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How many Java developers are there in the world?
Oracle says it’s 9,000,000. Wikipedia claims it’s 10,000,000. And the guys from NumberOf.net seem to be the most precise - they know that there are exactly 9,007,346 Java developers out there. Nice numbers. I have used those articles as reference points while speaking about the potential market size for our memory leak detection tool. But something in these numbers has bothered me for years - there is no trustworthy and public analysis behind those numbers. Its just conjured up from thin air. So I finally thought I would do something about it and try to figure it out for good.
Filed under: Java
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What is a PermGen leak?
What follows is a practical introduction to a specific type of memory problems in Java applications. Namely - we will analyze the errors that cause the java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space symptom in the stack trace.
Filed under: Memory Leaks
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Plumbr 1.1 – we now find PermGen leaks
It’s been only a month since we released 1.0. But we already have something new and cool to ship - as of this version we also find the leaks in the JVM permanent generation.PermGen leaks are a specific type of a memory leak the often happen during the redeploy phase. I guess you all have faced the dreaded java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space at some point during your career. And I bet most of you have struggled to find the cause and fix for this. Worry no more - Plumbr now provides you the tools needed to find and fix those errors.
Filed under: Product Updates
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How to plan for Y Combinator interview
Yes, we were invited by the Y Combinator for the interview, but didn’t have time to write about it back then. Right after we came back we did the final product and infrastructure improvements, and started testing for the official 1.0 release. Now, after having released the product, analyzed the feedback, issued the first invoices, we can sit back for a moment and relive the adventure once more. The article will hopefully be useful for future applicants by sharing our experience from the trip.TL;DR: An Estonian startup who applied to YC. Was invited to YC interview. Got rejected. Still spent a week in the Valley and got tons of interesting meetings, ideas and contacts in return.
Filed under: Plumbr
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Innocent until proven guilty
I would like to describe a recent case from my career as troubleshooter, which again reminds me that one should not put all his eggs into one basket. And that one should look around and use every possible tool from his toolbox, not just his favorite hammer. And that wrong and unverified assumptions are the most common reasons for long debugging sessions. And mostly of all: you should never jump to conclusions too fast!
Filed under: Memory Leaks
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Is $1,500,000 enough for a 1.0 release?
We in the Plumbr team decided that it is. Over the last few months in beta our customers have solved more than 200 memory leaks with the help of Plumbr. 200 leaks sounds cool, but how does it translate to money? You cannot force a leak to go away by just throwing piles of cash towards it.
Filed under: Plumbr
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Limiting your trials – by time or by features?
The sad truth is that nobody buys software solely based on a slick sales pitch. Everybody wants to get their hands on the piece of software first to find out whether they like it or not. And herein lies a pretty complicated problem - you want your users to fall in love with your product. At the same time you somehow want to limit the access to the product so that you can monetize it later. By and large you have two options here - either hand out a fully functional version of your software for a limited period of time and force users to convert to paid plans after the period passes or you somehow limit the functionality / capacity of the free version available. As most of the software industry tends to go with time-limited trials, so did we. But we soon realized we could do better.
Filed under: Plumbr
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Solving OutOfMemoryErrors (part 7) – APM tools as a solution?
Our series of posts about solving the OutOfMemoryError in our hypothetical production system nearing the conclusion. We have covered a number of different ways to attack OutOfMemoryErrors so far - profilers, JDK bundled tools and heap dump analyzers. Our today’s mercenaries will be Application Performance Management tools, or APMs.
Filed under: Memory Leaks
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Plumbr is mature: 1.0RC6 adds hot attach function
We are writing in from Tallinn Airport, on our way to San Francisco to the YCombinator interview. And we want to announce a major user interface update of our memory leak detector tool. This release of Plumbr is special also in another way: it is the final feature release before the official Plumbr 1.0. From this point on, we will only improve infrastructure and fix possible bugs, but will not add to the functionality any more. Plumbr 1.0 will introduce paid plans, which means that now is the last opportunity to use a feature-complete Plumbr for free.
Filed under: Product Updates
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On estimating the time it takes to solve a memory leak
Throughout the decade of being responsible for delivering various IT projects I have involuntarily developed a reflex - whenever I hear someone saying "Our application has a memory leak", I immediately get shivers running down my spine. The thing is - you can never estimate the amount of time it takes to solve the leak. Moreover - if the problem is in production, it means immediately allocating the best developer(s) in the team for an impossible-to-estimate period of time, and dropping everything else they were doing.
Filed under: Memory Leaks