Great India Developer Summit 5.0 : Developer’s perspective
Great India Developer Summit was organized this year for the 5th time in a row and undoubtedly, it turned out to be a sheer success. I attended GIDS this year for the first time, so can’t compare much with its previous version, but I found it really very helpful in every aspect important for any software architect. It simply turned into a vast knowledge pool with each & every drop making a significant contribution in spreading this knowledge around.
GIDS 2012, on the same lines as in previous years, consisted of 4 major streams: GIDS .NET, GIDS WEB, GIDS JAVA, GIDS WORKSHOPS. GIDS 2012 was flooded over with more than 140 technical sessions, keynotes and workshops with more than 70 national & international speakers. ‘Venkat Subramaniam’ and ‘Scott Davis’ were two main heroes with maximum sessions by a single speaker and that too houseful. Being a Java & Web developer, I attended all the streams except GIDS .NET and sessions around HTML 5, JavaScript, Java 7 – Java 8, Functional Programming, and Concurrency.
Day 2 : GIDS WEB
This day started with an immensely good session on ‘HTML5 Local Storage and Application cache’, by Scott Davis. The content of the session was mostly common but the way it was presented, blended with live examples was totally exceptional. Following this came an eye-opener session by Venkat Subramaniam on ‘Rediscovering Javascript’. Although Javascript is a well known scripting language in the technical world for years, but still there were some exceptional features and important concepts that most of the people were not aware of. The session uncovered all the ‘Goods & Bad of Javascript’ and helped clearing lots of false assumptions with the use of many intuitive examples.
Following the keynotes by various dignitaries in the technical world, were two interesting sessions on ‘Backbone.js’ by Scott Davis and ‘CoffeeScript’ by Venkat Subramaniam. The session on Coffeescript explained the concepts & constructs of this new language which is based on Javascript. The session described how the aspects of functional & effective programming can be applied to Javascript. The session also focused on how Coffeescript makes Javascript code much cleaner and solves various problems faced by programmers while writing javascript code. The session clearly explained the difference between ‘Clean Code Vs Effective/Understandable Code’. The session on Backbone.js also presented a good introduction on adding a well defined structure to the web applications.
GIDS Web consisted of another great session on Javascript, i.e. ‘Test driving Javascript’ by Venkat Subramaniam. The session enthralled the audience with many live & hands-on examples on writing test cases around javascript code. The session also focused on removing various barriers involved in the path of Unit Testing Javascript. Apart from these, there was another useful & introductory session on ‘CSS3 for Programmers’ by Scott Davis, uncovering the facts that how programmers can benefit from the capabilities of CSS3. I would just like to sum-up GIDS WEB as the day of Javascript, HTML5 and Mobile Web.
Day 3 : GIDS JAVA
This day started with much larger audience waiting to get a glimpse of What’s New in Java? Great India Developer Summit has always been an inspiration in this regard. GIDS has always been a reflection of the state of Technology in the Near Future. GIDS JAVA also started on the similar lines with some fantastic keynotes on Refactoring one’s Language Knowledge Portfolio, Blackberry for Java Developers and What’s new in the Internet Ecosystem for the Next generation.
Following the keynotes, was the plethora of some of the best sessions on some of the hot topics ranging from Java 7 to Java EE 7 to JMS 2.0 to Java 8, JAX-RS 2.0 to Java Concurrency to Scala & Groovy. The session on Java 7 by Venkat Subramaniyam exhibited some of the major features included in the latest release of Java Development Kit (JDK). The content of this session was although ordinary but the presentation along with live examples was indeed extra-ordinary.
The session on ‘Java Messaging Service 2.0’ by Arun Gupta clearly focused on the problems and unfulfilled expectations in the current version of Java Messaging Service and also gave a glimpse of the major features (changes in JMS 1.0, new API, etc.), Oracle is offering with the release of JMS 2.0. Following this came an introductory session by Shaun Smith on How Extensibility & Multi-Tenancy support has been extended to JPA architecture. The session gave a wonderful glimpse of how easily Multi-Tenancy can be ensured in our application using JPA 2.1 in EclipseLink.
After all these sessions, the era of predicting the Future of Java Platform began with Simon Ritter and Venkat Subramaniam pouring in their thoughts around the features of Java 8. The session by Venkat on ‘Java 8: A Sneak Peak’ exhibited some of the most expected features to be included in the next release of Java. The session gave a glimpse of the Project Lambda, Project Jigsaw, JVM Convergence and many such features in accordance to Java 8, duly supported with live running examples of the same.
Not just this much, there were few more interesting sessions on ‘Concurrency without Pain in Pure Java’ & ‘Scala for the Intrigued’ by Venkat Subramaniam and ‘Runtime and Compile-time Metaprogramming in Groovy’ by Scott Davis, that raised GIDS JAVA to a much higher level. The session on Java concurrency helped uncovering some of the major pain-points in the area of Concurrent Programming using Java and also exhibited the best approach possible in solving the same. The session around Scala was indeed the most helpful session for the beginners in the Land of Scala. I don’t know much about others, but I felt most satisfied at the end of Day 3 with all the expectations due fulfilled in the best possible manner.
Day 4 : GIDS WORKSHOPS
This day was meant for Hands-on Workshops on multiple topics ranging from Functional Programming to HTML 5 to Java Concurrency to Spring, Jquery and Android. The workshop on ‘Functional Programming on the JVM’ by Venkat Subramaniam was indeed a wonderful 3 hrs hands-on session covering the aspects of Why, What & How of Functional programming. The workshop was completely filled with running examples from many well known languages like Scala, Groovy, Ruby, Clojure. The workshop also stated the trade-off between a functional language & a dynamic language, and how functional language can help in achieving effective concurrency.
Following this was a comprehensive workshop on ‘Concurrent Programming with the Java Platform’ by Simon Ritter. The session provided detailed information around the basic concepts of Concurrency rising from the system level to the software level. The workshop completely uncovered the concurrent programming principles ensured in the earlier versions of Java to the latest versions. Although, the workshop lacked hands-on examples but was filled with code snippets of Java Concurrency techniques divided across Pre-Java5, Post-Java5 and Java 7 eras.
Apart from these, there were some other interesting workshops as well on ‘Pragmatics of Agility’, ‘Exploratory Software Testing’ and ‘Using jQuery-Ajax for Web Applications’. The session on jQuery-Ajax was purely a hands-on workshop with live examples varied across the vast Jquery API.
Great India Developer Summit 2012 had something or the other for every software architect in any domain whether .Net, Java, Web, HTML, Mobile, Testing, etc. It was definitely a great learning experience to be a part of GIDS 2012 and a great source of inspiration to learn & spread as much knowledge as you can.
The presentation files or videos of multiple sessions will be available for download/viewing by May, 4 2012 at summit’s website http://www.developersummit.com.
Filed under: Concurrency Control, Conference, Functional Programming, Java
