Mike's Java Café

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.

Folks: The 2008 Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) will be held April 25-27, 2008 at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, NJ. The TCF IT Professional Conference (now in its 3rd year) will be held on Friday, April 25, 2008 from 9:00am - 5:00pm. The regular TCF activities (now in its 33rd year) will be held on Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27, 2008. Activities include: (a) Suite of talks (b) Indoor vendors (c) Outdoor flea market (d) Robotics competition (NEW) (e) Saturday night banquest (at additional cost) The festival is always in need of volunteers. The commitment is a minimum of four (4) hours of your time. For your efforts, you will receive: (a) A TCF hat (b) Free admission to the weekend show (c) A discounted on the banquet ticket Please visit http://www.tcf-nj.org/ for more details including forms for volunteering. There's something for everyone at TCF! Please contact me if you have any questions, and I hope to see y'all at the show!

The 2008 Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference (sponsored by Chariot Solutions) will be held on March 26-27, 2008 at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. Registration is still open and seats are going fast. For more detailed information, please visit the following URLs: http://www.chariotsolutions.com/ http://www.phillyemergingtech.com/

For those of you that haven't heard of the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) symposium tour, my first question is, " Where have you been?! " This tour has been around since 2001, and has been gaining popularity. This is the third year that the tour has made its way through New Jersey, and I recently attended the Atlantic Northeast Software Symposium that was held in Princeton, New Jersey on August 10-12, 2007. This was my second consecutive year attending NFJS and I have to tell you that, just like last year, I left the symposium having learned a tremendous amount. When Jay Zimmerman, the founder and director of NFJS, says he strives to stay on the cutting edge of technology, he means it! For example, at the New York Software Symposium that I attended last year in Newark, New Jersey, I primarily gained a much better understanding of Spring , Hibernate , and Aspect-Oriented Programming . This year, I gained a much better understanding of Groovy , Grails , the Google Web ...

Last Call...Make sure and join us if you can for a great show! The No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium Series 2007, the premier technically focused Java/Agility Event series is coming to Princeton with the Atlantic Northeast Software Symposium 2007 on August 10-12th. Event Name: Atlantic Northeast Software Symposium 2007 Dates: August 10-12, 2007 Location: Princeton - Westin Princeton URL: www.nofluffjuststuff.com/sh/2007-08-princeton The 2007 Atlantic Northeast Software Symposium is coming to Princeton on August 10-12th. ANSS 2007 will offer five (5) concurrent sessions for you to choose from. The hot topics covered at ANSS 2007 include: * Spring 2.0 * Groovy/Grails * OSGI * Domain Driven Design * Annotations * JavaScript * DROOLS * Java 6.0 * REST * JRuby *Agility *Performance & Scalability We have a great set of speakers lined up for you to enjoy featuring: Venkat Subramaniam, co-author of "Practices of an Agile Developer" David Geary, co-author of "Core JSF...

This month, we welcome Aaron Mulder from Chariot Solutions who will introduces us to the open source Apache Geronimo application server from the perspective of a J2EE developer. Do you have experience developing J2EE applications, but no idea how to get started with Geronimo? Or perhaps wonder how to compare Geronimo to JBoss or Tomcat? Aaron will cover the Geronimo server's features, installation and management, deployment plan syntax, included tools, debugging options, and more. He'll also look at the logs, the management console, setting up database pools and JMS resources and security realms, how to hook Geronimo up to your build scripts and IDE for deployment and debugging, and how to take advantage of Geronimo plugins to leverage additional features from scheduling and reporting to J2EE 5. Aaron Mulder is the Chief Technical Officer of Chariot Solutions where he helps companies with their Java, J2EE, and Open Source architecture challenges. When not consulting,...

The 2006 No Fluff, Just Stuff (NFJS) Symposium Tour made it's way through the New York area on August 18-20, 2006 at the Four Points at Sheraton Hotel in Newark, New Jersey. This symposium series has been touring the country every year since 2002, but I first learned about it when Barry Burd attended his first symposium in 2005 to interview some of the industry experts while honing his Java skills. His interviews, by the way, can be found on Java Boutique . Barry, a regular attendee at the ACGNJ Java Users Group , raved about his experience at the symposium. When I first learned that this year's tour would come through Newark, I knew that I had to attend. Before I even had a chance to talk to my boss about attending, I happened to win a full registration pass at one of Yakov Fain's Princeton Java Users Group meetings. Yakov raffled off a total of two (2) such passes at his June and July meetings. My experience was better than I had expected. Jay Zimmerman does an ou...