Java Camp 7 - Krakow - Hadoop, RESTEasy, Web Apps Security and FREE PIZZA!

Today I attended Java Camp #7 in Krakow (see http://www.java.pl/?p=212 for event announcement). The meeting was devoted to web applications security, Hadoop and RESTEasy. There were also some additional goodies - discussion panel, free pizza and some licences for really cool software.

Java Camp meetings are organized by Polish Java User Group (see http://java.pl).

First of all, I was surprised by the number of attenders. I saw around 70-80 people there. Good!

This event had three parts: talks, discussion panel and free time (during lunch).

Talks

I missed the first talk on java web frameworks security by Piotr Bucki. From what I have heard later, it was interesting. Next time maybe. :)

Łukasz Lenart had a very good presentation on RESTEasy (http://www.jboss.org/resteasy). Short, very well prepared and performed. Fun factor included!

Few notes on RESTEasy that I took during his talk:

  • Many nice little things, e.g. objects not primitives, everything interface-based etc.
  • Very flexible and easily configurable - one annotation to consume/produce text, xml, json etc. Providers (translating before different formats) for all popular formats included.
  • Interceptors - same concept as servlet filters.
  • Works both on client and server side.
  • AJAX client included.

After introductory slides Łukasz presented an application written with RESTeasy using AJAX client.

I'm not an expert in this field, but from what I have seen today, I would say that RESTEasy is a really interesting library with a lot of us goodies which should boost my productivity. If I required such tool, I would definitely give it a try.

The next talk was held by Andrzej Grzesik and devoted to Hadoop (http://hadoop.apache.org/).

I really enjoyed this talk, even though I have known some stuff about Hadoop before. Lot of questions and discussion during this talk, apparently the problem of distributed computing is popular among Krakow devs (e.g. discussion of uploading data to HDFS or creating HDFS files). Andrzej presented some basic concepts, gave short introduction to all Hadoop family (PIG, Chukwa etc), also gave some tips on how to start playing with Hadoop (Cloudera distributes ready-to-be-used VMs with Hadoop and HBase - really useful for learning). I also noticed his short remarks on the importance of testing:

  • Better test your code, so you do not end with 1000000 of badly calculated values. Also integration testing is a must - start with a smaller dataset, make sure your infrastructure is good enough to handle it.

Discussion Panel

Then there was a discussion panel titled "A day in programmer's life". It was fun, even though very spontaneous (but that was the plan). Marcin Gadamer was moderating the discussion (but usually let people talk, and that was ok). There was a lot of discussion covering various aspects of our work. Some random notes below:

  • how to minimize the issues of skype/mail interruptions?
  • is pomodore (http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/) possible?
  • best work hours - very early in the morning or very late
  • work at home
  • pair programming - cool way to minimize interruptions, as no one dares to interrupt two people involved in something :)
  • finding solutions but moving away from your computer (take a walk, go to the kitchen, whatever)
  • what we do in free time at work:
    • code reviews / making code better
    • reading
    • things that we wanted to do for ages but had not time to (also disscusion on TODO lists)
  • Friday meetings - what cool have you done (for the team, in code etc)

I really wait for discussion panels on next Java Camp meetings. I have some ideas to be discussed with organizers, as I believe such discussions can be much better if prepared a little differently. Will see what can be done about it.

Socializing Without Facebook But With Pizza

Talks and discussion panel were ok, but I enjoyed the most lunch time. Free pizza is always a great thing, but free pizza with people you know/knew and want to talk with, is just great. The amount of things I have heard and learned is impressive.

Conclusion

In short, PJUG meetings are just great. Informal, interesting and fun. Great opportunity to meet colleagues, discuss some development issues, but also talk about possible business opportunities (I managed to make few good arrangements regarding the promotion of my book http://practicalunittesting.com).

Thanks to all organizers and attenders!

Concern on HBASE

"How to start playing with Hadoop (Cloudera distributes ready-to-be-used VMs with Hadoop and HBase - really useful for learning)" -- Actually, i wonder what the performance of the hbase is if it is running in VM. We know that the cpu performance is good for VM, but I/O performance is bad. While HBase is I/O intensive, how to get good performance if hbase is running in VM? I think a good evaluation needs to be done. How do you think? - Strep Throat Symptoms, Normal Body Temperature, Pain in Left Side

 
 
 
This used to be my blog. I moved to http://tomek.kaczanowscy.pl long time ago.

 
 
 

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