Mike's Java Café

I am happy to announce that Donald Raab will visit the ACGNJ Java Users Group on December 12, 2017.  He will present, " API Deep Dive: Designing Eclipse Collections " at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad (second floor) starting at 7:30pm. When designing an API, its authors have to consider many aspects: style, naming, scope, and implementation details are among these aspects. They have a direct impact on the resulting code, and its implementation can go in many different directions. How do you choose the best route to go? How do you guarantee consistency and performance across the framework? In this session, the mastermind behind Eclipse Collections (and previously GS Collections) shares the design choices he had to face and how he did it, the impact on different implementation strategies, and how the framework became a Eclipse project. Come take a look behind the curtains of a widely used API that has many years of development and that you can c...

The October 2017 ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Reza Rahman . He presented " Java EE 8 and Java EE 9: What You Need to Know ." He outlined the past, present, and future of Java EE, reviewed notable JSRs within Java EE 8, and what's on the horizon. Rahman also discussed the stagnation of Java EE , the emergence of the Java EE Guardians , and the events that lead to where Java EE is today. You can read all the details including Q&A with Rahman on my InfoQ news piece,  Eclipse Foundation Prepares to Open Source Java EE as EE4J .

This month's Java Users Group meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad starting at 7:30pm. Barry Burd will present " Swift Programming for Java Developers ." Abstract: Swift is Apple's new language for developing macOS and iOS applications. In this talk, Barry will introduce Swift programming and compare features of Swift with their counterparts in Java. He will also demonstrate the creation of a simple app for Apple's iPhone. Where: Scotch Plains Rescue Squad 1916 Bartle Avenue Scotch Plains, New Jersey 07076 When: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 7:30pm As always, you can visit the Java Users Group website for the latest information. Please contact me if you have any questions and I hope to see y'all on September 12!

I am happy to announce that Reza Rahman will visit the ACGNJ Java Users Group on October 10, 2017.  He will present, " Java EE 8 and Java EE 9 - What You Need to Know " at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad (second floor) starting at 7:30pm. The process of defining the scope for Java EE 8 was the most community opinion driven in the history of the platform.   Java EE 8 is supposed to solidly enable HTTP/2, Server-Sent Events (SSE), JSON and aligning all parts of the platform with Java SE 8.  It includes a much awaited security API overhaul, a brand new MVC API as well as a slew of critical updates to APIs like JSF, JMS, JPA, JAX-RS and CDI.  Unfortunately the road to Java EE 8 has not been smooth.  After a long and silent delay Oracle announced updated plans for Java EE 8 and Java EE 9.  The plans now include adding support for dynamic configuration, health-checks, NoSQL, fat-jars, eventual consistency, multi-tenancy, dynamic discovery...

The 12th annual Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference was held on Tuesday, April 18 and Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I was honored to have served as a steering committee member for ETE 2017 and to have covered the conference as a dedicated reporter for InfoQ . The summaries for both days are listed as follows: Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference 2017: Day One Recap Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference 2017: Day Two Recap Additional news items from ETE 2017 are listed as follows: Kiki Carter, Enterprise Architect at Lightbend, Speaks to InfoQ at ETE Jake Wharton, Android Engineer at Square, Speaks to InfoQ at ETE Oracle Defends the Java Module System   As always, the folks at Chariot Solutions went above-and-beyond organizing and hosting this conference!

The April ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Elliotte Rusty Harold .  His presentation was entitled, " Exceptions: I'm Telling You for the Last Time ." Elliotte discussed the three rules of using exceptions: Rule #1 - try blocks should be long, not short Rule #2: Checked exceptions indicate environmental problems. Runtime, i.e., unchecked exceptions indicate program errors. Rule #3 - If you can't handle it, bubble it. Harold provided his reasoning for not using exceptions.  He stated, "If we haven't learned how to use exceptions within the last 20 years, will we learn over the next 20 years?  Maybe exceptions are just too hard.  And if exceptions are too hard, then what about Java features such as lambdas and data binding?" Sun forgot to document exceptions when they were first introduced in Java 1, alpha 3.  Elliotte encouraged everyone to search for the original white papers by James Gosling, Patrick Naughton, and Bi...

I am happy to announce that Elliotte Rusty Harold will visit this month's ACGNJ Java Users Group to present, " Exceptions: I'm Telling You for the Last Time " on Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad (second floor) starting at 7:30pm. No feature of the Java programming language is as original or as misused and controversial as exception handling. More than twenty years after Java was introduced more developers don't understand exceptions than do. That's not surprising given that most textbooks and tutorials get exceptions seriously wrong by focusing on the rules you must follow rather than the reasons you should follow them. And yet just three rules cover 99% of what you need to know about exceptions: Separate exception handling from the main path by making try blocks as long as possible. Use checked exceptions for environmental problems and runtime exceptions for programming errors. Bubble exceptions you can't handle. Follow...

The 12th annual Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference will be held on Tuesday, April 18 and Wednesday, April 19 at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The two keynote addresses will feature: Blair McIntyre - The Web as Platform for Augmented Reality Experiences Scott Hanselman - A History of Back-End to Front-End: From Mainframes to Compiled JavaScript and Beyond Other notable speakers include: Jessica Kerr Yehuda Katz David Nolen Jake Wharton Maciej Ceglowski Andy Hunt Holden Karau Alex Grigoryan Guillermo Rauch Daniel Spiewak The entire schedule can be found here . ETE that is organized by Chariot Solutions in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.  I have participated in this conference since 2008 as an attendee, a speaker, and more recently, a member of the ETE Steering Committee.  Chariot Solutions is the most gracious hosts as they provide breakfast, lunch, and an after-hours social event after day one. This...

The 42nd annual Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) was held on Friday, March 17 (TCF IT Professional Conference) and Saturday, March 18 (regular show). At the TCF IT Professional Conference , I presented " Building Realtime Data Apps with Speedment ."  Many thanks to Per-Åke Minborg , CTO of Speedment, for his support. My schedule allowed me to attend only the morning sessions of the conference.  I attended the following talks before and after mine. Andrew Murran, Senior Cyber Security Engineer with Sila Solutions Group presented "Rebooting Software Development."  He focused on the philosophies of why developers choose the path of least resistance to ultimately write poor, therefore less secure code.  Andrew also demonstrated that it is possible to change that path of least resistance to write good, quality code that is more secure. Howard Deiner, a software consultant and educator who specializes in Agile process and prac...

The 42nd annual Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) will be held on Saturday, March 18, 2017 at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey. The theme for this year's event is Autonomous Vehicles. Ragunathan "Raj” Rajkumar , Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), will deliver the keynote address.  Professor Rajkumar directs a number of labs at CMU, including the the newly established University Transportation Center on Technologies for safe and efficient transportation.  He was co-director of the lab that created the Autonomous Cadillac, which completed 33 miles through high-traffic thoroughfares and two interstate highways. As always, there will be a suite of talks throughout the day including tracks on autonomous vehicles and object-oriented programming.  Please check back here for an updated blog post as the speaker grid is confirmed. Tickets are $12.00 in advance on-line and $15.00 at the do...

The topic for this month's meeting is "Technical Overview of Functional Programming" presented by Barry Burd . Abstract: This presentation is an overview of the concepts typically used in functional programming.  These concepts include pure functions, immutability, referential transparency, pattern matching, lambdas, currying, sections, map, filter, fold, list comprehension, lazy evaluation, higher-order functions, polymorphism, and monads.  Some of these concepts are the basis for features in Java 8, but many aren't. Where: Scotch Plains Rescue Squad 1916 Bartle Avenue Scotch Plains, New Jersey 07076 When: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 7:30pm As always, you can visit the Java Users Group web site for the latest information. Please contact me if you have any questions and I hope to see y'all on April 26!

Day Two of the 2016 Philly Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference kicked off with the keynote address by Raffi Krikorian entitled, " How Your Organization is Killing Your Software ." Raffi discussed certain aspects of software development such as speed of development and major rewrites of code by recalling his experiences while working at Twitter. His five stages of code rewrites are: Elation Buckle Down Oh SHIT! Exhaustion Relief One of his main take-home messages was the importance of establishing your team.  He stated, " Setting up your team says more about your architecture than the architecture itself. " This was indeed a very engaging keynote address. The sessions I attended are summarized as follows: Session One: " An Introduction to Web Components and Polymer " Jeff Posnick Jeff introduced Web Components and its four specifications: Template Shadow DOM Custom Elements HTML Import He then introduced Google...

Day One of the 2016 Philly Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference kicked off with the keynote address by David Ferrucci entitled, " AI: A Return to Meaning ." David's main message was related to meaning, that is, meaning in not explicit in language.  Making decisions based on statistical data versus deductive reasoning isn't easy.  David maintains, " We need machines to go beyond their words and their patterns.  We need them to understand ." This was indeed a very thought-provoking keynote address. The sessions I attended are summarized as follows: Session One: " React.js Reconciliation " Jim Sproch Jim provided a very nice introduction to React Reconciliation and its underlying design of the virtual DOM.  He juxtaposed how an existing paradigm, such as rebuilding the DOM with every UI change, can be made more efficient.  For example, the traditional approach of synchronizing the UI with the DOM has a complexity of O(N3).  ...

I arrived a short while ago at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia for this year's Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference. I've been fortunate to have once-again served on the Steering Committee for this year's event as one of the handful of industry folks who are not an employee of Chariot Solutions.  It's an absolute blast working with everyone!  Chariot Solutions is the most gracious host! There are keynotes both today and tomorrow... This morning's keynote will be delivered by David Ferrucci and is entitled, "AI: A Return to Meaning." For detailed information on all the talks at this year's conference, please visit http://www.phillyemergingtech.com/ . That's all for now...stay tuned for highlights of Day One!

The 2015 Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 7-8, 2015 at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I have been participated in this conference since 2008 as a speaker and steering committee member. The conference is run by Chariot Solutions based in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.  I've known some of the employees since 2006 and it's been an absolute pleasure working with them.  They treat me like a member of the Chariot family and it is certainly much appreciated! I wish I could say that there is still time to register for this event, but it has been sold out since mid-February, so you will have to wait until next year.  In the meantime, you can peruse the ETE web site for the keynotes and sessions that will be available this year. I'll be tweeting these next few days and blogging about my experience.  Please look for my tweets with the #phillyete hashtag at @mpredli .

The 2013 Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference was held on April 2-3, 2013 at the Sheraton Society Hill in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is year #6 in which I've participated in this conference in some capacity.  Not only have I attended ETE all these years, I was a speaker from 2008 through 2010 and I was on this year's ETE Steering Committee having participated on the Frameworks and Languages tracks.  I was also the guy tossing T-shirts to all the attendees and speakers as they checked-in on Tuesday, April 2. Even though I'm not an employee of Chariot Solutions , the folks there have made me feel as if I'm part of their family.  It's been an absolute pleasure working with them all these years and I look forward to many more years to come! My main focus for this year's ETE was Meteor and JavaScript.  I was indeed very happy that Avital Oliver, a core developer at Meteor , agreed to speak at ETE and host a meetup.  This is because...

The 38th Annual Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) will be held one month from today, i.e., Saturday, March 16, 2013 from 9:00am - 5:00pm. The venue will be at The College of New Jersey . This will be year #2 in which TCF has gone from a Saturday/Sunday event to only one weekend day, Saturday.  This was due to ever-increasing costs relative to the income realized from running such a show.  As you may know, computer shows have seen a decline in attendance over the past 20-or-so years. However, what makes this show different from others is the suite of talks that are available for a modest $10.00 price-of-admission.  I always say there's something for everyone at TCF as the talks aren't just for tech-savvy or IT professionals.  This year, there are tracks on Microsoft, Robotics, Apple, Games, among others.  I will be conducting a series of talks in my own track, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) University .  Look for a separate blog post for details! The...

The topic for this month's meeting will be Technical Overview of Meteor . Meteor is an ultra-simple environment for building modern websites. What once took weeks, even with the best tools, now takes hours with Meteor . The web was originally designed to work in the same way that mainframes worked in the 1970s. The application server rendered a screen and sent it over the network to a dumb terminal. Whenever the user did anything, that server re-rendered a whole new screen. This model served the Web well for over a decade. It gave rise to LAMP , Rails , Django , PHP . But the best teams, with the biggest budgets and the longest schedules, now build applications in JavaScript that run on the client. These apps have stellar interfaces. They don't reload pages. They are reactive: changes from any client immediately appear on everyone's screen. They've built them the hard way. Meteor makes it an order of magnitude simpler, and a lot more fun. You can build a compl...

The 2013 Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference (sponsored by Chariot Solutions ) will be held on April 2-3, 2013 at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Early bird registration is currently at $385.00 until February 15 when the price increases to $460.00 . Sheraton Society Hill Hotel  One Dock Street (2nd & Walnut) Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215) 238-6000 Book your room through starwoodmeetings.com to receive a discounted rate.

After a an extremely long hiatus of more than four years, I will be resuming blogging on this and potentially other out-dated blogs that I have started. Look for announcements on ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting announements, upcoming conferences and feedback about those conferences. I hope you find resurrection of this blog useful and I would appreciate any feedback you may have. Happy blogging! Mike.