Here are the highlights of the Great Indian Developer Summit 2012:
- More focus on HTML5, shift in the notion of Javascript as a merely client side programming language.
- Mobile platform getting a greater share of developer attention and companies like RIM (Blackberry), Microsoft, Nokia, Google going a step ahead to build developer communities. RIM lured in developers by giving away free Playbooks to all its participants at their workshop. ( I know a lost chance for me, but as usual Grapes are Sour).
- Leveraging HTML5 to build mobile compatible websites.
- Focus on Functional style of programming and mainly on the ones like Scala, Clojure which run on JVM. Alternate JVM languages getting a wide attention.
- People talking about Java 7 and also about Java 8.
- Focus on Cloud computing with the likes of Java EE providing cloud support in Java EE 7 and onwards.
Few observations:
- 90% of the participants where attending the talks by Venkat Subramaniam or Scott Davis. So you can guess the number of participants in the other 4 halls.
- 90% of the participants (of course the same people above) were spellbound by Venkat’s and Scott’s presentation and they say they would return only for them.
- I feel sad to say that #gids was never trending in India. This shows that not all developers are twitter savvy or not all have realised the potential of twitter.
- People still dont know how to tweet or how to use twitter.
- Expo stalls are useless, people visit only to get their expo cards stamped. And the exhibitors are happy to oblige. This has been the situation right from the 1st edition. Expo stalls should be more active, give out goodies and so on. I know RIM gave away Playbooks for porting applications.
- RIM has been clearing its Playbook stock by giving them away for FREE for workshop participants, for twitter contest winners. I know one guy getting 2 Playbooks.
- I missed a chance to get a FREE Playbook. And I this would linger at the back of my heart for a few days.
- Being geek is one part, being a good presenter is another. So one cannot guarantee the other.
- Lot of active participation this year than any of the previous years.