Kenneth Kousen
Greater Wisconsin Software Symposium
Madison · March 1 - 2, 2013
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
Making Java Groovy
Groovy isn't designed to replace Java – it just makes Java cleaner and easier to develop. This presentation will look at various tasks Java developers need to do and demonstrate ways Groovy can help.
Beyond Managing Your Manager
This is a revised and updated version of the previous talk, with current thinking from practice and the literature. The talk presents why conflicts with your manager are inevitable based on differences in priorities and perspectives, and how to plan for them. The goal is to show you how to build the loyalty relationship that allows you to get what you need when you need it.
Forecasting from Data
This talk could be called, “Why Nate Silver Was Right”. Nate's correct predictions during the 2012 US elections made him famous, but he actually used very straightforward, simple concepts that can be applied in a variety of business settings. This talk reviews his techniques, and includes an overview of Bayesian statistics, which allow you to use a priori estimates to refine your forecasts over time.
Design Patterns in Groovy
Languages that support both dynamic typing and closures radically simplify the standard design patterns. This presentation will demonstrate how many of the common patterns in Java simply vanish in Groovy, and how much simpler they are even when they remain.
Spock: Logical Testing for Enterprise Applications
The Spock framework brings simple, elegant testing to Java and Groovy projects. It integrates cleanly with JUnit, so Spock tests can be integrated as part of an existing test suite. Spock also includes an embedded mocking framework that can be used right away.
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.