Write less code

I think that old adage of "Sorry I wrote you such a long letter, if I had more time I'd write you a shorter one" certainly applies to software development as well. If you spend a great deal of time learning how to write less code by using more off-the-shelf toolkits and frameworks you will write less code in the end. Sounds obvious, but I still see developers re-inventing the wheel far too often.

The following code requires a steep learning curve around Java, Apache projects, iCal4j (a great calendaring toolkit for iCalendar) Spring, Spring DAO and Maven; and probably many more things. Look how straightforward the expression is though:

from(calendarEventEmailInboundEndpoint).to(
  "bean:calendarAttachmentTranslator").to(
  "bean:calendarEventTranslator").to(
  "bean:calendarEventDAO?method=save");

The above Java code shows a Camel route that reads emails from a pop3 or imap inbox (depending on how calendarEventEmailInboundEndpoint is configured), extracts iCalendar attachments from one or more emails, translates the iCal4j representation into a model form for persistence, and finally persists the calendar event(s) in a database.

Pretty sophisticated stuff for 4 lines of code. :-)