After taking a step back to have a think about my situation, I have regretfully pulled out of organizing the IJTC conference in Dublin this year. Putting together a conference is a hugely involved activity and I just do not have the time to spare on it this year. I wish the remaining organizers the best of luck and hope the event works out to be a success.
Archive for the ‘thoughts’ Category
Irish Java Technologies Conference 2008
It’s that time of the year again. We are just starting to ramp up getting this year’s conference in Dublin together for November. A good few months this time, as opposed to our insane 3 month schedule last year. There are a bunch of themes that we are looking to cover in this year’s line-up, but the crux of it will be around addressing common problems and how the tools can help to support that effort, rather than being a bog-standard tech showcase. It’s kind of a reverse point of view from what other other events take.
It was a great buzz putting it all together last year, and I know this one’s going to be even more fun, both for the delegates and speakers. We already have our scheming hats on 
Who reads your blog?
So, why no blog posts lately? Most of the interesting stuff that folks blog about are those issues and ideas which have currency, those at the forefront at their minds. Tech blogs too deal with the everyday. Issues that we have come across, interesting ideas, problems and techniques. However, in this day of corporate non-disclosure agreements and overly keen security departments sometimes it’s just not prudent to scratch that blogging itch, regardless of how tangential the topic might be.
On the flipside, if you didn’t know, Eclipse 3.4 aka Ganymede is out! With a whole bunch of new goodies as standard. After my first cursory test drive, the concensus is… very nice.
Teenage Knife Crime in London
An unfortunately pessimistic, yet topical, post this time. You only have to walk past the news stands any given day to see the topic of the month. Knife crime is increasing, with the victims typically being teenagers. What were a couple of isolated incidents now appear to be accelerating into a sustained trend. Anyone who has read Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point would not be surprised to see the similarities between the case studies described, and what’s going on. Ironically, bringing media attention to the issue, and staging marches in unity against knife crime only serves to validate this behaviour as an appropriate way to resolve disputes. Seeing one’s peers behaving in a particular way serves to validate that behaviour as an acceptable form of expression. The current trend will only be stopped by applying lessons from past equivalents. In the meantime, we can unfortunately expect it to accelerate.
The Long Tail of Java Tools
I went to an awesome session yesterday evening that did a rapid fire listing of small tools that you should know about if you are working with Java. The breakdown is on the Dublin JUG site.
Dynamic Language Smackdown
I just came out of a session comparing scripting (but probably better described as dynamic) languages. Groovy, Ruby, Python and Scala went head to head in three rounds; desktop app, web app and freestyle. Whatever language you follow, the possibilities for use are awesome with excellent features in each language ecosystem. While each compile down to Java bytecode Groovy really does provide developers with the most natural integration, Ruby has awesome libraries, and Scala’s concurrent programming model is compelling (and will probably be one I will be following up). The diversity in this space is awesome and Java developers really should keep abreast of developments in this area. The ease with which web apps in particular are developed in all three leave traditional frameworks in the dust.
Keynote Trends
Keynote was great. These things are really about getting excitement about the technology going, and it certainly succeeded. The big news really is JavaFX at the moment. The runtime will start to be distributed via the Java 6 Update 10 (J6u10 from here) formerly spoken of as the consumer JRE. Having given Flex a good kick of the tires, I’m really excited about JFX. It’s the possibilities of writing Rich UIs that run universally in a browser that you can detach and run as a desktop application, for which you can take the same code and run it on a mobile platform – JME, Android (looking forward to finding out what that’s about) etc. or on a PS3. Very, very cool stuff. The JFX media framework is awesome – 3D rendering, high definition video, high def sound. Makes for an amazingly impressive demo. I was talking the day before to a couple of guys about the capabilities of the various RichUI techs – Flex, Silverlight and JavaFX. The latter seemed an also ran, but with stable implementations coming out in the coming months, I’m not sure that our conclusions of still stand.
App server modularity is the trend of the moment. The new Glassfish container is 98kb! Makes for an interesting idea – what is the app server, and where is it? When a server can run on a mobile, what are the new possibilities? How does this change things? I don’t know, but it bears thinking about as it is definitely the trend forward. Glassfish, Geronimo, JBoss, now Spring App Server. The monolithic server’s days are numbered.
T-shirts galore, plenty of cool ideas floating, some half-assed ones. Body count: 1 broken camera, 1 dead laptop battery and 1 lost power adapter. Day 2 ahead!
Twittering JavaOne
If anyone’s interested, you can follow my exploits on via Twitter on jakekorab.
Heard on United 955 to SFO
Pilot: “Passengers on the left hand side of the plane, if you take a look out the window you will see a great view of the Golden Gate bridge and the Bay Area. Passengers on the right hand side of the plane, thank you for flying with United Airlines.”
Slapped in a Dark Tunnel at an Interview
The interview cycle is in full swing. I came across a post on Contractor UK about tricky questions posed by interviewers, which I think are just jaw-dropping. Someone needs to have a reality check and stop taking themselves so seriously. I have nothing against difficult, even impossible, questions in an interview situations. Most of the time they are great indicators of the way someone approaches a problem, and they provide a good starting point into a conversation about technologies, techniques, associated issues etc. But the examples here are pretty silly.
“You’re in a dark tunnel and someone slaps you in the face. What do you do?”
Should you have a bit of Krav Maga under the belt which emphasizes protection through offense, your reaction might be to cover your head, flail the elbows in the “drunken monkey” maneuver and lunge in the attacker’s direction, turning their attack into a fumble before removing them as a threat. However, apparently not what an interviewer wants to hear! A perfectly sensible self-defense strategy dismissed off the cuff. Why?
“This insinuates that the person is prone to react in a stressful scenario aggressively and without hesitation. These hypothetically aggressive questions can also increase a person’s tension there and then, which could mean that they are susceptible to stress and prone to make dramatic responses and reactions.”
Umm… yeah. It could also suggest that you have previously thought about such a scenario and are prepared for it in the event of it happening. That’s kind of what self defence is supposed to teach you. You’re probably not going to deck your manager in a meeting, though. Unless the meeting’s in a dark tunnel. And he slaps you.
Hiding is also not a good idea. “This generally indicates that the person cannot adequately deal with sudden events, resulting in an alarmed state of mind, freezing in a stressed scenario.” Seems to me like it might also be a sensible reaction. Someone hits you, you avoid getting hit again then worry about how to get out of the situation.
The preferred solution?
“I would first try to figure out from which direction I was hit and then find the fastest way possible out of the tunnel. Analysing the immediate situation first, and then consider the options that would solve the event. This answer indicates that the person will take a calm and calculated approach to a possible problem situation. That all the possible scenarios should be considered before any direct action is taken.”
It doesn’t take too much analysis to work out to run away from where it hurts. While you’re standing around analyzing, you get a follow through to the groin. Hmm… great solution.
Other gems include expecting candidates to be calm and collected after making them wait for 45 minutes (while their kids are waiting to be picked up from school), and hoping that people calmly ask police officers whether it’s them they’re yelling at to get their hands up. Right.
If you’re asking behavioral stuff with right or wrong answer, you should probably drop it. Questions of the “what-if” nature are useful only if they lead to an insight into patterns of working, problem solving or similar and lead to a wider discussion. A candidates reaction to getting slapped has as much place in the process as an interviewer in a dark tunnel.
A great example of how to do it right is described in Joel Spolsky’s The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing.