Eric Lefevre-Ardant on Java & Agile

September 28, 2009

Predictions for CITCON Europe 2009

Filed under: citcon — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 7:45 am

Last year, at CITCON Amsterdam 2008, a few of us stayed late into the night, drinking beer and discussing the state of the world.

And what to do when you have 21 geeks with time on their hands? Why, predictions, of course! (I want to do it again this year, check out the Google Moderator page I’ve started)

Bar at the Marriott Hotel

We decided to come up with a number of predictions (and bet on them), some serious, some not, that would be verified at CITCON Europe 2009, the price being beer points. And, the losers will be named and shamed, while the winners will be glorified (at least until new predictions are made, and for no more than a year, whichever is earliest).

Here are the predictions, and the actual outcome (a couple of them were settled by votes at the closing session):

Prediction Votes Actual
CITCON Europe has more than 120 attendees (I had voted against!!) YES YES
more .NET developers than Java developers NO NO
CITCON will take place in Paris YES YES
at least 5% of attendees are female (I personally did vote in favor) yes NO
at least 20% of participants do Ruby draw NO
Java closures are considered too complex NO NO
IBM buys ThoughtWorks NO NO
IBM buys Valtech NO NO
there is a Maven.NET coded in Java, with MS Tools integration NO NO
Ivan Moore gives up on build-o-matic NO NO
McCain wins the election draw NO
CITCON Europe takes place in Frankfurt NO NO
Jeffrey Fredrick XOR Tom Sulston (that is, either Jeffrey or Tom, but not both) have short hair YES YES
Fewer Agile Consultancies NO NO

So, out of 14 predictions, we got 11 right, 1 wrong, and 2 undecided.
Now, you may think that the answers were straightforward. But you need to realize that, for each one of them, someone was willing to bet a beer against the consensus. In other words, at the time when the predictions were made, it was not clear cut.

In the interest of the bets, I shall now reveal the names.
Winners (Glory to Them All!)

  • Andrew Parker (8 rights, 1 wrong)
  • Eric Lefevre (that’s me) (10 rights, 2 wrongs)
  • Guillaume Tardif (6 rights, no wrongs)
  • Jean-Michel Bea (8 rights, 2 wrongs)
  • Pekka Pietikäinen (7 rights, 2 wrongs)

Losers (Boo to Them All!)

  • Julian Simpson (3 rights, 4 wrongs)
  • Jeffrey Fredrick (3 rights, 6 wrongs)
  • Paul Julius (5 rights, 2 wrongs) — PJ is still a loser, ‘cos he has been right on bets with small payoffs
  • Tom Sulston (4 rights, 4 wrongs)

I have started a new series of predictions for CITCON Europe 2010. There are two steps:

  1. suggest predictions & vote for the best ones
  2. when predictions have been selected, vote

To actually win your beers, you’ll have to come to CITCON Europe 2010 (still unannounced).
Please check out the Google Moderator page to propose your own predictions.

Sorting out the bets from 2008If you want to the gritty details, I have a picture of the full spreadsheet.

September 23, 2009

CITCON Paris 2009, a personal retrospective of the organization

Filed under: citcon — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 7:21 am

Closing session

As I write this, I have still not fully recovered from CITCON Paris 2009. This conference being one where I have been involved a lot into its organization, I would like to indulge in a bit of personal retrospective.
What worked:
* we had more than 120 participants, which is in line with CITCON’s goals and the highest number ever in 15 events. Also, it is very close to the number we estimated ourselves.
* all the people in the waiting list have eventually been able to join the main registration list; no one was barred from coming
* costs well were contained, especially thanks to the use of ISEP’s rooms; in fact, this event contributed hugely to settle debts from the past events
* sessions were mostly on topics relevant to the conference
* quality of food was fine (especially for a free event)
* there were many well-known people, helping make the event a success for other participants
What could have worked better:
* there was not enough food. I think this is partly because the caterer is not a real professional. Even though we had given excellent estimated for the number of participants, I think that, as the person in charge of the student foyer, he was used to students eating on a budget, not professionals used to (relatively) fancy eating. If we use a semi-professional in the future, we would be wise to over-estimate the number of participants for the purpose of food. Just in case.
* even though we did arrange the chairs in the main room in circles, we left the other rooms as they were, theater-style. This didn’t help having discussions groups (as opposed to presentations).
* I am starting to wonder if we have not reach the maximum possible number of participants. One of the things that I really enjoyed last year was the late night drinks with the few that dared stay. This year, we were 30 or 40 at the end. Groups started to split up. Guillaume and I led a few to the Ti Jos bar and to the Caveau des Oubliettes. Although nice, it was a bit sad, as there wasn’t really a “closing the closing” moment. We didn’t ever get to do new predictions! (and settle last year’s bets, BTW)
On a more personal note, the conference passed a bit as a blur for me. Despite using OpenSpace Technology, I still ended up as the contact person. Also, helping my brother with the filming didn’t help.
In the end, I even managed to miss the (now traditional) “Is Scrum Evil?” session, which had been a favorite of mine last year.

As I write this, 3 days after the closing, I have still not fully recovered from CITCON Paris 2009. I have been very much involved in organizing this edition, so I would like to indulge in a bit of personal retrospective, mostly on the organization of the conference. This is basically self-reflexion; if that’s not your thing, you can leave. You won’t miss much.

Here goes.

What worked at the conference:

  • we had more than 120 participants, which is in line with CITCON’s goals and the highest number ever in all 11 events. Also, it is very close to the number we had estimated ourselves.
  • all the people in the waiting list have eventually been invited to join the main registration list; no one was left behind
  • costs were well under control, especially thanks to the free use of ISEP’s classrooms
  • we got significant money from sponsors; in fact, combined with the well-contained expenses, this event contributed hugely to settle debts from the past events
  • quality of food was alright (especially for a free event)
  • there were a number of well-known people, helping make this event special for other participants
  • twittering was big; according to my feed on Google Reader, there were more than 300 tweets. Including quite a few from people regretting not to have come.

What could have worked better:

  • there was not enough food. I think this is partly because the caterer is not a real professional. Even though we had given good estimates for the number of participants, I think that, as the person in charge of the student foyer, he was used mostly to students eating on a budget. If we use such a semi-professional in the future (likely, since we want to use more free venues such as universities), we would be wise to over-estimate the number of participants as far as food is concerned. Just in case.
  • Even though we did arrange the chairs in the main room in circles, we left the other rooms as they were, theater-style. This didn’t help having involved discussions (as opposed to presentations).
  • I’m wondering if we have not reached the maximum possible number of participants. One of the things that I really enjoyed last year was the late night drinks with the few that dared stay. This year, we were 30 or 40 at the end. Groups started to split up. Guillaume and I led a few to the Ti Jos bar and to the Caveau des Oubliettes. Although nice, it was a bit sad, as there wasn’t really a “closing the closing session” moment. We didn’t even get to do new predictions! (and settle last year’s bets, BTW).
  • Some rooms were lacking a video projector. I wonder if it would be good investment for the Open Information Foundation to buy one of those small and inexpensive projectors that have appeared recently on the market

On a more personal note, the conference passed a bit like a blur for me. Despite using OpenSpace Technology, I still ended up as the contact person for many participants, suppliers and sponsors, which was distracting. Also, helping my brother with the filming didn’t help. I even managed to miss out on the (now traditional) “Is Scrum Evil?” session, which had been a favorite of mine last year.

I still had a great time. Met Antony Marcano and Andy Palmer from Pair With Us (they are hoping to join us at the Paris Coding Dojo sometime — looking forward to it) as well as Gojko Adzic, whose copies of book was given away to some lucky participants, and Jason Sankey and Daniel Ostermeier from Zutubi… Reconnected with many former colleagues and friends, too. I also attended a few sessions ;-)

Oh, and last but not least, I’m one of the winners from last year’s bets! What do I win? Well, beer, in theory. But, even better, I get to call PJ, Jeffrey, Tom, Julian and Yegor LOSERS for a year. Priceless.

Check out

See you next year, in one of the five cities in our short list (Zürich, Copenhagen, Belgrade, Dublin, and Prague).

September 22, 2009

Faster tests, at CITCON Paris 2009

Filed under: citcon, test — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 9:11 am

"Going nowhere fast"

“Going nowhere fast” by Nathan

The session on Faster Tests (led by David) was interesting, at least to the extend that it was quite clear that we are not doing too bad indeed (Douglas Squirrel from youDevise is another one that seems to be quite cerebral about tests and builds).

Faster tests Faster tests

By looking that the various options discussed to get tests faster, I think it’s fair to say that the only way to really speed up tests is by compromising their integrity, at least to a level. In a way, to make tests faster, you’ve got to face reality and move away from their ideal abstraction (very reminiscent of Joel Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstractions). The only question is: how confident are you that those (slightly compromised) tests actually test something useful?

This leads to the conclusion that we only keep long integration tests because it is difficult for us to really understand what’s going on. If we did have an excellent understanding, we would have unit tests instead. And, interestingly, as we progress in our project, we find ways to convert integration tests into unit tests. In other words, we better understand what’s going on.

Also, check out my notes on the session on Mock Objects.

September 21, 2009

Mock objects at CITCON Paris 2009

Filed under: citcon, java — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 9:47 pm

The Mock Turtle

The Mock Turtle by Samantha Carlson

The session on mock objects, mostly lead by Steve Freeman, was a bit messy but interesting. My colleague David got to show some of our code on the screen, which was scary and exciting (he felt the urge to fix some of the tests he had shown immediately after). Also, I think I finally understood the relation between mock objects and interfaces that Steve insists on.

See, I always thought that Steve was in favour in adding interfaces directly on top of concrete classes. For example, if you have a FileManager, you would also have a IFileManager.

Steve made more clear that the idea was to use interfaces to represent a role, or (more exactly) just one of the roles that a class has. That makes sense. But, to be honest, I still prefer to have a single role per class. So, no interfaces really needed.

I wish I had more time to talk with Steve. Maybe his coming book will have answers for me.

Mock objects

September 10, 2009

Interviewed by François Beauregard

Filed under: agile, agile2009 — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 10:55 pm

François Beauregard from Pyxis Technologies interviewed me during Agile 2009 for their Vox Agile podcast. The interview is now online.

Toy sampling megaphone

We chatted about a favorite topic of mine: how to expand the horizons for Agile. My point is mostly that the Agile crowd is mostly talking about basic issues in software development, including during the Agile 2009 conference. I fear that this my give the wrong impression to beginners (”how, so we only need to do this and that, and we’re agile? Cool!”) and even to seasoned practitioners (”this Agile thing is not addressing my needs anymore”).
I would much prefer that we talk more about complex problems, whether they relate directly to Agile or not. This can include technical discussions or more touchy-feely ones. As long as we are addressing difficult problems, we will be making progress.

I also want to see more cross-domains talks. Obvious domains are the heavy industry (I won’t need to remind how influential Toyota has been to the IT industry) or performing arts. But that could also include things such as Behavioral Economics.

Or not. I don’t know for sure. However, I do know that we should be taking more risks. And stop presenting Introductions to Retrospectives for the upteenth time.

At the end of the talk, I mention 2 things for further reading. Here they are, plus a bonus book that I’ve just read:

The podcast is available in French on the Vox Agile site. Here is a direct link to the MP3 file.

Tim Harford

August 5, 2009

[Agile 2009] What’s in the conference for Java developers?

Filed under: agile2009, java — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 6:26 pm

quintessenceAgile 2009 is not just for Agile coaches or project managers. About one in three participants qualify herself as a developer or a technical leader. And the program reflects that.

Amongst the activities that might interest fans of the Java:

Here are a few sessions with Java either as the main topic, or as the language used for demonstration:

For some other sessions, Java is not central, but will be at least mentioned:

Check out the entire program on conference site!

Update (06/08/2009): should have mentioned that the Cast Codeurs podcast pretty much have the same information in French.

July 30, 2009

[Agile 2009] Presence of the CITCON community at the world’s premier Agile conference

Filed under: agile2009, citcon — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 6:32 pm

CITCONers are everywhere! And nowhere more than at Agile 2009 Conference.

First, CITCON will be represented by Lydia Tripp and myself during the Freshers’ Faire at the Ice Breaker. Watch out for the CITCON easel pad… and world-famous t-shirts ;-)

CITCON alumni are now a big crowd (there are more than 750 mailing list members, and presumably many more attended the CITCON events). Many of them will present at the conference
Modern and traditional tools

It Takes Two To Tango Also, Lisa Crispin is producer of the Testing Stage. And don’t forget that many more CITCONers will be presenting on the OpenJam stage, too! I know I‘ll be.

Lastly, I will be appearing a one of the contestants in Programming with the Stars! This means that I’ll be paired up with a “star”, then we’ll try to show our mad programming skillz and outperform our competitors. This is incredibly exciting but also very intimidating. Although I consider myself a competent programmer, I am certainly not the best, and the participants at the conference are not exactly beginners. Scary!

Check out the conference blog for an account of how Programming with the Stars went last year.

June 12, 2009

[Agile 2009] Continuous Integration

Filed under: agile2009 — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 6:32 pm

This year, just like last year, Continuous Integration is proving to be a popular topic at Agile 2009.

Phew! That’s quite a mouthful. Interestingly, there are many more talks listed here than I managed to get last year (and there are half as many talks this year). One reason could be that I was much more thourough this year, reviewing most of the sessions details — last year, I simply searched for keywords in the submission system.

To be honest, seeing as many sessions related to CI is rather a disappointment. I mean, CI is not a difficult practice, and you would think that many participants to Agile 2009 would be familiar with me. Plus, most sessions are introductions rather than advanced talks.

I guess I will content myself with Tom Sulston’s sessions (”Cage Fight” & “How to be awesome”).

June 3, 2009

XP France becomes Agile France, and other news from the French Agile community

Filed under: xpday — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 5:33 pm

XP France MeetingAs a member of XP France, I attended the annual meeting that took place during XP Day Paris last week.

Things have been moving for our little group.

Agile France

First and foremost, the group is renaming itself. It will thereafter be known as Agile France.

The extended French-speaking sphere

Second, its bylaws changed to reflect that the group is willing to help anyone in the extended French-speaking sphere (ie. French-speaking countries, non-French groups in countries where French is spoken, and French-speaking groups in countries where French is not an official language).

6-member strong board

Thirdly, a stronger team of people has been elected members of the board. We are jumping from 3 (Laurent Bossavit, Gabriel Le Van, Patrice Petit) to 6 (Raphaël Pierquin, Bernard Notarianni, Sandrine Olivencia, Antoine Contal, Laurent Bossavit). This boardis elected for 2 years.

What to think of all this?

  • in my view, the name change is excellent. I do believe that it will give more credibility to the organization. I remember talking to someone who thinks that the French Scrum User Group had been created in part because they felt that Scrum was not well represented by XP France — he repeated that this was clear to him, considering the name. I do not believe XP France is neglecting Scrum, but it is just as well that the name makes it clear.
  • specifiying that the association is willing to help the whole “extended French-speaking sphere” proved to be controversial. I personnally do not care much, but many thought that we can get into conflicts with other groups, such as Agile Québec. I’d personnally be very surprised if that becomes a problem.
  • though I agree that the new team looks strong and motivated, I am disappointed by the slightly heavy handed manner. We were basically told “oh, we are also going to change the board and, by the way, there is the only team you can get to vote for”. A simple email to the mailing list would have helped make things easier. I think. Also, a few people seemed to be disappointed, as they would have been candidates, given the chance.
  • I am also disappointed by the rather long mandate (2 years, down from 3 years in the original proposal). One argument was that 1 year is not enough to let the board members settle, and they would then be judged unfairly for their first year. Well, who’s saying that the members of the association would be so harsh as to kick them out if they can explain why they haven’t achieved much? Surely, a reasonable explanation is not too much to ask.

Anyway, at least it seems that the association is doing its best to be as relevant as possible. I think those changes are for the better.

See you next year and all the best to the new board! There is certainly work to do  for everyone.

June 2, 2009

“Is Scrum Evil?” Beyond our session at XP Day Paris

Filed under: scrum, xpday — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 12:14 pm

Is Scrum Evil?Our session “Is Scrum Evil?” at XP Day Paris this year went well. Attendance was good (50 people or so). One participant called it an “eye opener“. Two recorded the discussion (one of the records is available, in French, here; look for the podcast published on May 30th 2009). Nicolas Martignole even did a transcript of the session (in French — you might want to check out the Google translation).

I thought I would give more details here.

Our goals

We didn’t exactly manipulate the participants, but we certainly did not reveal, on purpose, what our goals were:

  • help dissenting voices come out of the closet — very few people are vocally criticizing Scrum today in France, and I have found no blogs. I wanted to show the pro-Scrum side that they do not have the final word.
  • let people vent — both pros and antis
  • make participants think — one later came to me and suggested that I should have offered “alternative solutions”. Well, I have none (though I do have some starting points, see below)Is Scrum Evil?

Alternative endings

We had prepare additional materials, in case the discussion died out. Fortunately, it was so lively that we couldnt use them at all. You’ll find all three of them below.

You are not alone

The first thing I wanted to highlight is that, though dissenting voices on Scrum (or Agile) are not currently heard in France, they do exist in the rest of the world:

Is Scrum Evil?

Scrum has Crossed The Chasm

There is a model that give hints to the current situation with Scrum. It is the Technology Adoption Life-Cycle, as amended by Geoffrey Moore in his seminal book “Crossing The Chasm“.

In short, it appears that many of the arguments against Scrum do not just mean that it is poorly explained, nor just that it is poorly understood, but rather that it is now being adopted by a large number of people. Or, to rephrase this, that it has been (consciously or not) packaged in order to be palatable to the mainstream. This implies trainings, books, consulting services, explanations, case studies, success stories. In short, packaging the approach just like a marketing team would do. That the people behind Scrum did it on purpose (as I believe) is beyond the point: the Agile approach that wins the hearts and minds of IT professionals everywhere is necessarily the one that comes with such as package, a whole product, in the words of Moore.

That is a reality that people that are blindly against Scrum must acknowledge.

ARXTA

Finally, I would like to point any aspiring Scrum-evil-ist to Brian Marick’s writing on Agile roots. His argument is that “Agile” (and, I guess, the names of pretty much all Agile methodologies) is too easy a term to adopt. In other words, many people will look at the name, glance at the practices, and quickly come to the conclusion that “hey, this is exactly what we’ve been doing all along! Let’s avoid asking ourselves hard questions and let’s not change the way we work.” Which is, obviously, missing the whole point.

Brian has came up with a new name for the roots of Agile: “Artisanal Retro-Futurism, crossed with Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism.” The name is cryptic (and even slightly repulsing) on purpose, so that people will have to ask, and will have to have a conversation.

Further reading

Check out

May 21, 2009

[Agile 2009] Self-management: Pomodoro

Filed under: agile2009 — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 4:07 pm

I have become interested in Pomodoro at Agile 2008 in Toronto, so I thought it’d be nice to check out where in Agile 2009 you can get to hear about it.

May 19, 2009

XP Day Paris, Agile 2009 and CITCON

Filed under: agile2009, citcon, xpday — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 9:47 pm

I will be quite busy in 2009 with conferences.

Coming up is XP Day Paris, May 25th & 26th (next week!). No less than 3 sessions will be presented by yours truly:

  • Introduction to Retrospectives, with Laurent Bossavit
  • TDD Explained to Managers, with Stephane Labati, a former colleague from Valtech
  • Is Scrum Evil? a workshop with Guillaume Tardif — the session I’m most excited about!

I will be at the dinner on Monday evening as well; feel free to come and talk.

In August, I will be at Agile 2009 Conference in Chicago. This time, I will host a Coding Dojo on Legacy Code, with my partner in crime Guillaume.

Unfortunately, Is Scrum Evil?, a session I had proposed with Jeffrey Fredrick, has not been accepted. Fear not! We will be back with a revenge during the Open Jam part of the conference. I have hope many big names of the Agile world will join us. Promising session, trust me.

Next, September 18th will see CITCON Paris. This conference is dear to me — I have participated to all previous European CITCON events, and I am sure this will be one to remember. 3 months to go and the list of registrants is already closed!

As you may know, this is an Open Space event, so sessions are not known in advance and will be discovered during the opening session. Sounds scary? Wait until you suggest a session! ;-)

Other events of note this year will surely be Valtech Days 2009 and Devoxx. I have helped organize Valtech Days in 2007 and 2008; having left the company, it will not be the case this year, but, who knowns? I might still get to host a session.

As for Devoxx, I have never participated so far, but I heard so many good things that I really want to make the trip this year. We’ll see.

Well, this will be a busy year. Hopefully, I will have a few vacation days for non-techie stuff as well!

February 12, 2009

Paris JUG One Year Anniversary

Filed under: conferences, java — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 8:30 am

JUG FrancophonesA fun evening last Tuesday at the Paris Java User Group. It was the first year anniversary, so special events were planned.

The highlight was the introduction of ALL French JUGs (all created shortly after Paris JUG was). More than a year ago, there was not a single JUG in France, there are now in total 9: Rennes, Nice, Bordeaux, Tours, Nancy/Metz, Toulouse, Lyon, Nantes, plus, of course Paris (and Luxembourg, Switzerland and Belgium, also represented that evening). There is little doubt that other major French cities will have their own JUG soon, especially Lille and Marseille.

The organizers gave a couple of interesting statistics:

  • the typical participant at Paris JUG is a Java architect more than 30 years old; this is in contrast to other local JUGs in France which have sometimes 50% students in the audience
  • the users mailing list (voluntary subscription only) has around 180 members
  • the announce mailing list (automatic subscription when registering to any evening) has more than 1100 members; however, only the organizers can post to it and only announcements of events organized by Paris JUG are made there
  • the number of people registering to a Paris JUG is reaching 220 (more than 200 since September); unfortunately, with 175 available seats, this means that they will have to limit the number of participants in the coming evenings
  • more than 1500 visitors / month to their website

Tombola Jazoon

There were also a few technical presentations, on subject such as Wicket, Java 7 and JOGL, but the most impressive one was for the version 3 (not currently available) of Parleys. Stephan Janssen did an impressive job, first with clients programmed in Flex, Java FX and GWT, second with an almost magic movie editor that matched videos of presentations with slides automatically. That could solve quite a few problems we have with our own conferences at Valtech. Extremely good stuff, as Londoners would say!

For more about this evening at Paris JUG, check out:

January 26, 2009

JavaCampParis3 is on!

Filed under: conferences, java — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 10:06 pm

I am very excited to let you know that my colleague Anthony and I are organizing a BarCamp related to Java programming and everything that goes around it. Quite a few people have registered already. A lot of the topics that people are interested in discussing include TDD, tests and build tools, but also alternative languages for the Java platform. Interested in them? or in other? Register today!

Don’t know what a BarCamp is? well, it basically works like an Open Space Conference: the participants (you!) bring topics that they are willing to talk or discuss about. They get sorted at the beginning of the day in an open agenda and people go to topics they are most interested in.

This BarCamp will last the whole day. Sun is kindly letting us use their fancy offices in Paris, near the Champs Elysées, and my employer, Valtech, is paying for the food.

Come and join us! It will be fun.

November 12, 2008

Back from Open Source eXchange

Filed under: conferences, groovy, java, spring — Eric Lefevre-Ardant @ 11:31 pm

Conference SignInteresting day at Open Source eXchange, a conference organized by Xebia and SkillsMatter.

It was fun meeting Wendy Devolder (now CEO of SkillsMatter) formerly from Valtech (I worked with her at Valtech London back in 2001-2002) and Michael Isvy (with SpringSource) also ex-former. Also had nice chats with Guillaume Laforge, Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, Antonio Goncalvez and many others, including 2 more Valtech alumni.

Aside from the presenters, most of the participants seemed to be tech guys working for blue chips.

Overview of the presentations

Michael Isvy from SpringSource did a valuable demonstration of DM Server. I find it surprising that it bets on OSGi (I cannot get myself to like it). But it seems mostly to become a good server, further strengthened by the recent addition of Groovy to their portfolio (post in French).

Spring DM Server seems to be mainly Tomcat + Spring Framework + OSGi. Supposed to be 100% OSS, but it is not easy to guess when looking at their website…

Tugdual Grall did an entertaining presentation of eXo Platform. The WebOS part is impressive (but run from the local machine, so presumably much slower when used over the net). But I can’t imagine it winning most hearts. My money is currently on using separate apps such as Google Docs.

Guillaume Laforge, formely from G2One and now with SpringSource, did his classic Groovy/Grails presentation. Not much to add to what he has said at Paris JUG in September.

Oh yes, one thing: he hopes that Groovy will be used to script deployment under Spring DM Server. I totally agree.

Antonio Goncalvez presented JEE6, due for release in 2009 Q2. My feeling is that it is just getting too complex, in the sense that it is getting impossible to know about all its various standards and API (reminding me of the whole SOAP fiasco). The JEE6 team knows about this and has a plan where only subsets would be used. As for me, I think most developers will just stick with Spring or some other simpler options (though I guess Spring is getting less and less simple…).

Another thing: it seems EclipseLink is used as the reference implementation for JPA by GlassFish. EclipseLink is in fact TopLink, only Open Source. Interesting comeback, for a tool considered as dead after the Hibernate landslide.

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine talked about GlassFish as a full-fledged JEE Server, open source, much faster and still as powerful than Weblogic and WebSphere. Strangely, few references to JBoss, except to mention that it (GlassFish) seems to have more downloads.

Christophe Laprun from JBoss had a session on JBoss Portal. I didn’t follow all of it (did work for Valtech instead). Portals and portlets are not that interesting to me. I’m glad other people work on them.

Hughes le Bars & Oktay Istanbullu from Yahoo! presented Hadoop, a solution to do grid computing for storage of very large data sets (in the order of PetaBytes). I couldn’t quite understand all the presentation, but the whole thing seems terribly interesting. It is used for web search and ads matching by Yahoo!

Oh, Hughes also mentioned PIG, apparently an equivalent of SQL, just better (!).

Drinks were paid after the conference, and a good time was had by all.

Check out my pictures of the conference on flickr.

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