Kenneth Kousen
Greater Wisconsin Software Symposium
Madison · March 13 - 14, 2015
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
New Features in Java 8
Java 8 is the biggest change to the Java language ever. The addition of lambdas, functional interfaces, and streams fundamentally changes the programming model for applications. This talk summarizes those changes, along with optionals, method references, and other new features of the language.
Groovy: Making Java Better
Groovy is unusual among programming languages in that it doesn't seek to replace its predecessor. You can freely mix Groovy with Java on a class-by-class, or even line-by-line, basis. If you are working with Java, there's no reason not to make your life easier by adding Groovy where it helps the most.
GPars: Concurrency in Java and Groovy
The Groovy Parallel Streams framework is a Groovy library for performing both Java and Groovy tasks concurrently. It offers many high-level concurrency abstractions, from Actors to Dataflow operators to Agents and Parallel Collections.
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.