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 and circuit breake

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 will be

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 door.