Slow down, you move too fast.
You got to make the morning last.
Just kicking down the cobble stones.
Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.


When I had first learned about Java, I was in college. The first time I started working with it was at OOPSLA '99, when my team implemented a coffee vending machine in Java with Swing. I had never worked with it or had seen it, but having had other languages in my past, I was able to pick it up well. About a year and a half later, I had a class on Java, where I actually learned about it in more detail. However, I didn't get that interested in it, and I hadn't realized just how big it had gotten.

Java has grown from what I learned it, and it has a full track dedicated to it at CodeMash. There are 200+ languages out there that run on the Java virtual machine - including Groovy and Scala. A more comprehensive list can be seen here.

So today's language set includes Java, Groovy, and Scala.

Language: Java
Website: Developer Resources for Java (java.sun.com)

Language: Groovy
Website: Groovy - Home (codehaus.org)

Language: Scala
Website: The Scala Programming Language

Where will these languages be seen at CodeMash?

At the Precompiler, check out the full day tutorial of Java, Groovy, and Grails 101 with Chris Judd and Jim Shingler.

There is a full track dedicated to Java. From what I can tell, you'll see these languages at the following presentations:

Java

• Actor Concurrency, presented by Alex Miller


• Executable documentation with easyb, presented by Andrew Glover


• Spring 2.5 MVC, presented by Ken Sipe


• RIAs with Java, Spring, Hibernate, BlazeDS, and Flex, presented by James Ward

Groovy

• Rich Apps with Groovy's SwingBuilder, presented by Andres Almiray


• Dynamic Languages and the JVM, presented by Nathaniel Schutta


• Griffon in front, Grails in back, presented by Jim Shingler


• Groovy/Grails for non-Java developers, presented by Michael Kimsal

Scala

• Programming in Scala, presented by Venkat Subramaniam


• Practical Scala, presented by Dianne Marsh


• Actor Concurrency, presented by Alex Miller

Where can I learn more about these languages?

Java

• Java Tutorials on java.sun.com


• Java Tutorial on VisualBuilder


• Java 101

Groovy

• Groovy Beginners Tutorial on codehaus


• Grails & Groovy Tutorials


• Fluently Groovy, from IBM

Scala

• Getting Start with Scala


• Scala Blog


• The busy Java developer's guide to Scala: Scala and servlets

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, Groovy, Java, Scala

While blog-surfing tonight, I came across this entry on Inside the Machine. This has me thinking...

What's the most fun you've ever had... programming?

I think for me, one of my more fun projects was taking part in CodeFest '99 at OOPSLA, during my sophomore year of college. I was part of a team that had to implement a coffee machine design from the DesignFest team.

So... what made this project fun?

• Working on a team: I had two other people who I had to work with that I had never coded with before. We hadn't really prepared for our trip, but we knew that personality-wise we'd be fine together. But do personalities always line-up to coding styles? Surprisingly, in this case, they did. We were able to work together quite well. We figured each other's strengths and weaknesses and were able to cover pretty much everything amongst the 3 of us.


• Learning a new language: In the few days that we had to implement the design, I picked up enough Java and Java Swing to be able to run with it. If I get to learn a new language while doing something interesting, that definitely makes programming more fun for me. And yes, we did choose the language because of the coffee-Java relationship.


• Taking on other challenges: Besides learning Java, we also had to work on changing our code towards the end, when they decided to implement more features in the coffee machine. Other curveballs were thrown throughout the conference, but I think our team handled them well.

That event made quite an impact on me, in ways that I can't fully explain here, but it meant so much to me, that I figured when I returned to developer life, I would return to OOPSLA. This year, I will be doing just that, heading to Nashville at the end of October to participate in DesignFest at OOPSLA. This time, I look forward to being on the other side and putting my design skills to the test and seeing other people's design styles. I haven't seen much in the way of CodeFest mentioned, but I hope that it happens, as it was a great learning experience that I will always remember.

Labels: coffee, fun, Java, OOPSLA, programming