Venkat Subramaniam
Greater Atlanta Software Symposium
Atlanta · October 21 - 23, 2005
Founder @ Agile Developer, Inc.
Dr. Venkat Subramaniam is an award-winning author, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., creator of agilelearner.com, and an instructional professor at the University of Houston.
He has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia, and is a regularly-invited speaker at several international conferences. Venkat helps his clients effectively apply and succeed with sustainable agile practices on their software projects.
Venkat is a (co)author of multiple technical books, including the 2007 Jolt Productivity award winning book Practices of an Agile Developer. You can find a list of his books at agiledeveloper.com. You can reach him by email at venkats@agiledeveloper.com or on twitter at @venkat_s.
Presentations
Java 5 Features, What's in it for you?
A number of new features have been introduced in Java.
What benefit do these features offer you. Are there
issues with using these features. For instance, when should you use annotation? The objective of this presentation is not simply to introduce you to the features, but to the effective use of these as well.
Good, Bad and Ugly of Java Generics
Java introduced Generics in the 1.5 version (Java 5). What are the capabilities of Generics?
How do you use it? Are there some gotchas in using it? In this example driven presentation,
we will start at the basics of generics and look at its capabilities. We will then look at some
of the under the hood details on generics implementation. We will then delve into the details of
some of the changes to Java libraries to accommodate generics. Finally we will take a look at
some restrictions and pitfalls that we need to be familiar with when it comes to practical and
prudent use of generics.
Groovy for Java Programmers
Object-oriented scripting languages, or agile dynamic languages, as some like to call those, are gaining programmers' attention. Groovy bring this excitement to
the Java platform with its ability to generate byte code. You can use Groovy instead of Java for some parts of your application. By learning it, you can switch between the languages where you consider fit.
Programming with Mock objects
You are convinced that Test Driven Development is good for you and your project. You realize the benefits it has to offer. What's holding you back? All the code and components that your code so heavily depends on is most likely making you wonder if TDD is really for you. We will start out by looking at dependency and dependency inversion. Then we will discuss how mock objects can help separate our code from its dependencies.
Prudent OO Design
Is your code object-oriented? Developing with objects involves more than using languages like Java, C#, C++ or Smalltalk for that matter. From time to time, the OO paradigm stumps even expert developers. Agile programming becomes a mere act of hack if we code without knowing the OO principles. What are these principles – the ones that influence your design? In this presentation the speaker will present some of the challenges that are fundamental in nature. Then he will present OO Design principles and good practices for prudent development of OO code.
Agile Methodologies
Agile development is picking up steam. You have heard about eXtreme Programming(XP). What other Agile methodologies are you familar with and what do they bring of interest or significant to the table of Agility? More important, why should you learn about these different methodologies instead of simply focusing on one?
There is no one shoe that fits all. Any methodology that requires you to follow it in totality and not let you adapt is rather dogmatic, not pragmatic. To be effective we have to take the best of different approaches and apply to our projects base on our specific needs.