A Few Hidden Treasures in Java 8

Venkat Subramaniam

Sure, Java 8 has lambdas and streams. However, the JDK has gone through significant makeover to make good use of lambdas and streams. Furthermore, some of the new functional interfaces have far more than abstract methods.

Interactive Development and Fast Feedbacks with Java 9 REPL

Venkat Subramaniam

Programming is an act of continuous discoveries. Auto-Completion in IDEs are great, but they’re more of a speculation than experimentation. Read-Evaluate-Print-Loop or REPL gives an instant feedback and the ability to quickly try out your ideas. Fast feedbacks are the rage today in development.

Java 8 Programming Idioms

Venkat Subramaniam

A number of developers and organizations are beginning to make use of Java 8. With anything that’s new, we often learn it the hard way.

Parallel Programming with Java 8 Streams

Venkat Subramaniam

“If streams can be parallel, why not make them parallel all the time?” is a common question from developers getting introduced to Java 8 streams. In this talk we’ll take on three separate topics. 1. When to consider parallelization and when not to. 2. How to parallelize, how to decide on number of threads, and how to control the threads pool. 3. Learn about some common mistakes people make when using parallel streams.

Refactoring to Functional Style using Java 8

Venkat Subramaniam

In Java, we’ve programmed with the imperative style for a few decades now. With Java 8, we can also code in Functional Style. This style has a number of benefits: code is concise, more expressive, easier to understand, and easier to make change. But, the transition from imperative to functional style is a hard journey. It’s not as much an issue of getting comfortable with the syntax. It’s the challenge of thinking functionally. What better way to learn that transition than taking imperative code and refactoring it to a more of a functional style.

What’s Brewing in Java 9

Venkat Subramaniam

What’s in Java 9 and, more important, how does that impact us?

Core Software Design Principles

Venkat Subramaniam

Creating code is easy, creating good code takes a lot of time, effort, discipline, and commitment. The code we create are truly the manifestations of our designs. Creating a lightweight design can help make the code more extensible and reusable.

Frege for Java Programmers

Venkat Subramaniam

Frege is an implementation of Haskell on the JVM. It brings along the strengths and power of one of the most powerful statically typed and functional programming languages.

Let’s Get Lazy: Explore the Real Power of Streams

Venkat Subramaniam

Efficiency is achieved not just by running things faster, but by avoiding things that shouldn’t be done in the first place. Lazy evaluations are a core feature of many functional programming languages. Your code can benefit from lazy evaluations with lambda expressions and, more so, with the power of Streams.

Measuring Quality of design (1/2 day workshop)

Venkat Subramaniam

Before spending substantial effort in refactoring or altering design, it would be prudent to evaluate the current quality of design. This can help us decide if we should proceed with refactoring effort or a particular alteration of design. Furthermore, after evolving a design, using some design metrics would help us to evaluate if we have improved on the design front.

Pragmatics of TDD to Evolve Design

Venkat Subramaniam

Test Driven Design, we hear is a great way to create lightweight design that is easier to maintain and evolve. Unfortunately, just writing test cases mechanically do not lead to good design. In fact, it may really not lead us anywhere we want to really go!

Taking Command of the Command Line

Venkat Subramaniam

Moderns IDEs are great, they let us get our work done, focus on solving problems, provide code prompts, and more. On the flip-side, they hide of lot of details and often do not provide everything to help get our work done. Learning to effectively use the command line, can help us navigate around, write script to automate certain routine tasks, isolate and understand issues, and more.

Towards an Evolutionary Architecture

Venkat Subramaniam

Big up front design is discouraged in agile development. However, we know that architecture plays a significant part in software systems. Evolving architecture during the development of an application seems to be a risky business.

Twelve Ways to Make Code Suck Less

Venkat Subramaniam

We all have seen our share of bad code and some really good code as well. What are some of the common anti patterns that seem to be recurring over and over in code that sucks? By learning about these code smells and avoiding them, we can greatly help make our code better.