Quite often, when I rename a maven module, IntellijIdea gets confused and keeps showing the old module name in the project view.

• Re-importing maven projects does not help.
• Clearing the IntellijIdea caches and restarting does not help.
• Even deleting the .idea directory does not help.

I discovered that this is happening because:

• IntellijIdea keeps information about a project outside of the .idea directory
• IntellijIdea fails to delete that information when you invalidate caches and restart.

The solution I have found to this problem is:

Some time ago and for about a year I used a Mac, which had natural scrolling by default. I decided to resist the urge to immediately configure it to work like Windows, and instead I made it a point to give natural scrolling a try for at least a while before making up my mind as to whether to keep it or lose it. While giving it a try, I was surprised to see that it was very easy for me to adjust to it, despite the fact that I have been using the unnatural Windows scrolling mode for nearly 30 years. (Ever since the mouse wheel became a thing.) I found that natural scrolling was indeed... natural. So, I kept using it, and I became addicted to it. Ever since then, I always have to configure natural scrolling on any Windows machine that I get my hands on before I can start using that machine.

For decades, Windows has been so poor that it did not offer any user interface through which a novice user can change the mouse wheel scrolling mode. To do that you had to edit the registry, and the setting you had to modify was a machine setting, so you would be affecting the mouse wheel mode for all users, not just for yourself. This is unbelievably lame, but hey, that's Windows, we are totally used to lame.

One of our customers tried installing our Windows Application on one of their computers and their antivirus software complained. They in turn complained to us, so we had to find a solution. I am documenting the solution here.

The Dutch rank #1 in the world in English-as-a-foreign-language proficiency, and they have been ranking #1 consistently every year for many years now, according to yearly reports by the Education First (EF) organization. (Wikipedia.)

I can attest that at least in the Randstad area, (where half the population of the country lives,) almost everyone speaks English, and many do so very fluently.

Nonetheless, there are certain mistakes that the Dutch are somewhat prone to make in English, mostly due to interference from peculiarities of the Dutch language. When this happens, it is called Dutchlish or Dunglish. The phenomenon is acknowledged by the Dutch, who have their own word for it: Steenkolenengels, which literally means coal-English.

Here is a long list of examples of Steenkolenengels that I have compiled over the course of several years of living in The Netherlands.

Abstract

A new method for Automated Software Testing is presented as an alternative to Unit Testing. The new method retains the benefit of Unit Testing, which is Defect Localization, but eliminates white-box testing and mocking, thus greatly lessening the effort of writing and maintaining tests.

This was written on 2021-11-26 but it is retro-dated so as to not appear among my recent posts, and thus avoid embarrassing certain unnamed entities. It is written in past tense even though a few paragraphs down the page it begins describing my current experience, because in the near future I intend this to become my past experience.

In 2015 I decided to leave Greece and its destroyed economy, and to go live and work elsewhere in Europe. I started an international job search, and within a couple of months I had a few offers to choose from. I picked the one from a company called Topdesk, in the nice little university town of Delft, in The Netherlands, mainly because of tax benefits available to expats in that country, but also, and in no small part, because The Netherlands has the reputation of being one of the most foreigner-friendly countries in Europe. The Netherlands achieves this reputation in a number of ways, one of which is the fact that the Dutch rank number one in the world (1) in English-as-a-foreign language proficiency, making it possible to live in The Netherlands without ever having to learn Dutch.