Greater Atlanta Software Symposium

October 24 - 26, 2008 - Atlanta, GA


Atlanta Marriott Perimeter Center
246 Perimeter Center Parkway NE
Atlanta, GA   30346
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NOTE: You are viewing details about a past event. We will be back in AtlantaSeptember 20 - 22, 2013.
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Stuart Halloway

CEO of Relevance

Stuart Halloway is the CEO of Relevance, Inc. (www.thinkrelevance.com). With co-founder Justin Gehtland, Stuart helps companies adopt agile, as well as innovative technologies such as Clojure and Ruby on Rails. Stuart is the author of Programming Clojure, Rails for Java Developers, and Component Development for the Java Platform. Prior to founding Relevance, Stuart was the Chief Architect at Near-Time, and the Chief Technical Officer at DevelopMentor.



Presentations

How to Fail with 100% Code Coverage

Over the last few years, we have taken dozens of projects to 100% coverage, and there are still plenty of things that can go wrong. We will look at examples the various problems, and show how to prevent them from infecting your project.

With an expressive language such as Groovy or Ruby and with modern test practices, 100% C0 test coverage is readily achievable. But 100% coverage is meaningless without other supporting habits and practices. Over the last few years, we have taken dozens of projects to 100% coverage, and there are still plenty of things that can go wrong.

We will look at examples of each of these problems, and show how to prevent them from infecting your project:

* Fragile mocking
* Pair bravado
* The ugly mirror
* Parallel abstraction
* Overspecification
* Underspecification
* Invisible code
* Misplaced exemplar

Refactoring JavaScript

The rise of Ajax and Rich Web Applications, plus the success of dynamic languages, has caused people to revisit the JavaScript language. Now that we take JavaScript seriously as a language, it is time to get serious about the quality of JavaScript code, through refactoring. In this talk, we will test and refactor a real-world jQuery plugin.

As we refactor a real-world jQuery plugin, you will learn how to

  • test JavaScript code with Screw.Unit, Smoke, and blue-ridge
  • write covering tests for existing code
  • perform common refactorings such as extract method and "use the right tools"
  • rethink refactoring in light of functional programming style
  • think about when and how refactoring shades into breaking changes and redesign

Java.next: Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, and Scala

In this talk, we will explore and compare four of the most interesting JVM languages: Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, and Scala. Each of these languages aims to greatly simplify writing code for the JVM, and all of them succeed in this mission. However, these languages have very different design goals. We will explore these differences, and help you decide when and where these languages might fit into your development toolkit. For more information see http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/9/24/java-next-overview.

As we reach the middle of our second decade of Java experience, the community has learned a lot about software development. Many of our best ideas on how to use a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) are now being baked into more advanced languages for the JVM. These languages tend to provide two significant advantages:

  • They reduce the amount of ceremony in your code, allowing you to focus on the essence of the problem you are solving
  • They enable some degree of functional programming style. Think of it as a dash of verb-oriented programming to spice up your noun-oriented programming.

In this talk, we will explore and compare three of the most interesting new JVM languages: Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, and Scala. Each of these languages aims to greatly simplify writing code for the JVM, and all of them succeed in this mission. However, these languages have very different design goals. We will explore these differences, and help you decide when and where these languages might fit into your development toolkit.

Java.next #3: Dispatch

Dispatch takes many forms. Single dispatch, switch statements, pattern matching, and multiple dispatch all meet similar needs: Selecting runtime behavior in response to varying runtime conditions. Flexible dispatch is a key element of Java.next. All of the Java.next languages support dispatch strategies that are far more flexible than Java's single dispatch. In this talk (Part 3 of the Java.next series), I will explore how the Java.next languages (Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, and Scala) support dispatch.

For more information, see http://blog.thinkrelevance.com/2008/8/26/java-next-3-dispatch-2.

Books

by Stuart Halloway

Programming Clojure (Pragmatic Programmers) Buy from Amazon
List Price: $32.95
Price: $21.64
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  • Clojure is a dynamic language for the Java Virtual Machine, with a compelling combination of features:

    Clojure is elegant. Clojure's clean, careful design lets you write programs that get right to the essence of a problem, without a lot of clutter and ceremony.

    Clojure is Lisp reloaded. Clojure has the power inherent in Lisp, but is not constrained by the history of Lisp.

    Clojure is a functional language. Data structures are immutable, and functions tend to be side-effect free. This makes it easier to write correct programs, and to compose large programs from smaller ones.

    Clojure is concurrent. Rather than error-prone locking, Clojure provides software transactional memory.

    Clojure embraces Java. Calling from Clojure to Java is direct, and goes through no translation layer.

    Clojure is fast. Wherever you need it, you can get the exact same performance that you could get from hand-written Java code.

    Many other languages offer some of these features, but the combination of them all makes Clojure sparkle. Programming Clojure shows you why these features are so important, and how you can use Clojure to build powerful programs quickly.


by Stuart Halloway and Justin Gehtland

Rails for Java Developers Buy from Amazon
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Price: $24.17
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  • Many Java developers are now looking at Ruby, and the Ruby on Rails web framework. If you are one of them, this book is your guide. Written by experienced developers who love both Java and Ruby, this book will show you, via detailed comparisons and commentary, how to translate your hard-earned Java knowledge and skills into the world of Ruby and Rails.

    If you are a Java programmer, you shouldn't have to start at the very beginning! You already have deep experience with the design issues that inspired Rails, and can use this background to quickly learn Ruby and Rails. But Ruby looks a lot different from Java, and some of those differences support powerful abstractions that Java lacks. We'll be your guides to this new, but not strange, territory.

    In each chapter, we build a series of parallel examples to demonstrate some facet of web development. Because the Rails examples sit next to Java examples, you can start this book in the middle, or anywhere else you want. You can use the Java version of the code, plus the analysis, to quickly grok what the Rails version is doing. We have carefully cross-referenced and indexed the book to facilitate jumping around as you need to.

    Thanks to your background in Java, this one short book can cover a half-dozen books' worth of ideas:

    Programming Ruby Building MVC (Model/View/Controller) Applications Unit and Functional Testing Security Project Automation Configuration Web Services

by Stuart Dabbs Halloway

Component Development for the Java¿ Platform Buy from Amazon
List Price: $39.99
Price: $31.28
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  • If you're serious about writing components in Java, this book focuses on the component services you need to master. DevelopMentor Chief Scientist Stuart Halloway presents unprecedented, in-depth coverage of writing, deploying, and maintaining Java components. Halloway begins by showing how to use, control, and troubleshoot components. He offers real-world guidance on reflection performance, and demonstrates how reflection is used to build the Java serialization architecture. He also offers detailed coverage of using the Java Native Interface (JNI) to control the boundaries between Java code and components written in other environments. In Part II, Halloway presents a practical vision for using component services to become a more effective Java developer. Through examples and sample code, he introduces generative programming techniques that leverage Java into high performance. Finally, building on these techniques, he shows how to construct robust interoperability between Java and Win32/COM.