303

This is my last blog post here on blogger.com! You'll find my new thoughts, projects and development ramblings at http://dlinsin.github.com. I migrated to blogger.com in late 2005 and was always quite happy with it. More than 5 years and exactly 502 posts later it's time to move on to something new. Subscribe to my new blog feed, check my stuff on github or follow me on Twitter.

GWT @ JUG-Ka

Tomorrow night there'll be the another event of the Java User Group Karlsruhe. It'll feature a talk on the Google Web Toolkit by Papick Taboada, who is quite an expert on the topic. The second part of the event will be a get-together after the talk, where you can discuss GWT over a beer. My company Synyx GmbH & Co. KG is kindly sponsoring the drinks.

The talk will take place at University Karlsruhe in room 101 and start at 7:15pm. The room is located in the basement, which you will find easily, if you follow our duke featured logo.

If you are interested in our lottery, where you can win a JetBrains or ZeroTurnaround license, submit your details through our online form. The winners are going to be announced at the end of the talk and must be present.

Last but not least, check us out on Twitter and subscribe to our Google Calendar or join our Xing Group.

Community Gathering @ JUG-Ka

After the first successful JUG Karlsruhe talk on Groovy, we will kick off the community involvement with a gathering this coming Wednesday.

Everybody who wants to get involved in our little Java User Group here in Karlsruhe is invited. We are looking for people with lots of ideas, sense of community and passion. I prepared a couple of slides, which will help us structure the gathering, but mainly we are hoping to get your feedback and ideas heard.

You can help steer the JUG in the direction which you want it to go. Just join us on Wednesday at 7:15pm, the usual time and the usual place. The University of Karlsruhe kindly sponsored a room (SR-107), which is located in the basement, next to the usual location.

I'm looking forward to see you guys on Wednesday to share some ideas on how to improve your Java User Group Karlsruhe.

Watch the Java User Group Karlsruhe Online

This is our first attempt to record a talk of the Java User Group Karlsruhe. Please forgive us the weird camera angle and the volume, we promise to improve that. Other than that I think it's quite reasonable.

I'm really impressed by the tools and platform Parleys.com provides. The best part is - it's free for JUGs. A big thank you from Karlsruhe to Belgium for that!

Groovy @ JUG-Ka

The first talk of 2010 at the Java User Group Karlsruhe is this coming Wednesday. After a successful finale in December 2009 with a talk on Scrum, we are turning our attention to the technical side of things again - Groovy.

We had a talk on Groovy back in early 2008, in case you remember. It was an introduction, whereas this coming talk will target a more advanced audience.

The speaker of the night will be Dierk König from Canoo Engineering AG, Switzerland. He is a Groovy committer and author of the book Groovy in Action. He'll give us an overview of 7 scenarios in which to use Groovy in your project.

I'm excited, that we are going to have a Groovy expert in the house Wednesday evening. If you have any questions on Groovy, it's your chance to get an answer, so make sure to drop by.

The talk will take place at University Karlsruhe in room 102, located in the basement - just follow our duke featured logo. The talk will start at 7:15pm.

Our monthly lottery of JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround, which are each giving away a free license of one of their products is already on. If you are interested in participating in the draw, submit your details through our online form. The winners are going to be announced at the end of the talk and must be present.

To keep up with all the JUG goodness in 2010 subscribe to our Google Calendar or join our Xing Group.

Scrum @ JUG-Ka

The upcoming talk at the Java User Group Karlsruhe this Wednesday is kind of an experiment. It features Scrum, which according to Wikipedia:

... is an iterative incremental framework for managing complex work (such as new product development) commonly used with agile software development.


It's an experiment, because we usually feature sessions on development topics like REST, Hibernate and Flex. A talk on a management framework, although it's closely related to development, is rather unusual for us. If you are not interested in this kind of topic, let me know, we appreciate your feedback.

The talk will take place at University Karlsruhe in room 102, located in the basement. Unusual topics call for unusual timings, so we'll start at 8:00pm this time. Our speaker is Dr. Jürgen Hoffmann of scrumcoach.de.

This month we are giving away a free book called "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Freeman&Pryce". If you are interested in participating in the lottery, drop me an email. The winners will be announced at the end of the talk.

This is the last gathering of the year 2009. There's even more to come in 2010, so subscribe to our Google Calendar and stay up-to-date.

RESTful applications in practise @ JUG-Ka

This coming Wednesday Gregor Roth from 1&1, you might know him from his InfoQ article, is going to give a talk on RESTful applications at the Java User Group Karlsruhe.

He will show how to implement applications leveraging a RESTful architecture and point out the mismatch between a RESTful and RPC-style approach. Furthermore Gregor will highlight the difference between HTTP PUT and POST and finally demonstrate how to implement none CRUD operations using REST.

I'm really looking forward to this talk. In my spare time I developed the REST interface for an Android game and it's going to be interesting to see what we could have done better and hopefully what we've got right.

As usual, the talk will be held at University Karlsruhe in room 102, which is located in the basement. We'll start at 7:15pm, if the door opens as planned this time.

JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround are each giving away a free license of one of their products. If you are interested in participating in our monthly lottery, send me an email. The winners will be announced at the end of the talk. In addition to that, Atlassian sponsored a couple of great T-Shirts, which you can pick up at the end of the talk.

If you want to know more about upcoming talks, subscribe to our Google Calendar. You'll also be able to see the planned talks for 2010.

jBPM 4 @ JUG-Ka

Today I'm pleased to welcome Bernd Rücker from camunda services GmbH to the Java User Group Karlsruhe. Bernd is going to talk about the Open Source Business Process Engine JBoss jBPM. I'm really excited about this talk, because it's a topic I was quite dedicated to a couple of years ago.

The session takes place today at University Karlsruhe, building 50.34 in the multimedia room 102, located in the basement. The talk starts at 7:15pm, our usual timing.

There will also be our monthly lottery, where JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround are each giving away a free license of one of their products. If you are interested in participating in the draw send me an email. The winners are going to be announced at the end of the talk.

There are still two more great talks coming up this year. You can subscribe to our Google Calendar to get the latest updates. There's also a Google or Xing Group to stay on top of things.

Tuning Hibernate and JPA @ JUG-Ka

After two sessions on client development, we are now turning our attention to the server side again. I'm very happy to welcome Michael Ploed from Senacor Technologies AG to talk about "Tuning Hibernate and JPA Applications" at the Java User Group Karlsruhe.

Michael will show us how to approach tuning of your Hibernate powered applications and which options exist, to increase your application's performance. Furthermore he will talk about Hibernate's second-level cache, which I'm looking forward to in particular. Finally, he'll demonstrate his tuning advices with a demo application.

This month we have a special prize in our monthly lottery: a free pass to the W-Jax conference, held this coming November in Munich. All you've got to do is send me an email and be present at the end of the session, when Michael will draw the winner.

The session takes place this Wednesday at University Karlsruhe, building 50.34 in the multimedia room 101, located in the basement. The talk starts at 7pm, a little earlier as usual.

We have more great talks coming up, the next couple of months. In order to get the latest updates, sign up for our Google Group or join us on Xing.

Java & Flex @ JUG-Ka

I was amazed how many people showed up at our last session on JavaFX and I would love to see such a crowd at every session.

Was it the new technology, that made so many people show up? Was it the fact that it was about client development? Or was it simply because we had a speaker from Sun? I'm really curious to know and I would love to get some feedback, in order to improve the topics of our sessions.

This Wednesday, our new theme on client development continues with a session on Flex & Java. Adobe Flex is a framework for building web and desktop clients. Corneliu Vasile Creanga from Adobe, will give us an overview of the framework and how it can interact with Java. The session starts at 7:15pm, this Wednesday and takes place at University Karlsruhe room 101 in the basement.

There will also be our monthly lottery, where JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround are each giving away a free license of one of their products. If you are interested in getting a free copy of IntelliJ or JavaRebel, send me an email to participate in the draw. The winners are gonna be announced at the end of the talk.

We have a lot more exciting talks coming up this year. To stay on top of things, sign up for our Google Group or join us on XING.

JavaFX @ JUG-Ka

With our new logo, designed by Samuel Mellert, who held last month's session on Git, we want to start into the second half of 2009. There are a couple of exciting talks coming up at Java User Group Karlsruhe, beginning with an introduction to JavaFX this week. To get the latest updates of the JUG-Ka sign up for our Google Group or join us on XING.

Stefan Schneider from Sun Micorsystem is going to give an introductory level session on JavaFX, with samples and time for QA. Stefan gave a couple of talks here in Karlsruhe and I'm very pleased he is back with something new.

The session takes place this Wednesday at University Karlsruhe and starts at 7:15pm. As usual, JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround are each giving away a free license of one of their products. There'll be a lottery, so if you are interested in getting a free copy of IntelliJ or JavaRebel, send me an email to participate in the draw. The winners are gonna be announced at the end of the talk.

I'm sure you all know the DZone network, which provides all sorts of services and information for developers, like Javalobby, JRoller or EclipseZone. They also have a service called Refcardz - nice little cheat sheets on a variety of topcis. You can download those Refcardz and print them yourself or you can come by on Wednesday and get one for free. DZone was kind enough to provide a couple of professionally printed Refcardz, which I will give out at the end of the next talk.

Jug-Ka Summer Stammtisch

Since we haven't had a Stammtisch of the Java Users Group Karlsruhe for a while, I thought it's time to get together again.

We are gonna meet on Wednesday, July 15th - 20:00, at a nice pub called Litfass, near Marktplatz. For further information you can send an email to our Google Group or join us on Xing.

Git talk @ JUG-Ka

This coming Wednesday Samuel Mellert (1&1 Internet AG) is going talk about "Distributed SCM with Git" at the Java User Group Karlsruhe. I'm a newbie when it comes to distributed version control and especially Git, that's why I'm really looking forward to this meet-up. The talk starts at 7:15pm and takes place at University of Karlsruhe.

JetBrains and ZeroTurnaround are each giving away a free license for their products. We are gonna have a lottery, so if you are interested in getting a free copy of IntelliJ or JavaRebel, send me an email to participate in the draw. The winners are gonna be announced at the end of the talk.

To get the latest updates of the JUG-Ka sign up for our Google Group or join us on XING.

JUG-Ka Stammtisch 3.0

Version 3.0 of the Java Users Group Karlsruhe Stammtisch is being release this coming Thursday 26th of March. This time we are going to meet directly in the pub Litfass, which is near Marktplatz, at 20:00 to get a good sip of Java. For further information check out the Google Group or drop me an email.

Heiko W. Rupp @ JUG-Ka

Heiko W. Rupp of Red Hat (author of the first German JBoss book) is going to talk about "System management with RHQ and JBoss ON 2" at the Java Users Group Karlsruhe this coming Wednesday. The JBoss Operations Network (ON) management platform is a centralized system for managing the JBoss middleware.

The talk starts at 7:15pm and takes place at University of Karlsruhe. Get the latest updates of the JUG-Ka at our Google Group or sign up for XING.

JUG-Ka Stammtisch 2.0

The second Stammtisch of Java Users Group Karlsruhe will be held on Thursday 26th of February. We will meet up at Marktplatz around 8pm to find a suitable location. If you'd like to join the geek chat about Java, check out the Google Group for further details or drop me an email.

NOTE: Over the next few weeks, I'm moving my feed from feedburner back to blogspot so please subscribe to http://dlinsin.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/ instead!

Heinz Kabutz @ JUG-Ka

Im really excited about this Wednesday's meeting of the Java Users Group Karlsruhe. Dr Heinz Kabutz is giving a to talk on "The Secrets of Concurrency".

You might know the The Java(tm) Specialists' Newsletter, which is most famous for a series of laws, explaining how to best write concurrent code in Java. Heinz is the mastermind behind those laws and the newsletter.

The talk takes place at University of Karlsruhe and it starts at 7:15pm. Sign up for our Google Group or join us on XING to get the latest updates on what's happing at the Java Users Group Karlsruhe.

NOTE: Over the next few weeks, I'm moving my feed from feedburner back to blogspot so please subscribe to http://dlinsin.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/ instead!

Java 7 Language Changes Poll Results

Inspired by Stephen Colebourne's whiteboard initiative at Devoxx, I started a similar poll on new Java language feature about a month ago. I sent an invite to the local JUG and posted it on DZone.

I'm really surprised, that over 200 fellow developers participated! Thanks to everyone for voting!

Now let's check out the results. First of all I gave you the choice to let me know how you found this poll.



There were 80 votes submitted through my blog and about 50% of all submissions came through various other channels like DZone or Alex Miller's Java 7 blog. I'm a little disappointed about the participation of our JUG. Only 22 people voted, although there are about 173 members signed up in our Google Group.

Unfortunately about 10% of the votes are invalid. Maybe I should have put the instructions on the blog post directly instead of using Stephen's presentation. However, there are 181 correct votes and those are used in the following charts:

1. Map for-each



2. For-each iteration control



3. List / Map access



4. Infer generics in declarations



5. Multi-catch of Exceptions



6. String Switch



7. String interpolation



8. Multi-line Strings



9. Resource Management



10. Null-handling




It looks like most people wanna see an improved Null handling (change no 10) in the coming Java 7 release. The improved List/Map access (change no 3) on the other hand is something that almost all the correct voters oppose. If you are interested in the cleansed results, I published as a separate website.

I thought a lot about how I should interpret these votes. Frankly, I'm a little surprised about the results. I didn't think that so many fellow developers would like to see an improved Null handling. However, the votes at Devoxx indicated the same and I do admit Null handling can be a huge PITA. What I am kind of shocked about is the huge resistance to closures-related features like resource management (change no 9) or Map for-each (change no 1). Maybe this indicates that a lot of developers are not yet ready for closures in Java. After all, it might have been a reasonable decision of Sun to drop closures - for now.

So, what am I gonna do with those votes? Well, I'll email them to Joe Darcy and hope Sun will include your votes into their decision-making process. I know these votes only speak for a very small fraction of the Java community, but I think every vote counts.

Thanks again everyone for voting!

JUG-Ka Stammtisch(BETA)

This coming Thursday at 7pm, the Java Users Group Karlsruhe will meet up for beer and chatting about Java at Marktplatz. If you'd like to join, check out the Google Group for further details or drop me an email.

Java 7 Language Changes Poll

When Stephen Colebourne published the results of the Devoxx whiteboard poll on Java 7 language changes, I had the idea of doing the same poll here on my blog and with the people of our local JUG. I know there are probably other polls and blog posts on the proposed changes out there, but I think it would be valuable input for Sun to hear even more voices.

So how is this supposed to work? Stephen was kind enough to send me a presentation, which highlights the proposed changes, together with code samples on each of the proposals. After you finished going through the presentation, you give your prioritized votes. I decided to not only include the local JUG's votes but also the votes of people reading my blog. There's a field to let me know where you got the pointer to the poll. If you have any questions, you can leave a comment, drop me an email or send me an IM.

What happens to the results? Frankly I don't know. I'll definitely publish them here and I'll let Sun know about it. I think it is important to give your opinion on the future of Java! Every vote counts! Since I've already voted at Devoxx, I won't participate here again and if your vote has already been counted on the Whiteboards there as well, you should probably abstain too.

The poll will run for 4 weeks, which I know is quite long. However, a lot of people will be on Christmas holidays and 4 weeks will give them the opportunity to vote as well.

Enough of the prelude here's the presentation and the poll! Please vote and help out by spreading the word!