Strange Loop 2009 – Day 2

My notes and thoughts about day two of strange loop 2009.

Also be sure to check out my Day one notes.

jQuery – Matt Taylor

http://weblog.dangertree.net/
Showed numerous examples how easy jQuery makes it to select and edit HTML elements. Made me realize I should use jQuery even in small apps.
Also showed examples of the jQuery AJAX functionality

Mobile Development 101

http://www.slideshare.net/michael.galpin
http://fupeg.blogspot.com/
This session was full which doesn’t surprise me since mobile development is about to get easier thanks to Android.
Started off going how to develop apps for the iPhone
- The emulator and development software only run on a Mac
- Has to be written in Objective C
  - I wanted to throw up when I saw the objective c examples
  - No garbage collection. Memory is limited on phones so this is an important issue.
  - Maybe I’m just to much of a simpleton, but I really don’t ever want to write any objective C
- MVC framework – cocoa touch
- No background processing on iphone
Android
- Can run any language that is built on the JVM
- XML format for UI develoment
- Does not use standard MVC pattern. Uses something called Activities and Intents.
- There are multiple android emulators
Mobile dev best practices (not specific to android or iphone)
- Need lean web services
- Limit network traffic
- Limit audio/video/images
Mobile Web Application
- Alternative to writing an iPhone/Android app
- A lot of phones have the same browser now
- Some mobile browsers leak memory

Entrepreneur Talk – Panel Discussion

This book was mentioned, Outliers: The Story of Success
Someone said that you need irrational arrogance to start your own company.
Another person said that start ups are all offense and no defense. Just keep putting stuff out, early and often
The idea was presented that everyone has risk even the person working for a company because you can be fired at any time
The current work culture is sort of like having one client at a time because developers change jobs so often.

Polyglot Grails – Jeff Brown

http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/conference/speaker/jeff_brown
http://javajeff.blogspot.com/
You can use many languages with Grails. Jeff even gave an example of Grails with a simple language he created
methodMissing(string name, args) is a very interesting feature of Groovy

Minimalism – Alex Payne

http://twitter.com/Al3X
http://al3x.net/books_talks.html
Interesting talk about little m minimalism and how it be applied to code
Alex made a few comments about how programming is a young field

List of slides on strangeloop.com
Day two sessions

October 25, 2009 | Filed Under java, open source | 2 Comments

Strange Loop 2009 – Day 1

A new developer conference has started in St Louis this year named Strange Loop. Normally I don’t go to developer conferences because they are either in a different country or on the coasts. This one was close by in St Louis, MO. And from the quality of speakers and diverse sessions I predict next years conference will sell out very quickly unless they increase the capacity. Below are my overall topics/themes I took away from the conference and some interesting points from each talk I witnessed along with links to the speaker’s site and slide show if available.

Day two

Strange Loop Thoughts Overall

open source, open source, open source

every talk envolved open source. The FUD around open source is finally withering away.

DRY constant theme
Mobile development is upon us and will be for maybe ever
Scala, Clojure, Groovy are HOT languages on the JVM
Great conference that covered many relevant topics
All the talks were technical, no boring management oriented sales pitches

Functional Ruby – Dean Wampler

http://deanwampler.com/
Link to slide show
I atteneded this talk because I’m interested in the functional programming line of thought. And I don’t get to see much ruby code.
Recommends learning a functiona programming language: Scala, Hascal, Cojure

Multiprocessor systems are making it more important to use threads. Threads and synchronizaton is hard to get right. So functional languages that have immutable objects/values are easier because immutable objects/values don’t require synchronization.

Try to avoid a bloated domain objects that have numerous properties to fullfill multiple requirements for different use cases. Have smaller objects for seperate uses.

Polyglot Programming – Dean Wampler

Link to slide show
polyglot programming: using more than one programming language. Not like using CSS, JS. But like using Groovy and Java or Groovy and Clojure.
Dean thinks that Scala could become very popular in the future

Hybrid object and functional language
Multiple cpus is driving the need for functional languages

Mentioned the famous quote: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exuper

Griffon (Swing just got fun again) – James Williams

http://jameswilliams.be/blog/entry/index
http://groovy.codehaus.org/Griffon
Mentioned that the swring application framework is dead
Griffon is the unofficial grails for the desktop

It really did looks rails like from the project layout to the build process

Suggested Groovy In Action for anyone that wanted to earn Groovy

Future of Java – Bob Lee

http://crazybob.org
Writes his talks in Java. I’m serious. Here is the SVN repo for his talks
- http://crazybobs-talks.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
Talked about how/why he wanted better resource management in Java.
Said he searched the JDK and found that 74 out of 110 the JDK has leaks for a certain IO functionality.
Talked about his work on JSR-330 dependency injection in JDK
- @Inject annotation
New quicksort that was developed for Android JVM (Harmony)

Day two

Day One Sessions

October 24, 2009 | Filed Under java, open source | 2 Comments

NHibernate in Action – Book Review

Book on Amazon
All summer I meant to read the book “NHibernate In Action”. I finally got around to it, better late than never I guess. In my opinion this book is aimed at higher level programmers such as lead developers or architects. The book does not contain clear step by step examples of how to get NHibernate running. However it does provide in depth conceptual reasoning why anyone would want to use NHibernate along with reference style examples. If you are trying to learn NHibernate you are better off reading a few online tutorials first and after that read this book so you can understand exactly what NHibernate is doing and how it does it. Below are some book pros & cons, NHibernate links, and chapter summaries.

Pros

Examples are all in c#
Shows config examples for NHibernate 1.2.1 and 2
Promotes proper design patters often references popular pattern books
Makes note of minor current bugs or missing features that may cause issues or confusion
Provides suggestions for when to use something other than the default NHibernate settings
Mentions how NHibernate can use the features of multiple RDMS, not just SQL Server

Cons

Download and install instructions were vague
- I downloaded NHibernate 2.1.0 QA from SourceForge after finally finding the link on nhforge.org. From there I followed the install notes in the downloaded zip file.
Examples do not use Generics
Doesn’t provide a link or even a suggestion to where you can download the NHibernate.Mapping.Attributes library which lets you use features similar to the annotations in Hibernate 3
- I found them here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nhcontrib/files/NHibernate.Mapping.Attributes/
Shows attribute and xml mapping examples randomly. In my opinion it would be better if one or the other was used consistently.
Jumps from definitions to examples. No clear step by step examples
- I would say this book is more of a reference than tutorial

Helpful NHibernate Links

NHibernate community site
- Great short tutorial
- NHibernate docs
NHibernate Google Group
Stackoverflow NHibernate questions and answers
How to use MySQL with .NET
Databases supported by NHibernate
Common exceptions

Chapter 1

Basic definitions of persistence, sql(sql not sql server) databases, and layered development
Doesn’t mention the testability benefits of layered development
Compares persistence layer choices available with .Net
Makes the case that LINQ and Entity framework will not replace NHibernate
Definition of ORM
Addresses the performance concerns of using ORMs
Author tries to convince people to use ORMs, this part needs a little salesman ship but I guess if someone is open minded enough to read this book then they don’t need much of a sales pitch.

Chapter 2

Some basoc instructions for how to download and install the NHibernate dll
- con: Could use a little details in this section about how to use the versions that don’t have msi installers yet like the 2.1.0.GA release I downloaded.
Shows very simple examples of saving and loading an entity
Then shows you a basic xml mapping document
- o Shows a mapping document for versions 1.2 and 2.
Quick glance at the NHibernate api and in depth notes on important interfaces
Very short section on logging with log4net

Chapter 3

Good section on the benefits of having a transparent persistence layer
Discusses the anti xml config file movement.
- However doesn’t mention the fact that poorly designed and overly complicated schemas are one reason for the back lash. Also never mentions CoC.
Discusses using attributes as meta data
- IMHO way more time should have been spent telling the users how to setup/install the mapping dlls needed to use this feature
- Does show many examples of how to use the attributes and what the xml version of the meta data would look like
This chapter provides information about the hibernate mapping elements and options
- It is a mix between a reference and tutorial.
Good section on object identity vs equality
con: Gives an explanation of what primary keys are. Surely anyone reading this book knows already knows what primary keys are.
Good short explanation of the different types of primary key creation that NHibernate supports
Long discussion on database and object model design
- table per concrete class
- table per sub class
- table per class hierarchy

Chapter 4

Explains object identity scope. probably a little high level for low level developers
Explains different options for Equals and HashCode implementations
Automatic dirty checking
- Changing an object in an ISession and committing will result in those changes being automatically reflected in the database
Clearly denotes the different cascading persistence options
Details the different object retrieval options
- Retrieving by identifier
- HQL
- NHibernate Criteria API
- Native SQL queries
In depth discussion of fetching strategies and how to implement each one
Short section on batching and how it can speed up queries for selecting collections
Provides common sense ideas for analyzing NHibernate’s performance

Chapter 5

Background on database transactions, unit of work and conversations
Excellent section on transaction isolation
Background on ORM caching

Chapter 6

Starts with more definitions and comparisons of entities and value types
Nice chart showing how NHibernate mapping types relate to .Net types
Give in depth example of creating a custom mapping type
Nice tips on controlling collection sorting with mapping settings

October 21, 2009 | Filed Under .Net, Books | 5 Comments