Duchess

Method naming survey Date Time APIs

Regina ten Bruggencate — Thu, 10 May 2012 06:45:52 +0000

Have your say on the new Date and Time APIs for Java 8.

Would you like to be part of the true development cycle of for the new Date Time APIs (JSR-310)?
Always found the method names to cryptic.
You can now have your say on this by participating in the following survey http://www.rationalsurvey.com/s/3775

Help build the new Duchess website

Duchess — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 06:16:22 +0000

Hi girls,

Despite the fact that our meeting last Saturday was a bit of a failure,
due to only the board being present, we are still determined to get a
new website. So last Saturday, we created a backlog and prioritized it.
And we still very much would like your help in building it.

If you want to join us and learn about LifeRay in the process, here's
what you have to do. Go to www.trello.com and either create an account
or log in with your Google account. Then send me the email-address that
you have logged in with, so I can add you to our board. As soon as I've
added you, you'll be able to read the issues we've created.

For those of you who've never heard of Trello, Trello is a list of
lists. This means that it is quite a handy tool to create a Kanban or
Scrum board. Our intention is to use it a bit like either one of those.
The first column on our board is the backlog. This columns contains all
issues that still have to be discussed in order to get them specified
enough to start building. Next is our Ready column. This will contain
all issues that can be built. The third column is In Progress,
containing all issues that someone is working on. The fourth column is
Reviewable, which means whoever built it is done, and someone else will
have to do a code review. Any review remarks can be added to the card
as comments. The fifth column contains everything that has been
reviewed and needs to be functionally tested. It's fine if whoever
reviews it, tests it as well. Any test remarks can be added to the card
as comments. And finally, the sixth column contains all issues that
have been tested and that have no more review remarks or test issues.
I.e. all the issues that are production ready.

Some final remarks, we'll be checking any code we have into bitbucket,
so you might want to create an account if you don't already have one.
And we're still looking for hosting. The most likely candidate will be
Amazon, but I still have to find out some details about how pricing
works.

To get the work on the site coordinated, we've picked four dates where
we will have Skype meetings to discuss the issues and who will do what.
These dates are:
- Monday May 7, 20:00
- Friday May 18, 20:00
- Monday June 4, 20:00
- Thursday June 21, 20:00

If you want to join in, send me your Skype name and the dates you would
like to attend, and I'll invite you to our chat session.

Note for all the other chapter hosts: Feel free to invite your members
into this project as well. Also feel free to suggest more functionality
if you miss anything in the list.

Regards,
The Duchess NL board

GeeCon 2012, Poznań – Poland

Duchess — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:36:55 +0000

GeeCON is a conference focused on Java and Java Virtual Machine based technologies, with special attention to dynamic languages like Groovy and Ruby. GeeCON is a forum for sharing experiences about modern software development methodologies, enterprise architectures, software craftsmanship, design patterns, distributed computing and more!
The event is for everyone interested in new things from the world of Java and related universes! Conference schedule is a mix of invited and call for papers talks. We are working very hard to choose the most interesting technologies and solutions in order to show you the hottest stuff.

Interested? There are several ways to get a free ticket. The first option is through the Google EMEA Travel and Conference Grants. The second options is to get creative.

Goto Aarhus (Denmark)

Duchess — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:20:26 +0000

It’s been a few years, but I’m going to Goto Aarhus again this year. Any other members coming to join me there? I’ll be there from Saturday September 29 (day before the conference) till Thursday October 4. I’ll miss the last two days of training (Thursday and Friday). It would be nice if we could organize a Duchess dinner or something.

- Linda

Les mains dans le code : soirée Clojure

Audrey Neveu — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:11:33 +0000

Pour le mois de mars, nous vous proposons une session Les Mains dans le Code sur Clojure, le langage de programmation fonctionnelle dérivé de Lisp et tournant sur une JVM.

Pour l’occasion nos speakers seront Antoine Dumont (@ardumont et ardumont sur GitHub) et Denis Labaye (@denislab et denislab sur GitHub), deux Sfeiriens que vous aurez peut être déjà rencontrés si vous avez participé à la Battle Language du mois de février.

Pour participer à la soirée, vous aurez besoin :
- de votre poste
- d’un éditeur de texte
- d’un binome, mais ça vous le trouverez sur place

La soirée se déroulera le jeudi 29 mars de 19h30 à 22h00 dans les locaux de Zenika, que nous remercions pour son accueil ! N’oubliez pas de vous inscrire ici.

Duchess members in Java magazine

Regina ten Bruggencate — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 07:12:20 +0000

The March issue of the online Java magazine features some young Duchess members on the cover and in an article.

See the issue here: http://www.oraclejavamagazine-digital.com/javamagazine/20120304#pg1

Review Devnology Community Day – 04-02-2012

Linda van der Pal — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:46:03 +0000

This year I had finally convinced my partner to join me for the community day, convincing him that there would be several other C# programmers there. So we set out early, braving the slippery roads (which didn’t turn out all that bad). We arrived just after the building was supposed to be open. Which would have been great if it wasn’t for the fact that it was in fact still closed. There was quite a crowd standing before the gates already. But as it was -15 degrees Celcius, we decided to stay in the car under the emergency blankets we had brought. After about forty minutes, somebody with a key showed up and we went inside. I didn’t take off my coat until after I’d finished my first cup of tea. And so the day started about fifteen minutes late.

How to show code quality – Joost Visser

The session started out well with an open discussion, trying to find out what quality is. According to Joost there are two kinds of quality: funtionality and technical quality. Whereas functional quality (the code does what was specified) is relatively easy to point out, technical quality is less tangible. This lead to a discussion on what makes code beautiful. Some aspects that were pointed out are easy to understand, performance, loosely coupled code, code split according to responsibilities, and compliance to coding standards, to name a few. Sadly, it seemed to me that this discussion took a bit too long for the allotted time, as afterwards the presentation didn’t quite live up to the standards that had been set in the first half. The second half went on to talk about quality certificates, while I had been expecting to be shown some tools or other useful tips on how to show code quality to management and clients. One final important statement I took away was that quality measurements merely indicate symptoms, and that after they are done you have to spend time analysing what the actual problem is.

To infinity… and beyond (no seriously!) – Felienne Hermans

Felienne warned us in advance that this session would not have any practical applicability for us, as it would be highly theoretical mathematics. She told us about Brazilian tribes that had no numbers larger than three, and how they put numbers (explained to them with a number of dots) on a logarithmic scale, instead of the regular linear one. Which turns out to be what young children do too. Then she showed us Zenos theorems, and Galileos paradox. She explained Hilberts hotel and showed us how there are just as many numbers in between 0 and 1 as there are between -∞ and ∞. But what boggled me the most was that as there can be nothing in between 0,999… (followed by an infinite amount of nines) and 1 they must be equal. I tried arguing that the same would be valid for 0,999…98 and 0,999…99, but she explained that defining an end to the number makes it a different case. I’m not sure I quite understand, but it was a lovely demonstration of maths.

Extreme startup – Willem van den Ende

My final session of the day was a programming session for which I’d specifically brought my laptop. Alas, I didn’t quite have my IDE ready yet, having only gotten the laptop a few days earlier, so I didn’t have the proper tools installed yet. So it took me quite some time to get ready (which was not something my team mates could help me with). The idea was that you had to build a HTTP request handler and that the requests would contain questions that you would have to reply to. There were nine participants and we teamed up in groups of three. The team I was in consisted of three ladies, so naturally I opted to call us Team Duchess (as we were programming in Java). To Willems great despair, all teams used Windows. It took ages to find out that my laptop was having trouble with a firewall. But then we finally got it working. We had nearly run out of time, but we did get to answer about four different questions. If we’d had more time, we probably would have won. As it was, we joined the market so late, we didn’t have a chance anymore. It was a really great workshop that showed how code quality is often set aside in favor of deadlines.

I skipped the fourth session, as I was quite tired already. I would have gone to join in the coding kata otherwise, but that’s something you need a clear head for. All in all I had a lovely day.

April 21 Dutch technical session: Creating a new website

Duchess — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 07:25:53 +0000

March 2012

Date
April 21
Topic
New website

Technical session: Creating a new website

Hi girls,

You might have noticed that our site doesn’t look quite as pretty as it used to. This is due to an attack on our site a while ago. Our host took the site down, and we haven’t really been able to put it back together again. Part of this problem is that it’s a WordPress site, and we have few people who can help with that. Clara has been doing a wonderful job, but she has a busy life too. So in order to take the burden off her shoulders, we have decided we want to try and create a Java-based website. The idea is to use the LifeRay portal software, as this already has quite a few features we’d like to have.

The technical session will consist of two parts: the morning will be spent on a quick introduction to LifeRay, and in the afternoon we will get cracking. First we’ll come up with a list of features we’d like, then we’ll see if we can actually realise some of these features as well.

We haven’t got a location yet, but we’d like the event to be in Utrecht, as this is the most central, easily accessible place of the Netherlands. So if you know of a company who’d be willing to lend us their office for a day, please let us know.

Date: Saturday April 21
Time: TBD (whole day)
Location: TBD
Requirements: Bring your own laptop with an IDE installed, preferably with the Liferay IDE (for Eclipse) or the PortalPack (for NetBeans) already installed.

Regards,
The Duchess NL board

JavaOne San Francisco 2012 Call-for-Papers

Regina ten Bruggencate — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 08:00:56 +0000

JavaOne San Francisco 2012 Call-for-Papers is LIVE

Great to see that the JavaOne San Francisco 2012 CFP is now LIVE! Deadline for submissions is April 9th.

more info

They are looking for loads off submissions from the community so submit your paper.
Also the community key note will contain a full hour off contributions by the community so share your ideas.

Not sure if a subject is right or how to present it just post it here or sent a personal message.

Want to try out your talk in a smaller group? Let us know as we are looking for more topics for our sessions.

An Interactive Session on Spring Roo and Cloud Foundry – San Francisco – March 14

Clara Ko — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:49:13 +0000

In this interactive session, we will go from zero to cloud by building a fully functional web app using Spring Roo and SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) and deploying the app to Cloud Foundry. You will learn how to use Cloud Foundry data and messaging services in your applications. You will see how easy it is to scale your new app on Cloud Foundry. You will also see how to interact with your app through tools such as debugging, log inspection, and direct access to services. You will get a brief introduction to running your own private cloud with Micro Cloud Foundry. This will be a very interactive tutorial, so we may also explore deploying other types of apps with frameworks such as Rails or Grails, if requested (and time permits). Bring your laptop and get ready to hit the cloud!

BEFORE THE SESSION

Please make sure you have the following setup prior to the session:

1) Sign up for a free Cloud Foundry account at cloudfoundry.com

2) Install or update to the latest version of STS (http://www.springsource.com/developer/sts). Be sure to choose Roo and Maven when prompted by the STS installer.

3) Launch STS, open the dashboard, select the “Extensions” tab and install “Cloud Foundry Integration”

Jennifer Hickey is a Sr. Software Engineer with SpringSource/VMware, with over a decade of experience in software engineering. Jennifer is a member of the Cloud Foundry team, specializing in developer experience and support of frameworks such as Spring, Grails, Rails, and Sinatra. She is passionate about increasing developer productivity in the cloud. Jennifer has led or contributed to a number of SpringSource projects, including Hyperic and tc Server. She has been involved in converting multiple large EJB/legacy codebases to Spring. Prior to joining SpringSource, Jennifer was a principal architect of a large-scale network management system.