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on Nov 26th, 2010Eclipse November DemoCamps are nearly over, but…

Eclipse DemoCamp New Eclipse November DemoCamps are nearly over, but...One thing I like about November is the DemoCamps, and this year I spoke at two of them, Bonn and Munich. Both were great events where I had the chance to talk  about RAP. The DemoCamps are all about spreading the word about technology and both events did a great job. November is nearly over, but you will have a second chance on December 9th to see some great speakers like Ralph Müller, Marcel Bruch, Benjamin Muskalla, Karsten Thoms, Klaus Krogmann, Markus Tiede, Stefan Schuerle and David Burkhart. Of course you’ll also hear me speaking about RAP again. icon wink Eclipse November DemoCamps are nearly over, but...

If you are in or around Karlsruhe feel free to stop by. All you need to do is sign up for each of the events: the democamp (sign up on eventbrite) and for the Stammtisch afterwards (sign up on doodle). But you have to be fast because there are only a few seats left. Here is the complete agenda for the Karlsruhe DemoCamp on December 9th.  Looking forward to meeting you there.

  • 17:30 – 17:40 Intro – Ralph Mueller
  • 17:40 – 18:00 From Stack Trace to Scrum: Agile development with Mylyn, Benjamin Muskalla, Tasktop
  • 18:00 – 18:20 Balanced Software Design, Klaus Krogmann, FZI
  • 18:20 – 18:40 Agile Development with Eclipse, Stefan Schuerle and David Burkhart, andrena
  • 18:40 – 19:00 Eclipse Code Recommenders, Marcel Bruch, TU Darmstadt
  • 19:00 – 19:30 break
  • 19:30 – 19:50 Jubula- take a sneak peak, Markus Tiede, Bredex
  • 19:50 – 20:10 A look ahead at RAP: what’s new now and will be noteworthy in the future, Holger Staudacher, EclipseSource
  • 20:10 – 20:30 Building Xtext based projects with Maven, Karsten Thoms, itemis AG

on Nov 22nd, 2010A women’s way to clean code

A few weeks ago the news in Germany was that the average lifespan of German citizens has reached its highest level ever (Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland).  This was good news but I was also surprised to hear that women still live longer than men. I can imagine a lot of contributing factors but maybe that’s a long discussion better done over beers. One thing that I’ve observed, that I think I can say without getting into trouble, is that some women I know, are simply smarter about their health. For example, if they develop symptoms, they’ll go more quickly to the doctor than I would (or other guys I know). Longevity led me to think about the lifetime of code, and how short that can be sometimes. And, how we often ignore symptoms of illness in code too.  This would be in the form of warnings during compile time, like in the following example, “death by internal API change”.

dbiac A womens way to clean code

With the right compiler settings, a modern IDE like Eclipse displays warnings when something isn’t right e.g. when using internal API.  By ignoring these warnings you are vulnerable to the ‘death by internal API change’ malady.  One day the owner of the API will change its internal structure. If you’re lucky you can adopt the new structure and your code will survive. But if you’re out of luck, the changes to the internal API are so drastic that you can’t repair your code and your application, built on top of internal API, is completely broken.

This death can be avoided by reacting to the symptoms. Let me explain this with the same example. Every programmer has found himself in the situation were a public API couldn’t do everything you needed.  If you’re writing code in a women’s way, you won’t ignore the symptoms.  A female would consult a doctor, in this case the creator of the API or the community around it. They would describe the symptoms, and with this kind of information the “doctor” can react by extending the public API of the framework. In this way, all symptoms (warnings) are recognized early and eliminated before the malady can take hold. It’s the same here as with people: if you consult the doctor early, the probability of illness will shrink.  So, be nice to your code…

Can you think of other examples where bad code is so easy to ‘catch’?  It would be great to hear your examples of  maladies like “death by internal API change” and hear your experiences.

on Nov 13th, 2010RAP 1.4 M3 supports JQuery, reduced client size

Another milestone build on the way to RAP 1.4 is available: RAP 1.4 M3.

In this milestone, we conentrated on optimizations to the Javascript code that we deliver to the client browser. We managed to reduce the size of this code by ~8%, making RAP apps load a litte bit faster again. More optimizations will follow.

As a nice side effect of using a new Javascript compressor, RAP does not interfere with JQuery anymore. That means that you can now use JQuery in your RAP applications, if you like.

In the next milestone, scheduled for Dec 17, you can expect updated JFace and Workbench bundles as well as key bindings support.

on Nov 13th, 2010Portland DemoCamp 11/2010 – Photos and Slides

Thanks to everybody who attended or presented at the Portland Eclipse DemoCamp last Monday. This time the theme was “Eclipse for mobile developers”. We had about 50 attending, which is a strong uptick from past events.

Below some pictures and slides from the event:

1. Michael Galpin (@michaelg) from eBay opened the night with a presentation on ‘Android Development with Eclipse’. He introduced the Android platform and demoed the Eclipse-based Android Development Tools (ADT). Interesting fact: eBay’s mobile applications on Android are enjoyed by more than 3 million users. If you want to learn more about Android, Michael’s upcoming Android book should be a good place to start.

democamp1 300x225 Portland DemoCamp 11/2010   Photos and Slides

2. John Thomas from RIM continued with ‘BlackBerry Application Development Options‘. BlackBerry developers have a variety of language choices for developing apps, such as Java, HTML5/Javascript and Adobe AIR. All development tools are integrated nicely in Eclipse and Adobe’s FlashBuilder (also Eclipse based). Visit this page for details on BlackBerry app development.

democamp2 300x225 Portland DemoCamp 11/2010   Photos and Slides

3. Elias Volanakis (@evolanakis) talked about ‘iPad Development with Eclipse RAP‘. After introducing the project I demoed how to write a calculator web-app for the iPad using Java. We are optimizing RAP for mobile devices for the 1.4 release next summer. You can download the slides here.

democamp3 300x225 Portland DemoCamp 11/2010   Photos and Slides

Thanks for joining us,
Elias.

on Nov 5th, 2010Portland DemoCamp: Mobile Development with Eclipse – 11/8, 6pm

If you want to learn more about Android / Blackberry / iPad development while enjoying some free pizza and beer, I would be glad to see you next Monday. Will have three presentations:

  • Android Development with Eclipse
  • BlackBerry Application Development Options
  • iPad development with Eclipse

The event is scheduled for this Monday, Nov 8th at 6pm at the Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby (map).

Please RSVP on the wiki (or sent me an email). Space is limited, so sign up now.

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_November_2010/Portland

Looking forward to see you there,
Elias.

on Nov 5th, 2010ESE 2010 is over. It’s time for the November DemoCamps

I had a great Eclipse Summit this year – and I heard similar things from other people.  I had a chance to meet and talk with friends, colleagues and new acquaintances, and to see a lot of really good presentations.  Of the presentations I saw, these were my personal top three.

Number 3 on my list was Chris Frost’s talk about using Snaps with Virgo. It was really interesting to see what they’re doing with this OSGi server. Here is Chris’s description of the talk:

A quick overview of the Virgo Runtime server. Then a look at Snaps, a new prototype to break up your web application front end into multiple bundles.

IMG 0082 224x300 ESE 2010 is over. Its time for the November DemoCamps

My personal number 2 was the talk by Marcel Bruch about IDE 2.0. I attended the talk back in July of this year, but its still really fun to watch Marcel presenting the “Code Amazon” aka code-recommenders. Here is Marcel’s description of the talk.

Application frameworks have become an integral part of today’s software development. This is hardly surprising given their promised benefits such as reduced costs, higher quality, and shorter time to market. But using an application framework is not free of cost. Before frameworks can be used efficiently, software developers have to learn their correct usage which often results in high initial training costs.

However, framework usages frequently follow typical patterns that manifest themselves in source code of applications that use these frameworks and thus can be extracted from code and directly reused to guide novice developers when learning these frameworks. The code recommenders project facilitates this reuse of collective knowledge by automatically collecting such information from code and brings back this knowledge into the IDE by means of intelligent code completion, extended (usage-driven) javadocs, smart api-misuse detectors, or personalized code search engines.

This talk introduces the ideas and concepts of Eclipse Code Recommenders, a new (upcoming) Eclipse project proposal under the umbrella of the Eclipse Technology top-level project.

IMG 0083 224x300 ESE 2010 is over. Its time for the November DemoCamps

The absolute number 1 was Jeff Norris’s keynote. It was pure fun to watch him. He captivated the audience for a whole hour – that felt like only 10 minutes. It was absolutely amazing to see his slides. I talked to Mike Milinkovich the next day and he estimated that Jeff must have invested more than 80 hours in preparing the keynote.  He really is a world-class presenter. Here is Jeff’s description of the keynote:

Whether it is controlling interplanetary spacecraft, managing medical records, or “merely” staying employed, it seems like more of us are facing the pressure of developing mission-critical software. It’s tempting to think that reliability is all that matters, but we’re also forced to adapt to constantly advancing technologies, shifting priorities, and relentless competitive pressures. Is it wise to embrace innovation and take risks when so much is at stake? Can you afford to be agile when failure is not an option? Can you afford not to?

IMG 0086 300x224 ESE 2010 is over. Its time for the November DemoCamps

Of course it’s too bad that ESE was over so quickly, but there is good news. It’s November and the November DemoCamps start.  Some of the talks from ESE will be presented again at the  DemoCamps, including Marcel Bruch right here in Karlsruhe. So, if you missed this year’s ESE you will have a second chance to see the speakers. Here is a full schedule of the program:

November 8-14

November 15-21

  • Bonn, Germany – November 16; Location: Collegium Leoninum, Noeggerathstraße 34
  • Ottawa, ON, Canada – November 17, 19:00-21:00; Location: Clocktower Brew Pub, 575 Bank St.
  • Bay Area, CA, USA – November 18, 18:00-21:00; Location: Replay Solutions, 2100 Seaport Blvd., Top Floor, Redwood City
  • Bangalore, India – November 19; Location: SAP Labs India Pvt. Ltd., Whitefield – Google Map
  • Budapest, Hungary – November 19, 19:00; Location: Miniat?r, 1024 Budapest, II.district, Rózsahegy street 1/A
  • Pune, India – November 19; Location: Saba Software India Pvt. Ltd., 5th Floor, Mutha Tower, Don Bosco Marg, Yerwada
  • Kampala – Makerere University, Uganda – November 20, 10:00; Location: Makerere University, Faculty of Computing and Informatics Technology, Block B
  • Krakow, Poland – November 20; Location: TBD

November 22-28

  • Munich, Germany – November 23, 17:30; Location: Technische Universität München, Arcisstr. 21
  • Stuttgart – November 23, 10:00; Location: STEP Engineering Park, Gropiusplatz 10
  • Dresden, Germany – November 25, 17:00-21:00; Location: Technical University of Dresden, Fritz-Förster-Platz 4, Room POT/112/H
  • Ottawa – Carleton University, ON, Canada – November 25, 18:30-20:30; Location: Carleton University
  • Kassel, Germany – November 26, 17:00; Location: University of Kassel, Wilhelmshöher Allee 73
  • Pécs – University of Pécs, Hungary – November 26, 18:00; Location: F?tér, 7625 Pécs
  • Poznan, Poland – November 27; Location: Johnny Rocker PUB, ul.Wielka 9
  • Jakarta, Indonesia – November 27; Location: Microsoft Indonesia

November 29-December 5

  • Antwerp, Belgium – November 30; Location: Cronos, Business Park King Square, Veldkant nr. 35 D
  • Dortmund, Germany – November 30, 18:00; Location: FZW
  • Vienna, Austria – December 1; Location: Mooslackengasse 17, 1190 Wien (U4 Heiligenstadt)

December 6-12

  • Berlin, Germany – December 7; Location: Fraunhofer FOKUS, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31
  • Florence, Italy – December 10, 15:00-18:00; Location: House of Creativity, Florence
  • Karlsruhe, Germany – December 9, 17:30- 20:30; Location: FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik, Haid-und-Neu-Straße 10-14
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