Busy Weekend/Life
October 17, 2005 @ 02:00 PMNo Fluff Just Stuff
I love software conventions and other related activities (users groups, etc). So when the announcement showed up on the Seattle Java Users Group email list that the No Fluff Just Stuff software symposium was coming to Seattle, I was thrilled! Every few years or so Sun makes their way to Seattle with their free TechDays convention, but they haven’t been here in a couple years, so I decided to pony up the $700+- and go to NFJS.
Wow! It was fantastic! 5 different tracks of lectures going at any given time… great food… great speakers. I didn’t recognize most of the names, so I was a tad skeptical when I first registered… but once I got there and these people started mentioning what books they’d written, I realized most of these guys are authors of tech books that I’ve read and own!
I can feel already that I could go on and on for paragraphs detailing what this convention was like, so instead I’ll just stop myself here and and point out a few highlights.
Best Quote of the Weekend: Neal Ford of ThoughtWorks was asked why nobody seems interested in EJB3, even though it seems to fix a lot of the problems from EJB2.x… Quote: "Plan 9 from Outer Space is considered by most the worst movie ever made. Would you go see Plan 10 from Outer Space?"
Apple laptops outnumbered PCs… by a dramatic margin. Easily 3:1 or higher.
For the first time (that I’VE noticed), the Java crowd was very bitchy about Java. I think it’s because we’re finally feeling secure that Java’s not being wiped out by .NET, so we can stop putting on a happy face. There were a lot of critiques and lamenting about what to do now.
Out of that came my next pursuit: Ruby on Rails. For a Java conference, there was a LOT of talk going on about Ruby of Rails. And after going to one of the RoR lectures, I understand why. So I picked up a book today and will be learning that. If you’re doing web development, I seriously recommend picking up a book on Ruby on Rails. The alpha-geeks in Java-land are flocking to it… claims of 10x productivity over Java are being thrown around (and not disputed).
First Math Exam in 7 Years
I got back my first math exam I’d taken in 7ish years. Ready for this….?? 110 / 100 points! WOOO. (Yes, there was 10 extra credit points).
I’m kickin’ ass.
I had more to say but I want to get back to my Ruby book. Below are some photos from No Fluff Just Stuff..jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)