As a Java EE developer, I sometimes envy how fast it’s possible to see the result of a code change in a running application with interpreted languages like PHP or JavaScript. With Java, it’s always necessary to rebuild the source code in a bytecode, which can be then safely updated only by restarting the whole application. And all developers know that restoring the desired state of the application after a fresh restart takes time and is tedious. A while ago I’ve come across an opensource tool called HotswapAgent that speeds up code reloading. (more…)