This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Jim Weirich. Original Post: No Fluff, Just Stuff (Friday) Feed Title: { | one, step, back | } Feed URL: http://onestepback.org/index.cgi/synopsis.rss Feed Description: Jim Weirich's Blog on Software Development, Ruby, and whatever else sparks his interest. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Jim Weirich Latest Posts From { | one, step, back | }

Registration started at 12:00 noon on Friday (July 11) at the Mariott Northeast. I got there plenty early and had plenty of time to go through the material before the actual conference started.

Compuware sponsership was very prominent (full disclosure: I am a consultant for Compuware, although that affiliation had little to do with my attendance). Everyone got a cool pen (the kind that lights up!) with a Compuware logo. Our notebook with the seminar schedule included a whitepaper on MDA development by Tom Blankers (Compuware’s OptimalJ Product Manager). And who could miss that huge Compuware/OptimalJ banner that was hung behind the speaker in the main room.

At 1:00 Jay Zimmerman, the conference organizer, gave a short welcome talk and the conference was started.

Java Persistence Frameworks (Bruce Tate)

The Cincinnati symposium had three tracks going at once. The topics I wanted to hit were Java persistence and J2EE issues, so the first talk by Bruce Tate was right on target.

I’m not going to record all the details of each presentation, but rather record my overall impressions and capture some thoughts.

I’m relatively new to Java persistence beyond the basic JDBC stuff, so there was lots of good information here. Bruce tends to favor JDO over EJB persistence. How JDO uses byte code enhancements to get the necessary persistence hooks is interesting. There was some discussion of how AOP might mitigate the need for byte code enhancement in the future.

Break

I was reviewing the conference schedule on Thursday night, and my teenage daughter was helping me choose topics (well, at least she was giving me her opinions). She told me to make sure I attended the breaks because they were likely to have snacks.

Bitter EJB (Bruce Tate)

Bruce’s next talk based on his latest book Bitter EJB. Basically, Bitter Java/EJB concentrats on identifying systemic failures, i.e. Antipatterns.

Some good quotes and other stuff that stuck in my head:

• "Good guitar players know what notes to play. Great guitar players know what notes not to play. The same is true for programmers and code."
• Use a Wiki for group communication.
• "Every 10 or 15 years the industry will come up with a new framework."
• "EJB is ripe for AntiPatterns"
• Bruce compared EJBs to Tolkien’s ring of power.
• Beware of the Design by Resume pattern

Agile Software Development (Dave Thomas)

Dave was one of the original signers of the Agile Manifesto. He shared his insights of what the manifesto means and gave an overview of the different agile methodologies.

Here’s a quote that I like:

"Without excellent personnel, even good to excellent processes can only achieve marginal results." — Capers Jones, Software Assessments, Benmarks, and Best Practices, Addison-Wesly, 2000.

There was an added bonus at Dave’s talk. Chad Fowler, a fellow rubyist, was there. Chad had recently returned from a 1 1/2 year stint in India so it was great to catch up with him.

Dinner

Keynote: Intro to Pragmatic Programming (Dave Thomas)

Dave gave his views on the state of the software industry and some things we need to do to address the issues. Here are some frightening statistics…

• Almost 60 Billion dollars per year are wasted due to buggy software
• That’s about $20,000 per developer! (I’m glad they don’t want it back).
• The defect rate per 1000 lines of code has remained relatively constant over the past 20 years.

Dave shared his "pragmatic principles" for becoming a great software developer. If you haven’t read The Pragmatic Programmer, then immediately go out get a copy to read.

After Hours

After the keynote talk, several of us wondered over to the hotel restaurant for drinks and talk. Over the course of the evening Dave Thomas, John Carnell, and Stuart Halloway stopped by for conversation. Topics covered many areas, including

• The state of Microsoft (Dave and Stuart predicted that Microsoft would be a major open source vender in 5 years)
• Books, both technical and non-technical
• The heavy infiltration of Mac laptops at recent conferences (in particular OSSCON). It seems that Mac has become the machine of choice alpha geeks.

At one point we were discussing technical interviews. I shared that I often asked what technical books an applicant had read in the past half year. Someone else shared that they asked what authors they have been reading; an interesting twist.

We finally broke up around 11:00. It was a long day. More on about Saturday and Sunday when I get it ready.