Overview of the Java sessions at the Great Indian Dev Summit-2012

There was a lot to learn at the Java sessions of the GIDS 2012 with topics covering Java 7, Java 8, Concurrency in Java using STM model, Java EE 7 and its various JSRs, Scala, JavaScript among other topics. And not to forget a beautiful key note by Venkat Subramaniam about the need for developers to be familiar with multiple languages and how one can go forward in shaping their careers. The key-note, Java 7 session were very much similar to the one at GIDS 2011, but redundancy helps in learning better.

• Each of the sessions were filled with technical content and lot of things to be learnt. I got an early peak into the Lambda expressions to be introduced in Java 8 and whole lot of other features to accompany that release. Also there was a quick walk through of Java 7 features.
• The concurrency in Java session showed as to why the current concurrency model in Java is aptly called as synchronize and suffer model. We were shown how the Software Transactional Memory model of  Clojure could be made use of in Java as well.
• We as Java developers dont spend much time writing  JavaScript and more so people working with component frameworks like JSF, ADF would spend even less time. During the session about JavaScript, there was a face-off between Java and JavaScript and how they are familiar and different.
• There was a really good session on Scala by Venkat Subramaniam which stretched beyond the allotted 45 minutes into about 90 minutes. He covered concepts such as Tail Recursion, Traits, Val-Var, Classes and so on. I really appreciate the effort he put in and the dedication he showed in conveying and covering the concepts he intended to during the session which involved stretching out of the allotted time.
• I by chance happened to sit in a session on creating RESTful WebService using JAX-RS and the new features in JAX-RS 2.0, though there was lot discussed, my eyes were paining seeing at the amount of code one had to write to create and consume the RESTful webservice. But for people of JavaEE stack that shouldn’t be much of concern.
• Interesting to see lot of Goldman Sachs employees turning up at the GIDS 2012 and being present in their Expo booths. Also go to know about a Collection library developed by Goldman Sachs for their internal use which now they have open sourced. I have a copy of their source-code, binaries and some material which I would go through in the coming days and see if I can share some of my findings here. So looks like they are trying to build and sustain a good technical expertise inhouse.

So stuffs to try out:

• Goldman Sachs Collections API
• JavaScript and BackBone.js framework
• Lambda expressions in Java 8
• HTML 5 features