Robert Fischer

By Robert Fischer

The power of multicore machines and cloud computing is all dependent on an application's ability to successfully leverage concurrency. Although concurrency has traditionally been considered fatally difficult in Java, a few simple architecture principles can make all the difference. This session will review some of those principles in both theory and practice.

This session will review the theory of concurrency and the different levels that concurrency will act on. With that basis, it explores the theoretical reasons behind the difficulties in writing concurrent code, and then some practical application architecture techniques to cope with those difficulties.

By Robert Fischer

Development of a program has traditionally been done in one language and one language only. Increasingly, however, JVM languages are being expected to interoperate with one another. This talk explores what makes polyglot programming possible, why businesses should adopt the polyglot development model, and compares the interoperability of JRuby, Groovy, Scala, and Java.

It is very possible for an application written on the JVM to be made up of many different languages. In fact, that model of development will be increasingly popular as languages increasingly specialize in their domain of strength. Because of that, polyglot programming will become one of the key skills expected of JVM developers, and this session gives a leg up on that.

By Robert Fischer

With languages like F#, Clojure, and Scala increasingly taking up mindshare, many developers feel pressure to jump into functional programming. The jargon of functional programming can prove a huge barrier, though, and it really shouldn't. This session will explain what the functional programmers mean when they say things like "closure", "monad", "monoid", and "combinator", and show that they are actually ideas with Java analogs that are more familiar than their names may imply.

Functional programming has been the domain of academics for a long time, but the paradigm is increasingly being considered by business-line developers. Some people even tout it as the movement of the future. Unfortunately, the jargon of functional programming have been defined by academics, which makes breaking into the language tricky. As a student of pure mathematics, a Java programmer, and a functional programming consultant, Robert will translate these ideas between paradigms.

By Robert Fischer

The Grails web application is an innovative hybrid of best-of-breed Java technologies and dynamic/convention-based development. The result is a powerful, flexible, exciting framework that still fits comfortably into enterprise stacks. This session introduces Grails, but approaches it from the perspective of an enterprise web development stack, in order to see how Grails works well in mid-size and mature development shops.

Some technologies seem to think that running on the JVM is all that it takes to be enterprise-ready, but the reality is that there is a large context of standard Java technologies like Spring, Hibernate, Log4J, JNDI, and app servers that make up the backbone of enterprise Java shops. This presentation will show how Grails naturally fits into that context because it is built off of those existing technologies.

By Robert Fischer

Increasingly, people are adopting Agile practices a la carte, and some are even talking about "post-Agile" methodologies. If things are going to be changing, let's take a moment to review Agile development practices, the problems they were trying to solve, what worked, and what difficulties these new methodologies are responding to. With this information in hand, we can make an intelligent decision about the development methodology for our team.

This interactive session will review the why's, wherefore's, and why not's of test-driven development, continuous integration, iterations, "point"-based estimation, retrospectives, scrums, and other Agile practices.

By Robert Fischer

Although functional programming is getting a lot of hype, there isn't much help out there for those who want to learn the paradigm. This presentation introduces F#, an increasingly popular dot-Net functional language from the MetaLanguage (ML) family. It then uses F#'s lightweight functional programming syntax to explore the basic concepts and jargon that underly functional programming, providing a basis for understanding functional programming in general.

Functional programming has been the domain of academics for a long time, but the paradigm is increasingly being considered by business-line developers. Some people even tout it as the movement of the future. Unfortunately, the jargon of functional programming have been defined by academics, which makes breaking into the language tricky. As a student of pure mathematics, a Java programmer, and a functional programming consultant, Robert will translate these ideas between paradigms. This session will explain what the functional programmers mean when they say things like "closure", "monad", "monoid", and "combinator", and show that they are actually ideas with OO analogs that are more familiar than their names may imply.