Kenneth Kousen
Research Triangle Software Symposium
Raleigh · August 24 - 26, 2012
President, Kousen IT, Inc.
Ken Kousen is a Java Champion, several time JavaOne Rock Star, and a Grails Rock Star. He is the author of the Pragmatic Library books “Mockito Made Clear” and “Help Your Boss Help You,” the O'Reilly books “Kotlin Cookbook”, “Modern Java Recipes”, and “Gradle Recipes for Android”, and the Manning book “Making Java Groovy”. He also has recorded over a dozen video courses for the O'Reilly Learning Platform, covering topics related to Android, Spring, Java, Groovy, Grails, and Gradle.
His academic background include BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from M.I.T., an MA and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and an MS in Computer Science from R.P.I. He is currently President of Kousen IT, Inc., based in Connecticut.
Presentations
Groovy, part 1: Collections, closures, and the Groovy JDK
Want to use Groovy but don't have time to read all of Groovy in Action? This talk gives you a whirlwind introduction to its capabilities, from basic data types, Groovy strings, POGOs, collections, Groovy SQL, and the Groovy JDK.
Groovy, part 2: Builders, metaprogramming, and AST Transformations
Want to use Groovy but don't have time to read all of Groovy in Action? Building on the Groovy 101 talk, this presentation reviews features of Groovy that aren't based on simplifying Java. Topics include building and parsing XML and JSON, using the metaclass to enhance existing classes, and Abstract Syntax Tree Transformations like @Delegate, @Immutable, @Canonical, and more.
Gradle Fundamentals
The Gradle build tool is one of the most successful projects in the Groovy ecosystem because it addresses a difficult problem – every major build is a custom build. Gradle builds are written in Groovy, so the full power of the language is available if you need it. Gradle supports Maven project structure and repositories and uses Ivy dependency management without being bound by their normal constraints. With major systems like Grails, Hibernate, and the Spring Framework moving to Gradle, this is a technology worth taking the time to understand.