thejavajar

I usually don’t like to just post a link to another blog post or article on the web, but I couldn’t help myself here. If you or a colleague haven’t seen a presentation on Grails by the project lead, Graeme Rocher, you should definitely check this out.

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Web-Development-Grails-Graeme-Rocher

This is a great presentation to get you started with Grails. Watch this presentation, download Grails and create your own application in about 1.5 hours.

Just got home from presenting Spring Roo at the Tampa JUG. Everything went pretty smooth; basically did a demo of building a simple app with a few JPA entities. Then I imported the the project into Spring Tools Suite and ran it on tc Server. I created a few entities, did some updates and then opened up Spring Insight. People were impressed with what Insight has to offer. Vladimir Vivien contributed to the presentation by discussing some details of the internals of Roo and we both discussed the advantage of having something like Grails or Roo when looking for paths to productivity. Most of the JUG members in attendance were impressed with Roo but there still was this feeling of uncertainty about code generation and the ‘magical’ things happening in the background. All I know is that productivity is something that Spring Roo brings to table and the ‘magical’ things happen to reduce Java complexity so we can focus on getting the job done. Thanks to all of the JUG members who attended.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to end and that means it is time to pack my things, check-out of my hotel room in NOLA and catch a flight back to Tampa. The good thing is that the excitement of SpringOne / 2GX doesn’t have to end. I am little late to press with completing this post (MacBook battery, sleep, travel, work), but anyone who works with me or who lives with me can tell you that I am still amped about what I saw and experienced at SpringOne / 2GX.

At the beginning of day four, I checked out Hamlet D’Arcy’s presentation on Groovy and OSGI. I have seen a presentation at the Tampa JUG on OSGI, courtesy of my colleague, Vladimir Vivien and Hamlet’s presentation really helped me get a hold of the technology again. He is a wealth of knowledge and a talented software developer / presenter.

One of my favorite presenters, Venkat Subramaniam, discussed design patterns in Java and Groovy. It was a very useful presentation. Venkat is an incredible presenter and the content of his presentations are right on point. He knows what he is doing!

After lunch, I checked out Jeff Brown’s (SpringSource / Grails) presentation on using Grails without a browser. I really enjoyed Jeff’s presentations all week. It is awesome to hear about a technology that I feel passionate about from the source. As Jeff said, Grails is a Web framework but Grails really offers more that just rapid Web development, it is also a platform. He proved that in his presentation.

SpringOne / 2GX 2009 was a great event. My Rod Johnson bobble-head is already on my desk solving enterprise Java problems. The No Fluff Just Stuff crew and SpringSource hosted a great event, at a great venue, in a beautiful city. Looking forward to the 2010 event.

Day three was an exciting day. I attended an awesome presentation about DSL’s in Groovy presented by Guillaume LaForge. I got to speak with him a bit, he is a great guy. I attended Christophe Coneraets and Jeremey Grelle’s presentation on the technical pieces of Flex and Spring. Flex is great (already knew that), but being able to make remote calls to Spring is where it’s at. Spring’s BlazeDS support is very Spring-like and that means you an leverage your spring knowledge to work with Flex remoting. I checked out Keith Donald’s presentation, “Working with Spring Web Flow”. I really like Web Flow. I like Web Flow with JSF because it makes sense when you have to use JSF and I also like the Web Flow hooks inside of Grails. Hamlet D’Arcy’s presentation, “Legacy Code, Groovy and You”, really spoke to me. Some of us work in environments that need to pay attention to some of his key points on re-factoring/re-writing and TESTING. At the end of the day, I attended “Groovy AST Transformations” with Venkat Subramaniam. First, he is a great speaker/presenter and I look forward to attending most of his presentations because he knows what he is doing. Second, AST transformations look really cool, but I need to let it digest a bit before I dig in. It is a great feature of Groovy, like MOP, but it can also be dangerous, like MOP, if you don’t know what you are doing. I am looking forward to attending “OSGI and Groovy Jump Start”, “Design Patterns in Java and Groovy” and “Grails Without a Browser” on the final day of the event.