St.Louis Code Camp
During the closing session at the St. Louis Code Camp this Saturday, Brian Button wrote on one of the white boards “If you had fun, blog about it!” and jokingly added “But if you didn’t have fun, don’t blog about it.” Sorry Brian, but I have to admit… I didn’t have fun. Why? Because I didn’t win an XBox 360 or one of the Nintendo Wiis that were given away as door prizes. Other than that, I had a pretty good time. 
To kick things off, the first session I attended Alex Miller gave a great presentation on Java 7. He covered a lot of the interesting features that “might” be in store for us, of which I found interesting NIO 2, the multitude of proposals for Closures, and Type annotations. Is it just me, or do some of the Closure proposals for Java range from simple and elegant, to slightly cluttered or outright ridiculous? Just keep it simple… I want to just be able to pass a code block in dynamically to be executed on demand, that is all. Anyhow, kudos to Alex for a very informative and eye opening presentation… it made me want to run out and download the jdk7. My question is, will Java 7 perhaps provide support for expanders? Only time will tell.
I also attended the Object Oriented Javascript presentation, which I admit I attended to get some ideas for a similar presentation I planning to give to some co-workers who may be interested. First off I would like to say that Adam Esterline did an AMAZING job giving this presentation on such short notice… I think Brian said the person originally scheduled to give it couldn’t make it, and Adam had about 30 minutes to prepare for it. It was a really great presentation on how to TDD javascript and write OO javascript using Prototype.
However, that is one thing I disliked about the talk, the use of Prototype. I think it’s useful, but I also think that people should learn the real object oriented syntax of a language before using scaffolding that waters it down and makes it different. I would have preferred to see something like this and this, but nevertheless it was a great presentation and I throughly enjoyed it, and no doubt will open the eyes of some people stuck in the days of writing many procedurally based javascript functions while cemented with the belief you can’t write object oriented javascript.
Throughout the day I got to chat up with a lot of other interesting developers on a multitude of topics, and really had a blast. Oh, and a few people asked me about you Cory, so I guess you made quite an impression at the code camp last year. 
I can’t wait until the next code camp, and I must say that Brian Button deserves a special thanks for a job well done organizing this event!
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May 8th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Bah! Trust me, I was with you all in spirit, and would have loved to have come out for it instead of flying to Augusta, GA (even though meeting with the guys who run nuclear stuff was fun and interesting). I’m always trying to snag gigs in St. Louis, and if I do, I’ll be sure to come out to Columbia to visit!
Hopefully next year you’ll be speaking, so I can come watch you!