Boulder JUG

March 9th, 2010 Meeting

Come join us for the March meeting of the Boulder JUG. We will kick off the evening with a talk on Jython followed by a discussion on how to implement emergent designs.

Sponsorship and Door Prize

We continue to enjoy Big Sky Technology's and TekSystems's Sponsorship's of the meeting room and of the food at the meetings.

JetBrains's and ZeroTurnaround's are providing personal licenses to their products.

Location

We continue to meet at the Wolf Law Library:

Wolf Law Building, Room #207
2450 Kittredge Loop Road
Boulder, CO 80309

A map and directions can be found on the Boulder JUG web site.

6:00-7:00 PM: Jython - Python for the Java Platform

First we will go over the state of Jython. 2.5.1 release and the recently released Jython book. Then we will discuss our forthcoming 2.5.2 release and future work on 2.6. Then we will introduce Python and demo how Jython easily integrates with Java. Next we will explore how Django, a popular web app framework for Python, works on Jython. Using Pydev, a Python IDE that's an Eclipse plugin, we will use Django's ORM to build database models, then provide a quick yet highly usable UI through the Django admin. Then we will look at how to build a simple CRUD web app. Next we will look at deployment against a JEE app server. Jython deployment for Django supports WAR packaging, database connection pools, and thread pools. Lastly we will look at JMS integration. As time permits, we will look at other interesting Jython tools such as Sikuli (functional testing), Grinder/GrinderStone (load testing), and Field (computational art).

About Jim Baker

Jim has over 15 years of software development experience, focusing on business intelligence, enterprise application integration, and high-performance web applications. A three-time startup veteran, Jim is a member of the Python Software Foundation and a committer on Jython. He has presented at Devoxx, EuroPython, JavaOne, and the Python Conference, as well at numerous user groups and is a coauthor of The Definitive Guide to Jython from Apress. Jim is a graduate of both Harvard and Brown.

7:00-7:30: Pizza, Soda and Networking

We are grateful to Tek-Systems for their continued sponsorship of the Pizza and Soda!

7:30-9:00: Implementing Emergent Designs

Emergent design is a big topic in the agile architecture and design community. This session covers some of the theory behind emergent design, but spends most of its time showing examples of how you can implement this important concept.

Agile architecture and design tries to defer important decisions to the last responsible moment. These techniques fall under the name of the emergent design, and that's what this presentation is about. It covers some of the theory behind emergent design, but mostly it describes and illustrates techniques to make emergency design possible. In this session, I cover testing as a design tool, re-factoring toward emergent design, and why emerging design is the only winning strategy in a world where requirements must change due to business decisions.

About Neal Ford

Neal is Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.

Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.

He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.

February 9th 2010 Meeting

Sponsorship and Door Prize

We continue to enjoy Big Sky Technology's and TekSystems's Sponsorship's of the meeting room and of the food at the meetings.

JetBrains's and ZeroTurnaround's are providing personal licenses to their products.

Location

We continue to meet at the Wolf Law Library:

Wolf Law Building, Room #207
2450 Kittredge Loop Road
Boulder, CO 80309

A map and directions can be found on the Boulder JUG web site.

6:00-7:00 PM: Design Fragments

Frameworks are a valuable way to share designs and implementations on a large scale. Client programmers, however, have difficulty using frameworks. They find it difficult to understand non-local client-framework interactions, design solutions when they do not own the architectural skeleton, gain confidence that they have engaged with the framework correctly, represent their successful engagement with the framework in a way that can be shared with others, ensure their design intent is expressed in their source code, and connect with external files.

A design fragment is a specification of how a client program can use framework resources to accomplish a goal. From the framework, it identifies the minimal set of classes, interfaces, and methods that should be employed. For the client program, it specifies the client-framework interactions that must be implemented. The structure of the client program is specified as roles, where the roles can be filled by an actual client s classes, fields, and methods. A design fragment exists separately from client programs, and can be bound to the client program via annotations in their source code. These annotations express design intent; specifically, that it is the intention of the client programs to interact with the framework as specified by the design fragment.

Here are more details on the topic.

About George Fairbanks

Dr. George Fairbanks has been teaching software architecture and object-oriented design for ten years for companies including Kinetium, Valtech, and Platinum Technology. In the Spring of 2008 he was the co-instructor for the graduate software architecture course at Carnegie Mellon University.

He holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, advised by David Garlan and Bill Scherlis. His dissertation introduced design fragments, a new way to specify and assure the correct use of frameworks through static analysis. He has publications on frameworks and software architecture in selective academic conferences, including OOPSLA and ICSE.

He has written production code for telephone switches, plugins for the Eclipse IDE, and everything for his own web dot-com startup. He maintains a network of Linux servers in his spare time. George is a program committee member for 2009 Working International Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2009), and has been a referee for IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE).

7:00-7:30: Pizza, Soda and Networking

We are grateful to Tek-Systems for their continued sponsorship of the Pizza and Soda!

7:30-9:00: Scaling Agile And Working With Distributed Teams

The early agile literature was adamant about two things: stick with small teams and put everyone in one room. However, in the years since the Agile Manifesto, the increasing popularity of agile and the dramatic improvements it brings has pushed it onto larger and larger projects. Additionally, having an entire team--especially on a large project--in one room, or even one building is a luxury no longer enjoyed by many projects.

In this presentation, we will look at how agile can be scaled to work on any multi-team project. Even a project with two teams will benefit from learning how to proactively manage interteam dependencies, conduct iteration planning for multiple teams, cultivate communities of practice, and coordinating work. Because so many projects are spread across multiple sites we will also look at overcoming the unique challenges facing distributed teams. We will look at deciding how to distribute a team, how to create coherence among team members, the importance of getting together and when are the most important times to use the travel budget, changes to what the team documents, and how to handle meetings when spread across timezones. Whether your project is spread across two locations in the same city or spread around the globe, you will leave with practical advice to try tomorrow.

About Mike Cohn

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, where he teaches and coaches on Scrum and agile development. He is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning, User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, and the newly published Succeeding with Agile: Software Development with Scrum. With more than 25 years of experience, Mike has previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes, from startup to Fortune 40. A frequent magazine contributor and conference speaker, Mike is a founding member of the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. He can be reached through www.mountaingoatsoftware.com.

January 12th Meeting

Welcome to the first meeting of 2010! We are starting the year learning first about writing testable Java code and exploring NetKernel.

Sponsorship and Door Prize

We continue to enjoy Big Sky Technology's and TekSystems's Sponsorship's of the meeting room and of the food at the meetings.

JetBrains's and ZeroTurnaround's are providing personal licenses to their products.

We will also have a few Mike Cohn's books and a seat on one of his classes to raffle in preparation of his presentation in February.

Location

We continue to meet at the Wolf Law Library:

Wolf Law Building, Room #207
2450 Kittredge Loop Road
Boulder, CO 80309

A map and directions can be found on the Boulder JUG web site.

6:00-7:00 PM: Writing Testable Code

Writing tests is easy, right? Anyone can use JUnit. The hard part is writing your code so it is easy (or even possible) to test. Tonight, we'll talk about some techniques for making your code easier to test, and some pitfalls to avoid.

About Jim McMaster

Jim McMaster has been writing code since it was punched on cards. In recent years, he has become a fan of developer testing. He is a Software Engineer at Google, Inc. in Boulder, where (among other things) he acts as world-wide publisher for Testing on the Toilet.

7:00-7:30: Pizza, Soda and Networking

We are grateful to Tek-Systems for their continued sponsorship of the Pizza and Soda!

7:30-9:00: Introduction to NetKernel

NetKernel is a software platform that runs on the JVM. It is based on a very small pure REST kernel and includes tools and services in its stack (much like Unix). Like the Web, everything in NetKernel is identified by a URI.

NetKernel started as a research project in HP Labs in 1999. Since 2002, the technology has been advanced by 1060 Research. We are releasing NetKernel 4 on 10/9/2009 and this represents a major step forward in the refinement of the abstraction and platform.

NetKernel is used by large corporations (e.g. BlueShield of California) governments (e.g. US Army, Intelligence Agencies) and small companies. All report the same - applications built on NetKernel run faster, require less code, scale with cores and in general, simplify systems.

About Randolph Kahle

Randolph has worked at GTE Sylvania, HP, Microsoft, MageLang Institute, lead his own consulting company and is currently working with 1060 Research. He has worked with Java from the very beginnings of the language and was an early consultant, instructor and architectural advisor to investments banks, manufacturers and service companies.

He is currently working on NetKernel.

Tuesday, December 8th 2009 Meeting

We are going to have a different rythm for this month's meeting. We will have a retrospective on the past year and look into what will happen next year.

Sponsorship and Door Prizes

We continue to enjoy Big Sky Technology's sponsorship of our meeting room and Tek-Systems's sponsorship of the food and sodas. Both JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround are sponsoring door prizes for this meeting.

2010 Speakers

We are looking for speakers for early 2010. Contact Frederic Jean with talk proposals.

LOCATION:

Wolf Law Building, Room #207
2450 Kittredge Loop Road
Boulder, CO 80309

6:00-7:00 PM: Retrospective and Looking Ahead to 2010

We will look at what happened in 2009 and discuss the topics that will be covered in 2010.

7:00PM: Taco Bar, Soda and Networking

We are grateful for Tek-System's sponsorship of the food and drinks throughout the year.

Post Meeting

We will head down to the Mountain Sun Brewery on Pearl Street after the meeting to continue chatting and networking.

Groovy Unit Testing Slides

The Groovy Unit Testing slides from Frederic's talk are now available on http://fredjean.net/GroovyUnitTesting.