I was planning to talk about Scala at the Ann Arbor Java User Group meeting this week, but I'm going to have to cancel. I came down with the flu, and then pneumonia and I'm still coughing too much to be able to do a talk. I'm sure that we will reschedule it for a later date.
I will be doing an introduction to Scala at the Ann Arbor Java User Group meeting on Tuesday, March 26. The AAJUG wordpress site is broken, but hopefully people will know about the talk and attend anyhow.
Here's my abstract:
Scala is a multi paradigm language, offering both object-oriented and functional programming that runs on the Java Virtual Machine. The proliferation of multi-core machines is driving interest in functional languages, as they offer a simplified approach toward concurrency. This talk discusses why you should care about Scala as an emerging language, describes unique features of the language, and uses programming examples to demonstrate its use.
AAJUG meetings are held at Washtenaw Community College, Room BE 260, starting at 6:30 pm.
If you're in the Ann Arbor area tonight, join locals for an open gathering of Beer and Code. I'm sorry to say that I'm down with the flu and won't be attending, but it looks like fun. Here's the announcement that Winston Tsang sent out:
——————————————————
We're going to have our 1st of what will hopefully become a series of
monthly open gatherings tonight.
So whether you know Java, .NET, Ruby, or just have a sense of
curiosity with all things tech, come and join us at:
Corner Brewery
Tonight – Tuesday
6:30PM-whenever.
Location:
720 Norris Street
Ypsilanti, MI 48198
We're on the corner of Forest and Norris between River and Huron 2
blocks north of Cross Street.
http://neotech.net/ABC/index.php?site=cornerbrewery
Arbor Brewing Company, the sister company to the Corner Brewery, does
not have wi-fi. Neither does Leopold Brothers from what I've seen.
Leopolds is also going away soon (due to rental rate increases).
The Corner Brewery is a great spot. A nice and cozzy open
environment.
A few of us are going to be there to talk, code, etc, including our
remote member from NYC, Dan DeMaggio.
I plan on finishing up the first of my SmgMug apps and catching up
with Dan on all things tech.
Hope to see you there!
-Winston Tsang
Last year, at the Java Posse Roundup in Crested Butte, a few of us got together the day before the conference for a pre-event. We talked about Django and TurboGears. It was quite interesting, and people filtered in throughout the evening, as they arrived in town. So I figured we needed something similar this year and had been sort of thinking about what might be a good topic, but hadn't really given it much thought until TODAY, when one of the attendees (waving at Mike Levin in the Swamp) mentioned that he and Robert Cooper had been talking about Android quite a bit and were looking forward to seeing what they could do with it. No sense them having all of the fun, all by themselves.
So, for this year's Roundup (March 4-7), a few of us are going to get together the day before the conference starts to see what we can do with Android. Should be fun. I already have all of the development tools on my laptop, from CodeMash. I'm looking forward to it, and several of the attendees have already emailed me saying that they are as well! Fun!
The Richard Hale Shaw will present a 1-day MiniCamp on LINQ and C# 3.0 for experienced .NET developers on March 14 from 9 am – 5 pm. This class will be held at SRT Solutions' offices, at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI.
To attend this course, you should have a minimum of 2 years experience programming C# and the .NET Framework and 1 year programming C# 2.0, or you should have attended the .NET Bootcamp.
Cost of the course:
$350 by February 18 (NOTE: That's Monday!)
$500 by March 7
$600 by March 14, if space is still available
Detailed course information and registration is at http://srtsolutions.com/static/register.php
SPARK and Janeeva are coordinating to determine if there is interest in a Flex User Group. Toward that end, and toward introducing Flex to people who might not know about it, they are holding a meeting next Monday evening, February 11, from 6-8 pm.
Introduction to Flex : Creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
Janeeva and SPARK are pleased to invite you to a seminar on creating RIAs using Adobe Flex technology. Flex is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). Flex enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems.
Seminar leaders Raj Rajen and Michael Bergens, both of Janeeva, will use examples to demonstrate the key concepts of Flex, then progressively build upon the examples to illustrate how Flex applications interact with backend server applications. The seminar is designed for web application developers experienced in using Java, PHP, Ruby, Python or .NET.
We will also discuss the potential to create a Flex User Group, depending on the level of interest. If you are unable to attend but interested in a user group, please register anyway.
The session is scheduled for February 11th, 6-8pm, at SPARK Central in Ann Arbor. Please register at www.annarborusa.org/events.
Raj Rajen is currently the CTO of Janeeva Inc., an Ann Arbor based SaaS company delivering Rich Internet Applications to fortune 500 customers. Previously, Raj was an Information Architect at Mechanical Dynamics Inc, MSC Software, and BlueGill Technologies. He has 20 years of industry experience in the IT and Computer-Aided-Engineering space with a focus on Enterprise Systems development.
Michael Bergens is currently a Senior Software Engineer at Janeeva. He is a graduate of the Mendeleyev University in Moscow's Computer Science department. He wrote and sold his first computer program in 1976, and has more than 30 years of software industry experience.
If you're in town, feel free to show up for lightning talks. Pizza is still expected.
I hope that we're able to rescheule Joe O'Brien for sometime soon. I was really looking forward to his talk.
Joe O'Brien is braving the weather, en route from Columbus up to Ann Arbor for tonight's Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting. Ann Arbor is getting some ice, but evidently the rest of the area seems to be getting snow.
If you're already in Ann Arbor, definitely stop by. I'm, sadly, not going to be able to make it since we got hit pretty hard with snow and ice at my house and I'm pretty much iced in. Having heard Joe speak several times, I'm very disappointed to be missing his talk, and I hope that someone will blog about it!
The meeting is at 6 pm, at 206 S. Fifth, Suite 200, Ann Arbor. AACS provides pizza, free of charge, to all attendees. Meetings are free and open to the public, but only members ($20/year) qualify for door prizes.
The Michigan Python User Group will do some live coding of one or more of the the Code Kata's
from Dave Thomas:
http://codekata.pragprog.com/
The meeting will be held at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI. It will start around 7 pm.
MichiPUG meetings are free and open to the public.
Barry Hawkins attended a talk given by Mike Cohn at Agile Atlanta. Barry's summary is on his blog, and well worth a read. The topic was transitioning to agile. This was one of the questions that was given a lot of air time recently at CodeMash, where Barry was on the Wednesday night panel. I especially liked the characterizations of the Patterns of Agile Adoption.
I always enjoy talking to Barry (and reading his blog). I've learned a lot from him in the 2 years since we first met at Bruce Eckel's Programming the New Web conference in Crested Butte, CO.