Glen Vanderburg gave an exhaustive presentation on the Java Collections Framework. Despite the mundane subject matter, this was a session worth attending. Although most of the tips and tricks were old hat to experienced developers, I’m certain everyone learned something new.
My favorite tidbits:
Collections.binarySearch(…)
Glenn’s ugly trick of using try…finally to execute code after a […]
I skipped the intro session, but attended Rod Cope’s second session on Groovy?. His presentation was a strong collection of “look how easy this is” examples that made quite a compelling case for Groovy (or, arguably, any dynamic language with closures, dynamic extensions, etc.). I am attracted to Groovy because it builds on […]
David Bock clearly had not given this talk before, and it was not quite as informative as I’d hoped.
I did get a sharper picture of how plugins should interact with their hosting application, via a specific API (which will be applied to a new SnipSnap API). He also showed a nice workflow configuration format […]
Ted Neward put on an extremely disappointing show. He simply recycled the The Eight Fallacies of
Distributed Computing plus two predictable additions, and droned on and on in an effort to fill the time alloted reading through them. Most of that filler was devoted to his own ego.
My notes from the NFJS? expert panel, which was not as good as 2004 but still fun:
Ben Galbraith spoke about the uncertainty principle and paradox of choice. Advises that architects choose something that works, and don’t get distracted by the latest shiny framework. The best choices for your project will not be those […]
Another great presentation from Eitan Suez full of live demonstrations. Naked Objects is a fun framework that seeks to automatically generate your presentation and persistence layers from your model classes. The buzzword of choice is “radical simplification,” which Eitan supported by a great quote:
If anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when […]
Ben Galbraith presenting without his usual partner, Dion Almaer. I didn’t learn anything new; it was largely an AJa X? demo. At least Ben is an entertaining speaker. Perhaps their new site, Ajaxian, will prove more educational over time.
Eitan Suez gave a great presentation on JiBX. He had great slides for reference, but spent the session time demonstrating the use with real, from-scratch examples. He only returned to the slides for some strong conceptual presentations, such as the weaving of XML and Java references together into a mapping file.
JiBX itself looks […]
David Geary, a fellow with a lot of Struts cred and a serious affection for JSF gave a repeat of his JavaOne talk on Shale?. It was largely an introduction, a bit of sales pitch, and some Craig McClanahan hero worship (which I’ve been guilty of myself, of course).
David is a very knowledgeable guy, […]
I just happened upon an excellent mini-rant from Elliotte Rusty Harold about not
letting your UI be the ultimate leaky abstraction.
