Kenneth Kousen
Northern Virginia Software Symposium
Reston · November 6 - 8, 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.
Advanced Android I
This session will move beyond the basics cover Android persistence mechanisms, accessing RESTful web services, and more. We'll look at shared preferences, basic file I/O, and the Sqlite database. We'll also show how to operate off of the UI thread to access data from remote servers.
Advanced Android II
Topics in this session will include an in-depth discussion of fragments, as well as services, notifications, and the action bar.
Basic Android I
The basics of developing for the Android platform will be explored, from setting up the SDK to using the Android Studio IDE and the generated Gradle build files. No previous experience is required, other than a basic knowledge of Java.
Basic Android II
Building on the the previous talk, we'll add intents, customized layouts for alternative configurations, talk about the activity lifecycle, use logging, and more.
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.