JAOO 2008 in Århus

Again this year I went to Århus to attend the annual international conference on software development. This year some of the main highlights where, Google Chrome, functional programming languages and Domain Specific Languages. Not to mention all the great people attending the conference, being really passionate about software.

• Java Performance Tuning - by Kirk Pepperdine. Great tutorial showing how you can optimize your code using available Open Source tools. Rating: ****'s (of 5 possible)
  

• Continuous Integration by Chris Read - great session, although I've heard it all before. Nothing new under the sun. Rating: ***'s (of 5 possible)
  
• A Developers guide to the Microsoft Platform (2) by Ronnie Saurenmann - well this session could just as well have been called "drag and drop with MS - see how easy it is". I liked the short intro to XAML and the example flight control app. Rating: *'s (of 1000 possible)
• PowerShell by Jeffrey Snover - got me thinking, maybe I can use this for something really cool (haven't figured that out yet). Pretty cool shell - I will definitely look into this shortly. Rating: ****'s (of 5 possible).
• Introducing Scala Programming Language - eehhmm... pretty boring speaker. Interesting feature to have a more powerful language running on a standard JVM. Rating: **'s (of 5 possible)
• Why Functional Programming (Still) Matters by Erik Meijer - pretty entertaining and cool warm up for the party, but not as weird as 50 in 50 (with a cowbell, drumstick, bad taste in music and what have you).

• V8: The Javascript Engine Inside Google Chrome by Lars Bak - interesting talk. However getting the projector to work took ages. Next time the projector plays tricks on you Mr. Lars - do something, tell a joke, do the jig, sing a song, anything is better than walking up and down the floor complaining. Content Rating: ***'s Performance Rating: 0*'s. And yes I think it is cool you guys implemented the V8 in Javascript.
• How Cool do Users Feel When Interacting with Your Software by Marianne Graves. Cool title, but the content was not what I had expected from reading the title.

• 50 in 50 by Richard Gabrial and Guy Steele Jr. Weird, weird, weird ... could have been a really cool talk about the overlying trends in the development in languages over the last 50 years, but somehow Guy Steele on a cowbell, dancing away was not funny and plain weird. I felt I was wasting my time.
  
• Five considerations for Developers by Frank Bushmann and Kevlin Henney. Great talk - something every developer should have the possibility to experience. Rating: *****'s (of 5 possible)
• Keeping your Data in Sync with the Microsoft Synchronization Framework. Good talk - something I definitely will look into. Handy to know what is possible/not possible using the various MS frameworks.
• Learning F# by Robert Pickering. My immediate thought: "Cool new tool, but I have no idea what to use it for". I will definitely check F# out, but I don't know which of the web apps I'm working on would benefit from this language, if any at all. Rating: ***'s (of 5 possible)