Greater Atlanta Software Symposium
September 21 - 23, 2012 - Atlanta, GA
View the event details here ».
Session Descriptions
Tim Berglund - GitHubber
Complexity Theory and Software Development
Some systems are too large to be understood entirely by any one human mind. They are composed of a diverse array of individual components capable of interacting with each other and adapting to a changing environment. As systems, they produce behavior that differs in kind from the behavior of their components. Complexity Theory is an emerging discipline that seeks to describe such phenomena previously encountered in biology, sociology, economics, and other disciplines.
Connected Data with Neo4j
Neo4j is an open-source, enterprise-class database with a conventional feature set and a very unconventional data model. Like the databases we're already used to, it offers support for Java, ACID transactions, and a feature-rich query language. But before you get too comfortable, you have to wrap your mind around its most important feature: Neo4j is a graph database, built precisely to store graphs efficiently and traverse them more performantly than relational, document, or key/value databases ever could.
Git Workshop (Bring A Laptop)
Git is a version control system you may have been hearing a bit about lately. But simply hearing more about it may not be enough to convince you of its value. Getting hands on experience is what really counts. In this workshop, you'll bring your Windows, Mac or Linux laptop and walk through downloading, installing, and using Git in a collaborative fashion.
Gradle Jumpstart (Bring a Laptop)
Gradle is a compelling new build tool that incorporates the lessons learned from a decade of Ant and Maven. More than just a compromise between declarative and imperative build formats, or between convention and configuration, Gradle is a sophisticated software development platform that simple builds easy and complex, highly automated continuous software delivery pipelines possible to build. Using its extensible APIs and expressive DSL, you're equipped to build your next build.
Hadoop
When you want to measure fractions of a millimeter, you get a micrometer. When you want to measure centimeters, you get a ruler. When you want to measure kilometers, you might use a laser beam. The abstract task is the same in all cases, but the tools differ significantly based on the size of the measurement.
Likewise, there are some computations that can be done quickly on data structures that fit into memory. Some can't fit into memory, but will fit on the direct-attached disk of a single computer. But when you've got many terabytes or even petabytes of data, you need tooling adapted to the scale of the task. Enter Hadoop.
NoSQL Smackdown 2012
Alternative databases continue to establish their role in the technology stack of the future—and for many, the technology stack of the present. Making mature engineering decisions about when to adopt new products is not easy, and requires that we learn about them both from an abstract perspective and from a very concrete one as well. If you are going to recommend a NoSQL database for a new project, you're going to have to look at code.
David Bock - Principal Consultant, CodeSherpas Inc.
Maintaining Source Code Quality (The Project Integrity Series)
How many times have you started a new project only to find that several months into it, you have a big ball of code you have to plod through to try to get anything done? Have you ever been the 'new guy' on a project where it seems like the code grew more like weeds and brambles than a well-tended garden? With a few good tools to help analyze the code, we can keep our project from turning into that big ball of mud, and we can salvage a project that is already headed down that path.
Managing Complexity (The Project Integrity Series)
How many times have you started a new project only to find that several months into it, you have a build process that mysteriously fails, a bunch of 'TODO' and 'FIXME' comments in the source, and problems that come and go because "it works on my machine"? Does your project have a little bit of 'folk wisdom' that isn't well-known, but is necessary to get things done? How easily could you recreate your development environment if you got a new machine today?
Metrics for steering your projects to success
There are a lot of things we can measure about our source code, but what about the "project as a whole" and its overall health? Are there ways of measuring the effectiveness of our processes? Are there things we can measure that would point to project automation wins? Is there a way to measure team 'morale'?
Surviving Middle Management
Most good developers eventually have the opportunity to be managers. Whether they call you the "project manager", "Technical Lead", "Lead Developer", or some other classic middle-management title, you become the 'goto' guy between management and developers. You're the guy who is expected to keep the project in-line, track a schedule, and occasionally answer the question "How's it going?", and perhaps still contribute at a technical level. So how do you do that?
Jeremy Deane - Chief Architect - Software Engineering Aficionado
Enterprise Integration Agility
Today’s interconnected world requires that organizations rapidly deliver flexible-integrated solutions. The conventional approach is to integrate heterogeneous applications using web services but unfortunately that tends to tightly couple those applications. In this session we will explore several alternatives for achieving Enterprise Integration Agility.
RESTful Imaginarium
In this RESTful Imaginarium you will learn about about the core concepts of REST demonstrated through three leading RESTful web service frameworks: Jersey (JAX-RS), Spring MVC and NetKernel. During this daydream you will learn about the fallacies of URL parameters, the debate of PUT vs. POST and the power of HATEOAS.
Resource-Oriented Concurrent Processing
Traditional concurrent development on the Java Platform requires in depth knowledge of threads, locks, and queues (oh, my!). Fortunately, new functional languages that run on the Java Platform, such as Scala, have made concurrent programming easier.
An alternate approach is to implement concurrent processes using a resource oriented computing (ROC) platform. At the heart of this ROC platform is a microkernel that allows processing to scale linearly as more CPUs are added. Consequently, developers are freed from the complexity of Java concurrency and functional programming.
Neal Ford - Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.
Continuous Delivery Pt 1: Deployment Pipelines
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. This workshop focuses on the Deployment Pipeline concept from Continuous Delivery.
Continuous Delivery Pt 2: Infrastructure
Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process. This workshop sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. This workshop focuses on the agile infrastructure required to implement a deployment pipeline and continuous delivery.
Emergent Design
Emergent design is a big topic in the agile architecture and design community. This session covers the theory behind emergent design and shows examples of how you can implement this important concept.
Prerequisite: understanding of architectural and design concepts
Douglas Hawkins - Lead Software Engineer
Inside Android's Dalvik VM
Android is gaining popularity rapidly, but why does Android use its own implementation of Java?
Introduction to Virtual Machines and Interpreters
Have you ever wondered what goes on inside the virtual machines and interpreters that we use every day?
In this session, you'll see some of the inner workings of Python, PHP, Java, and JavaScript and learn that at the lowest level these languages really are not as different as they may seem.
Understanding Garbage Collection
Most of us don't want to go back to the days of malloc and free, but the garbage collector isn't always our friend.
Virtual Machines and Interpreters II: Inside the Java Virtual Machine
In part II of VMs and Interpreters, you'll dive into the inner workings of the Java Virtual Machines. You'll learn how your Java code is translated from Java source code to byte code and ultimately machine code.
You'll also see tools for viewing Java byte code and measuring performance changes caused by VM optimizations.
Daniel Hinojosa - Independent Consultant/Developer
Joda Time and a Brief History of the World
JodaTime is Java Date/Time and Calendering done right. There are many problems with the original Date/Time API that came prepackaged in the early Java days. There are even One of the obvious issues is that Calendar is mutable and can unintentionally be changed. Another issue is that constructing Calendars in Java involves setting certain fields at certain times during coding, but not always getting the expected result. Joda Time repairs those issues and offers a robust and immutable date, time, and duration API.
Making Java Bearable with Guava (2013 Edition)
This presentation covers the Guava library developed by Google (http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/). Guava provides collection extensions to the Java Collection API and, along with this, a cornucopia of time-saving utilities that bring Java as close as possible to some of the more functional and dynamic language competitors like Scala, Ruby, and Clojure.
Personal Agility with the Pomodoro Technique
Time is very precious and is often threatened by phone calls, emails, co-workers, bosses, and most of all, yourself. The Pomodoro Technique reigns in unfocused time and gives your work the urgency and the attention it needs, and it's done with a kitchen timer.
Scala Koans - A new and fun way to learn a Scala programming language (Bring a Laptop)
Have you looked into Scala? Scala is a new object-functional JVM language. It is statically typed and type inferred. It is multi-paradigm and supports both object oriented and functional programming. And it happens to be my favorite programming language.
If you are interested in Scala, how you are planning to learn Scala? You probably are going to pick up a book or two and follow through some examples. And hopefully some point down the line you will learn the language, its syntax and if you get excited enough maybe build large applications using it. But what if I tell you that there is a better path to enlightenment in order to learn Scala?
Kenneth Kousen - Author of "Making Java Groovy"
Grails Workshop
Build a Grails application from start to finish in this half-day workshop. We'll start with domain classes, apply constraints, add controllers and services, apply both unit and integration tests, and then add additional functionality through plugins.
Groovy Workshop
This half-day workshop will bring you up to speed on the specifics of the Groovy programming language. We'll touch on most of the major features of the language, from collections and closures to builders, AST transformations, and metaprogramming. Specific examples will cover topics from Groovy itself and will be supported by unit and integration tests and built using Gradle.
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.
Pratik Patel - CTO TripLingo & Code Hacker
Advanced JavaScript for Java Devs
So you think you've picked up enough JavaScript to be dangerous, but feel like the whole prototypical language thing is still a mystery. In this session, we'll go from basic JavaScript to advanced JavaScript. We'll discuss and code modular JavaScript with CommonJS. We'll look into the details of a prototype language and discuss things like parasitic inheritance. We'll also look at JavaScript libraries that will help you get the most out of JavaScript - not jQuery, but a library like UnderscoreJS and SugarJS.
Mobile Development Options 2013
There's a bevy of options for developing mobile apps. If you're looking at cross-platform solutions, there's a multitude of options to choose from. In this session we'll explore the three basic categories for developing mobile apps: native, cross-platform-to-native, and mobile web. We'll discuss the sweet spot for each of these three approaches and the benefits and drawbacks of each. Technologies discussed include Android, iOS, HTML5/CSS3, Phonegap, Titanium, and jQuery Mobile.
Mobile Performance Tips n' Tricks
Creating a web site, web app, or native app for mobile use presents a special set of challenges. Specifically, developers and designers should be zoned into the techniques for usability - and usability can be enhanced greatly by taking performance elements into consideration up-front. In this session, we explore the many performance tips and tricks you can employ to make your website or web app or native app shine on mobile devices. This is an advanced course that discusses issues such as image loading, JavaScript performance, and wireless latency.
Put some Backbone.js or Ember.js into your app
We've come a long way down the JavaScript road. Gone are the days of 'just hack it' for the web - architecting even a small project in JavaScript can be a challenge. Thankfully, there are several frameworks to help you; the most popular currently is Backbone.js. In this session, we'll assume you know nothing of Backbone.js, and we'll build a small application using Backbone.js as the foundation. We'll also build the same app using Ember.js, another popular JavaScript framework.
Prerequisite: Advanced JavaScript of JavaScript knowledge
Nathaniel Schutta - Author, speaker, software engineer focused on user interface design.
Designing for Mobile
The word just came down from the VP - you need a mobile app and you need it yesterday. Wait, you've never built a mobile app...it's pretty much the same thing as you've built before just smaller right? Wrong. The mobile experience is different and far less forgiving. How do you design an application for touch? How does that differ from a mouse? Should you build a mobile app or a mobile web site? This talk will get you started on designing for a new, and exciting, platform. Whether that means iPhone, Android, Windows Phone or something else, you need a plan, this talk will help.
Hacking Your Brain for Fun and Profit
The single most important tool in any developers toolbox isn't a fancy IDE or some spiffy new language - it's our brain. Despite ever faster processors with multiple cores and expanding amounts of RAM, we haven't yet created a computer to rival the ultra lightweight one we carry around in our skulls - in this session we'll learn how to make the most of it. We'll talk about why multitasking is a myth, the difference between the left and the right side of your brain, the importance of flow and why exercise is good for more than just your waist line.
JavaScript Libraries You Aren't Using...Yet
You're all over jQuery - you write plugins in your sleep - and before that, you were a Prototype ninja. Your team treats JavaScript like a first class citizen, you've even written more tests than Kent Beck. Is that all there is in the land of the JavaScript developer? Believe it or not, the JavaScript party hasn't stopped. What other libraries are out there? What do they offer? This talk will survey the field of modern JavaScript libraries getting you up to speed on what's new. We'll dive in just deep enough to whet your appetite on a wide variety of libraries such as Backbone, Underscore, Zepto and more.
Leading Technical Change
Technology changes, it's a fact of life. And while many developers are attracted to the challenge of change, many organizations do a particularly poor job of adapting. We've all worked on projects with, ahem, less than new technologies even though newer approaches would better serve the business. But how do we convince those holding the purse strings to pony up the cash when things are "working" today? At a personal, how do we keep up with the change in our industry?
The Mobile App Smackdown: Native Apps vs. The Mobile Web
Mobile is the next big thing and your company needs to there. But what does there actually entail? Should you build a native app? On which platforms? Do you have the skills for that? What about the web? Can you deliver an awesome experience using nothing but a mobile web browser? This talk will help you navigate these treacherous waters. We'll discuss the pros and cons of the various approaches and give you a framework for choosing.
Matt Stine - Community Engineer @CloudFoundry
Code Archaeology
Feature requests are steadily pouring in, but the team cannot respond to them. They are paralyzed. The codebase on which the company has "bet the business" is simply too hard to change. It's your job to clean up the mess and get things rolling again. Where do you begin? Your first task is to get the lay of the land by applying a family of techniques we'll call "Code Archaeology."
Effective Java Reloaded
Even with the recent explosion in alternative languages for the JVM, the vast majority of us are still writing code in "Java the language" in order to put bread on the table. Proper craftsmanship demands that we write the best Java code that we can possibly write. Fortunately we have a guide in Joshua Bloch's Effective Java.
Effective Java Reloaded, Part II: Hello, Project Coin!
Even with the recent explosion in alternative languages for the JVM, the vast majority of us are still writing code in "Java the language" in order to put bread on the table. Proper craftsmanship demands that we write the best Java code that we can possibly write. Fortunately we have a guide in Joshua Bloch's Effective Java.
Prerequisite: Incredibly useful to attend Part I, but not strictly required.
Functional SOLID
Robert Martin assembled the SOLID family of principles to provide a useful guide to help us create object-oriented software designs that were resilient in the face of change. In recent years, the need to write highly-concurrent software in order to leverage increasingly ubiquitous multicore architectures, as well as general interest in more effectively controlling complexity in large software designs, has driven a renewed interest in the functional programming paradigm. Given the apparent similarity in their goals, "What is the intersection of SOLID with functional programming?" is a natural question to ask.
Practical Lean for the Practicing Developer
Much is said today by the software methodology "talking heads" about the need for organizations to "go lean." The question is, what does it mean to go lean? Is this the job of IT management? Or is it the job of the practicing software developer? And furthermore, does this simply mean the adoption of of another set of processes and procedures? Or is it something entirely different?
Ultimately, going lean simply means removing all of the impediments that prevent our organizations from achieving more of "the goal." While that goal may differ from context to context, for the vast majority of us that means "making more money," by improving our efficiency at moving from, as the Poppendieck's have so aptly said, from "concept to cash."
While a great many of us do not have the role power necessary to spur top-down organizational change, there are many practical things each of us can do to bring the power of "going lean" to our teams. As we apply these principles and practices to our day-to-day work, we can build the credibility necessary to become change agents.
Venkat Subramaniam - Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.
Applying Groovy Closures for fun and productivity
You can program higher order functions in Groovy quite easily using closures. But the benefits of closures go far beyond that. Groovy has a variety of capabilities hidden in closures.
Programming Concurrency with Akka
I call the JDK concurrency API as the synchronize and suffer model. Fortunately, you don't have to endure that today. You have some nice options, brought to prominence on the JVM by Scala and Clojure.
Programming with HTML 5
Developing a rich user interface for web applications is both exciting and challenging. HTML 5 has closed the gaps and once again brought new vibe into programming the web tier. Come to this session to learn how you can make use of HTML 5 to create stellar applications.
Rediscovering JavaScript
JavaScript is one of those very powerful languages that is often misunderstood and underutilized. It's quite popular, yet there's so much more we can do with it.
Scala Koans - A new and fun way to learn a Scala programming language (Bring a Laptop)
Have you looked into Scala? Scala is a new object-functional JVM language. It is statically typed and type inferred. It is multi-paradigm and supports both object oriented and functional programming. And it happens to be my favorite programming language.
If you are interested in Scala, how you are planning to learn Scala? You probably are going to pick up a book or two and follow through some examples. And hopefully some point down the line you will learn the language, its syntax and if you get excited enough maybe build large applications using it. But what if I tell you that there is a better path to enlightenment in order to learn Scala?
Thinking in Functional Style
Functional Programming has been around for a while, but it is gaining popularity, especially due to direct support in languages on the JVM. Writing code in functional style is not about syntax, it is a paradigm shift. In this presentation, using examples from Java, Groovy, and Scala, you will learn how to write code in functional style. We will start out discussing the elements of functional programming and then look at examples of some common operations and how you can implement those in functional style.
Craig Walls - Author of Spring in Action
Building Web Applications with Spring MVC
In this session, we'll start with the basics of Spring MVC development, focusing on how to leverage the new annotation-driven model. With that foundation set, we'll continue by exploring the new features in Spring 3.0 and 3.1 to build RESTful web applications that can serve both human-facing content as well as resources that are consumed by machine clients.
Developing Next-Generation Applications
For a long while, we've built applications pretty much the same way. Regardless of the frameworks (or even languages and platforms) employed, we've packaged up our web application, deployed it to a server somewhere, and asked our users to point their web browser at it.
But now we're seeing a shift in not only how applications are deployed, but also in how they're consumed. The cost and hassle of setting up dedicated servers is driving more applications into the cloud. Meanwhile, our users are on-the-go more than ever, consuming applications from their mobile devices more often than a traditional desktop browser. And even the desktop user is expecting a more interactive experience than is offered by simple page-based HTML sites.
With this shift comes new programming models and frameworks. It also involves a shift in how we think about our application design. Standing up a simple HTML-based application is no longer good enough.
Effective Spring
After almost a decade and several significant releases, Spring has gone a long way from challenging the then-current Java standards to becoming the de facto enterprise standard itself. Although the Spring programming model continues to evolve, it still maintains backward compatibility with many of its earlier features and paradigms. Consequently, there's often more than one way to do anything in Spring. How do you know which way is the right way?
Securing Spring
In this session, I'll show you how to secure your Spring application with Spring Security 3.0. You'll see hot to declare both request-oriented and method-oriented security constraints. And you'll see how SpEL can make simple work of expressing complex security rules.
Securing the Modern Web with OAuth
In this session, we'll look at OAuth, focusing on OAuth 2, from the perspective of an application that consumes an OAuth-secured API as well as see how to use OAuth to secure your own APIs.
Spring Data
This session starts with a high-level look at all that the Spring Data project has to offer. Then we'll dive deeper into a few select Spring Data modules, including Spring Data Neo4j, Spring Data MongoDB, Spring Data Redis, Spring Data JPA, and Spring Data JDBC Extensions
James Ward - Developer Advocate, Typesafe
Practicing Continuous Delivery on the Cloud
This session will teach you best practices and patterns for doing Continuous Delivery / Continuous Deployment in Cloud environments. You will learn how to handle schema migrations, maintain dev/prod parity, manage configuration and scaling.
