Speakers

Hamlet D'Arcy

Sr. Java/Groovy Developer, Groovy Committer

Hamlet D'Arcy has been writing software for over a decade, and has spent considerable time coding in C++, Java, and Groovy. He's passionate about learning new languages and different ways to think about problems, and recently he's been discovering the joys of both F# and Scheme. He's an active member of the Groovy Users of Minnesota and the Object Technology User Group, is a committer on the Groovy project, and is a contributor on a few open source projects (including JConch and the IDEA Groovy Plugin). He blogs regularly at http://hamletdarcy.blogspot.com and can be found on Twitter as HamletDRC (http://twitter.com/hamletdrc).

Presentations

Groovy Compiler Metaprogramming and AST Transformations

'A language should have access to its own abstract syntax' John McCarthy, Father of Lisp. Well, now Groovy 1.6 does! This talk is about why AST transformations are important, what you can do with them, and where the language world is headed. We'll dive into some of the useful Groovy annotations and libraries being written that harness AST transformations, see how to write our own, and work with the AST tools coming out with the next version.

At the end we'll prognosticate about the future of programming languages in general, and hypothesize about where the Groovy features fit into the history of languages. Fun!

Functional Groovy

For many, learning Groovy made you think differently about Java. Now it's time to think differently about Groovy. Although Groovy is not a functional language by many measures, it does support many of the common functional idioms and patterns. Come explore both how far functional programming can be pushed in Groovy, where functional programming can't currently go, and where functional programming is headed in future releases of both the language and the JVM.

Learn about morphisms, option types, tail call optimization, pattern matching, and functional composition in the context of solving classic CS problems side-by-side with a more traditional functional language, and decide for yourself how terms like elegance and simplicity should drive your coding. This is not meant to be an intro to functional programming but no prior experience is required.

OSGi and Groovy Jump Start

OSGi, Jigsaw, modularity, service lifecycles, bundles... where do you start? This talk covers the basics of using OSGi and Groovy together.

You'll be introduced to the OSGi framework by building a Groovy based application that introduces the core concepts of OSGi such as themodule system, service registry, and service life cycles. We'll also cover common pifalls encountered by mixing Groovy and OSGi, as well the latest OSGi tools available.

Legacy Code, Groovy, and You

Thinking about writing Groovy unit tests for your legacy Java code? This session is an honest discussion about what Groovy will gain youand what it won't.

Come learn the engineering practices and tools that you can use to battle tight coupling, monolithic projects, and tangled dependencies, and then decide for yourself whether Groovy is the answer for your project. Plan on returning to work with a vision of what your team can do to write better software.