:jasonrudolph => :blog

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Michael Kimsal for a diverse and enjoyable episode of WebDevRadio. Over the course of about 30 minutes, we tackle such topics as Groovy, Grails, Ruby, Streamlined, and the No Fluff, Just Stuff tour.

If you’ve listened to WebDevRadio in the past, you know that Michael comes primarily from a PHP and Perl background. Throw those languages in the mix with Ruby and Groovy, and that’s a whole lot of dynamic language goodness for 30 minutes of podcasting! (We try not to leave any of the low-level languages too battered and bruised, but their extra baggage has simply become too much to bear for day-to-day application development.)

While the podcast itself is obviously intended to focus on web development, in this particular interview, developer productivity may very well outshine web development as the overriding theme. We discuss the profound impact of convention-over-configuration, the future of opinionated software, and whether there’s ever such a thing as too much choice.

Many thanks to Michael for having me on the podcast.

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Download via iTunes

Download the MP3 directly

Next Monday (June 18th), I’ll be presenting an introduction to Grails at the Triangle Java Users Group. Scott Davis introduced TriJUG to Groovy back in April, and the response was extraordinary! Here’s your chance to see some more Groovy in action, and really focus on how Groovy (via Grails) breathes new excitement into web development on the Java platform. (My apologies for the pun.)

A local talk? I know. I know. It sounds crazy, but the commute should be quite nice.

The meeting starts at 6:30 PM. Hope to see you there!

The slides from my presentation on Grails at the Princeton JUG are now available at…

http://jasonrudolph.com/downloads/presentations/Getting_Started_with_Grails.pdf

Enjoy!

If you’ll be in or around the Princeton, NJ area this coming Tuesday (June 5th), mark your calendars for a special Groovy and Grails double-header at the Princeton Java Users Group.

Andrew Glover (co-author of Groovy in Action and author of IBM’s “Practically Groovy” series) will be presenting his talk on Real World Groovy, which will introduce several of Groovy’s handy roadside assistance offerings (including Groovlets, GroovySQL, Groovy Templates, and Builders). Andy will also shed light on when and how to call in that kind of support while traveling down the sometimes rocky road that is modern Java development. (And oh yeah, watch out for the rulers!)

And of course, web development makes up a big part of that road, but that journey needn’t be rocky any longer either. In my presentation on Getting Started with Grails, we’ll see first hand how Grails spares us from the typical flat tires and oil leaks (most likely caused by those sharp angle brackets scattered everywhere) and instead treats us to a turbo-charged development experience.

The meeting starts at 7 PM. Hope to see you there!

The No Fluff Just Stuff G2One event officially kicked off my JavaOne festivities last night, and it turned out to be the veritable who’s who of Java geekery. I say that affectionately, of course, and I was quite impressed. It’s a clear testament to the sincere interest the Java community has in the Groovy story. Faces I saw in the crowd (some of which I had the distinct pleasure to meet) included none other than: Dick Wall and Carl Quinn (of Java Posse fame), Emmanuel Bernard (of Hibernate and JBoss fame), Romain Guy (of Filthy Rich Client fame and owner of the French accent making occasional, and always hilarious, guest appearances on the afore-mentioned Java Posse), Stu Halloway (most-recently of Ruby and Rails fame), David Geary (of Swing and JSF fame), and Chris Richardson (of POJOs in Action fame). And when we capped off the event with the panel discussion, we were presented with a surprise guest host, Ted Neward (of interoperability/controversy fame (wink)), to preside over the session. Very cool! It was a blast!

For those that weren’t able to attend the event (or are perhaps still wanting more Groovy/Grails goodness), Jay Zimmerman announced plans for a dedicated Groovy and Grails training program that’s set to debut in September and then the first Groovy Experience conference scheduled for February of next year. Stay tuned. The momentum continues to build.

As a final note, it was great to finally meet so many of the Groovy and Grails pioneers and evangalists in person: Graeme Rocher (who has a good write-up on Day 0 as well), Dierk Koenig, Guillaume LaForge, Andrew Glover, and Neal Ford. Keep groovin’, Guys!

If you’re heading to JavaOne next week, what better way to get the festivities started than to spend an evening checking out the one-two punch that is Groovy and Grails?! The No Fluff Just Stuff Java Symposium Series is hosting the Groovy/Grails One Meet-up from 6:30 - 10:30 on Monday night at the W Hotel, just across the street from the Moscone Center.

Come on out and hear the latest news on the just-released Groovy 1.1 beta. Groovy Project Lead, Guillaume LaForge, will be on hand with all the details. And, you won’t want to miss Graeme Rocher, Grails Project Lead, as he brings you up to speed on the slam-packed Grails 0.5 release due out any moment. We’ll follow up those presentations with giveaways, demos, and a panel discussion including Dierk Koenig, lead author of Groovy in Action; Andrew Glover, co-author of Groovy in Action; Neal Ford, DSL Guru; and yours truly.

And in a genuine show of class, the NFJS folks have added a charitable angle to the event. Registration is free, but they’ve asked that attendees make a small donation to the charity of their choice. In exchange, you get to check out two of the most promising technologies in the Java world today, meet some of the people behind the scenes, and you even stand a chance to win some cool gear. Well done!

Attendance is limited, so register early!

The slides from my presentations on Grails at the Southeast Virginia JUG and Richmond JUG are now available at…

http://jasonrudolph.com/downloads/presentations/Getting_Started_with_Grails.pdf

Enjoy!

If you'll be in Hampton Roads on Tuesday of next week or in the Richmond area on Wednesday, I'll be presenting a couple sessions on Grails that I happily invite you come check out. It's a promising time for Grails, and I think you'll find this talk to be a nice kick start towards bringing you up to speed on one of the Java platform's most exciting up-and-coming technologies. Come learn how this hyper-productive next-generation framework can transform web development as you know it. The Southeast Virginia Java Users Group (SEVAJUG) is hosting the first presentation at 7 PM on March 20th in Norfolk, VA. And on the following night (March 21st), the Richmond Java User Group (RJUG) is hosting the presentation at 5:30 PM. If you're in the area, I hope to see you there.

What would it take to assemble a group of speakers like Spring creator Rod Johnson, Grails project lead Graeme Rocher, Groovy in Action author Dierk König, renowned agility expert Dr. Venkat Subramaniam, real-world Grails users from as far as away as Japan, Australia, and the UK, thought leaders from Hibernate, JBoss, Dojo, Google, Oracle, and Sun, and a whole host of others that each deserve individual mentions as well?

It’s the First International Grails eXchange 2007, of course! Mark your calendars for May 30th to June 1st, and head on over to grails-exchange.com to register for what’s sure to be a rock-solid event. From the official site…

Packed with presentations on Grails, Groovy, Ajax & Web 2.0 and JEE and the core technologies that support the Grails technology stack such as JEE, Spring, Hibernate, SiteMesh, Dojo and Quartz. … The Grails eXchange features the following tracks:

• The Groovy Language
• The Grails Framework
• Ajax and Web 2.0
• Java Enterprise Edition - JEE

I hope to see you there!