Alef Arendsen

I had great fun at JavaPolis on the 2nd day again. Unfortunately, the wireless is completely broken again, so there’s no way to get some real work done (like reading email and stuff). That’s why I’m back in my hotel right now to get the most important ones done.

The conversation Jon and I are having actually got picked up by the editors of the JavaPolis Times (or how they call the daily newspaper published on JavaPolis). So Jon was featured on the back page expressing his frustration about his hotel and his amazement about how many people are still using EJB2 or older technologies in his post titled POJO mojo and Sexy Flex

I really like the improvements Stephan has arranged for at the conference (such as the newspaper) and still think a movie theater is the best place to hold conferences like these with big crowds. For the audience it’s great as the rooms and seats are really comfortable and you can walk in and out of any session without bothering or interrupting anybody that much (because the rooms are so big). For the presenters it’s actually really exciting as well, because the rooms are so huge and the screens so awfully big. All in all great fun.

I heard the keynote Marc Fleury gave this morning was quite a show. Unfortunately I couldn’t be there because I had other things to do. This afternoon (I’ll be heading back to the conference in about two hours or so) there are another two interesting talks by Rod and Costin. Costin is going to show us how Spring OSGi works, which should be great fun. Rod is going to talk about the future of Spring.

p.s. Oh, and would anybody know if there’s any truth in the rumor that Jon has left his hotel without having another place to stay because of the size of the iron they gave him?

I was posting an entry on JavaPolis just now and right after I finished it, I saw my related entries plugin doing its job. It came up with two entries on the Amsterdam Java Meetups that I hosted in the past year.

It’s that time of the year again where you’re thinking about everything you’ve done during the year and I can’t help but think the Java Meetups were actually great fun.

So, here we go: next January 26th, get ready for another one!! Location isn’t yet know, but until further notice, it’ll probably be the same as last time’s, which was De Jaren.

For more details about the location, refer to other posts about the Java Meetups.

Okay, and now I need to run for breakfast. Costin and Arjen are probably waiting downstairs for me already to head off to JavaPolis for the keynotes.

I got up early this morning to check my mail (wasn’t able to yesterday due to the all the busy-ness) in the hotel. Fortunately I have quite an okay hotel with working internet and towel that actually allow me to dry myself after getting a shower (okay Jon, I’ll quit whining about your choice of hotel right now and won’t ever mention it again ). I hope I’m not being too much of my usual Dutch cynical self here, but hey, you been living in Holland right, so should know that Dutch are like that .

Arghhh, shite! It’s as if somebody eveil is watching me type this! I just about finished that last sentence and then the internet dropped out (that’s no joke ). Anyway, I can keep on typing and post the entry later on anyway.

Yesterday was my first day of JavaPolis this year. In short, it was good! I had prepared a 3 hour talk for the university sessions that went quite well. I focused on three major areas in which we’ve improved Spring. Ease of configuration, simplifications in the web area and the decreasing the code-test cycle. It was great fun presenting together with Arjen (I hadn’t actually seen him for a while, we had both been on the road for quite some time), although I hope he though my jokes I put in the slides weren’t too cheesy.

Anyway, the good thing about JavaPolis is not just the sessions (the conference part of JavaPolis hasn’t even started yet). It’s also about meeting nice folks. Yesterday night we had dinner with a group of people at a Mexican restaurant near the conference center and I met Jan Newmarch from down under (presenting on Jini here) and several other nice folks I hadn’t met yet.

Jon (I mention him and his choice of… oh no, I promised I wouldn’t mention that anymore) and I also discussed the (still widespread) use of technologies such as EJB2. Jon thought it was amazing that these people aren’t yet using Spring. He perfectly summarizes my thoughts on that at his blog. For me one of the reasons for this is that for those companies it’s too costly (seemingly maybe) to migrate away from those technology because of the initial investment they’ve put in it. Because that initial investment has gone into code which isn’t (entirely) portable across different versions of application servers and more importantly, doesn’t allow for an easy migration path because of inter-twined concerns (more on that later) in their core code. In other words (as Jon puts it) they’ve mixed concerns related to the environment (the infrastructure, whatever you name it) with the actual business logic. Because of this, migration from environment version A to environment version B is quite costly.

This was also a major theme when Arjen and I were discussing the JavaConfig stuff during our session yesterday. Sorry for spoiling the fun Rod (I guess he wanted to talk about this during the conference later this week as well). To me separation of concerns is one of the most important concepts in software engineering that keep your maintenance costs down. With the JavaConfig stuff, we’re hoping to improve on this even further. Using specially designed and coded configuration class, that’s completely separate from your actual business logic (just as your XML files have been since Spring 1.0), we are (well, actually you will be) addressing the two different concerns in question here (configuration and business logic) in two different artifacts. If something needs to change to the configuration you don’t have to mess up your business logic. If your business logic changes slightly, you don’t have to change your configuration. So go on and check this JavaConfig stuff out (I would be writing more about it soon, if it weren’t for the fact that I have a holiday coming up and am still terribly busy with all kinds of other stuff).

In our session, we covered lots of things, but we basically stuck to the basics (Spring DI using XML and Java, Spring AOP, Spring MVC a bit, Groovy integration and bit of integration testing) but apart from that there’s sooo much more cool stuff in the Spring portfolio (I’m almost sounding like I’ve got something to sell here; but I just have this renewed feeling of excitement about what we have to offer ). Spring WebFlow for example is something I expect to be really big in 2007. It’s only been released for short period but already I’m seeing some major corporation here in Holland pick up on themselves. Some of those are of the less progressive kind and would’ve other stuck to Struts if it weren’t for the benefits they already got from Spring. There are some major banks and insurance companies thinking about putting WebFlow to use in their internal and public facing apps. Anyway, I’m digressing…

Back to the talk. I’m attaching the slides [i] I used yesterday as well as the sample application [ii]. I was about to upload the slides I used during the talk yesterday, but somehow can’t create a PDF document of them using PDFCreator so I’ll have to do that some other time maybe. I did upload the sample app already. It is quite small and really should be seen in combination with the talk, but it kind of shows some nice concepts (such as my first tiny attempt to use the JavaConfig stuff in anger–I have to say, it really worked well).

Oh and by the way, did you know Interface21 is hiring in the Netherlands? If you think you can add value to our team and have a decent share of experience with Spring and (modern and classic) J2EE technology and still don’t think you know enough, than you might want to send me your resume. My email is the usual, first name at company name dot com.

[i] the slides I used during my talk yesterday
[ii] the sample application

I’ll be giving a lecture on Spring next Tuesday. I just finished my slides and they’re pretty okay, if I may say so myself. I’ve packed them full with Spring 2.0 material, so if you’re into Spring development and would like to get the latest on Spring 2.0, don’t miss this one! We also have a booth at which I’ll be hanging out during the week (I’ll be there until Thursday evening I think), so if you’re there, don’t hesitate to drop by!

Other than that I was supposed to play poker tonight with some friends, but unfortunate I was late with my slides, so had to work instead of trying to earn as much money off the backs of my friends as possible .

Anyway, I did also have some time for fun today. This afternoon we had our 10th soccer match of the season or so. We just started this team and I never played in a competition before. I’m the goalkeeper and I’m kind of okay (at least, that’s what the opponents are always saying). The number don’t however, because we haven’t won a single match yet and all teams together have scored about 100 goals against us already . We’re still having fun .

Anyway, today was another match and the first half went kind of okay. It was 2-1 after the first 45 minutes. In the first half however, in a scrimmage with an opponent, I injured my wrist (my typing speed has reduced to about 30% of what it was, so it’s still okay, for those who know me ). I got the ball, but the opponent thought it was necessary to continue and try to kick the ball of my hands (no, I’m just kidding, he couldn’t really help it).

So the second half, I was out in the field, instead of in the goal. That was the first time ever I was in the field and they wanted me to be a striker. Striking, that’s what I did, I scored a goal after 5 minutes or so . It felt sooo good, I don’t think I’ll ever get back to being a goalie again…

My hand still hurts a lot though and that’s bad, not because of my reduced typing speed (I’m making less mistakes now), but also because I’m heading off to Cost Rica in a little over three weeks) for two weeks of surfing, so I hope it’ll heal fast, as I need to paddle a lot out there…

Okay, for those of you that’ll be dropping by in Antwerp, see you there. We’ll probably have drinks on both Tuesday and Wednesday in the city, if you want to join, drop me a line.

Although I won’t be there, I’ll probably lay my hands on some of the slide decks that will be presented at the Spring Experience quite soon. Ahh, yes, I’m currently synchronizing our internal file server and it seems some have already uploaded their decks .

I couldn’t make it this year due to prior commitments and as a matter of facts, I’m kind of okay with not making too much trans-atlantic flights this year. Next week it’s going to be a very busy week again with JavaPolis and some other things I have to do. The week after JavaPolis, I have some other engagements, after which, fortunately, the holiday season is starting again. At least for me. I’m heading off to Costa Rica for the third year in a row. It’s almost getting boring you might say. Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t visit the East coast yet, so I guess that’s where I’ll be heading this year.

Okay, I think I’m almost done synching the fileserver and have some decks to plough through. Have fun if you’re there!

Yet another attempt to switch to Linux . So I found this brilliant step-by-step guide to install Ubuntu on a T60. I changed a few things along the way, but nothing fancy really. If you’re looking to do the same, definitely use this guide:

http://cyberkruz.vox.com/library/post/installing-ubuntu-on-t60-with-xgl-and-beryl.html

I also installed Beryl as 3D Window Manager which is *really* nice. As discussed with some of the attendees to the training I’m given at the moment, I did however switch back to Windows after trying Linux for about a week. Although it pretty much suited all my needs, I still think Linux is rough on the edges for an experiences Windows user, especially with respect to getting a decent level of productivity soon. I also have a Mac (at home) and this is also a lot better than Linux (yes, I admit, I like Macs too, although I frequently claimed–especially with most I21 colleagues running on Macs–that Macs were only for wannabe pretending-to-be-cool open source programmers ) and that I’d always stick to an IBM ThinkPad.

So, I’m going to leave Linux again for another year or so.