I still wonder how come that after so many years of HTML existence there is no easy way to output date/time values in local time. What could be as simple as having an element like <localdatetime value="2015-05-06 10:39:00" format="hh:mm"/> to make sure that user sees the time in the local timezone? (the value as you may have already guessed comes as UTC date/time and the format allows to control which parts of date/time have to appear in the result)
The problem is that even in the simplest case of a static page that, for example, now and then has to display a maintenance warning like "due to maintenance works the site will be unavailable till 10:00 of local time" the developer must use javascript or something else to render the time correctly. That's quite annoying.

Entity metadata: Java vs XML

The architecture of the last multi-tier project I worked for included a bunch of C# frontends connecting to a few Java services. There were a number of business domain entities. The state of almost every entity was continuously mutated.

Tribute to C++

It's been a long time since I last did anything in c++. After many years with Java and C# I don't really feel like fiddling with tons of headers and source files without a really good fast navigation between the types, methods, etc. One of the biggest advantages of Java/C# is that declaration and implementation are combined in one source file. That greatly simplifies navigation and refactoring (unless, of course, the application is designed that badly that it stops you from making any changes in a reliable fashion).
However, the knowledge of C++ still appears to be extremely helpful, for instance, when I need to clarify some details of JVM operation. Every time a question comes for which there is no good answer readily available (e.g. does JVM really apply any optimizations to final methods?) I'd better dig into JVM source code rather than wasting my time on reading many controversial opinions on the question. After all it is just a waste of time trying to understand who's right, who's wrong. So usually a better option is to make it certain by yourself.

P.S. JVM does apply optimizations to a final method. For example, see Parse::optimize_inlining(), ciMethod::find_monomorphic_target(), methodOopDesc::can_be_statically_bound() methods (JDK6-6u18 sources). And understanding if these optimizations may really boost your application performance is best assessed with testing. That's the only reliable approach.