blog.leenarts.net

Last week I presented at J-Spring 2008. It was one of the first times I presented to such a large group of unknowns. The room wasn’t packed, but still quite full. Afterwards I heard the head count was over 70 people attending my session. Good to see that many people interested in ANTLR. I was in the before last round of sessions and not everyone of the 1000 people attending was on the premises anymore. So all in all. I think I did good by at least attracting 10% of those people still there.

My presentation went very smooth. In 45 minutes I crammed 42 slides, 3 short demo’s and a 5 minute Q&A.

I did fumble on one single thing.

ANTLR does allow more than 2 nodes with the same root node in a tree.

It’s all supported in the tree grammar syntax. The grammar I demoed was indeed binary, I thought the question was about that fact, while in hindsight I realised the person was asking if ANTLR support AST’s with more than 2 child nodes on a node.

I’ve just put some final touches to a presentation and demo I’m giving on ANTLR v3. On april 16th I will be presenting at the Dutch NL-JUG J-Spring conference. It’s a Dutch conference focussed on all things Java.

Hope to see you there, and if not, my employer is probably going to post my slides very soon somewhere linked of of this page.

I recently got word from the NL-JUG that they have granted me a presentation slot based on my session proposal regarding ANTLR.

I think it will be a tricky session to pull of properly. I’ll have to make a guess about how much my audience will know about grammar definition, parsers and compilers. But hey, that challenge is part of the reason I made my session proposal.

More details will follow.

Last things I heard, the NL-Jug team is hard at work preparing the next J-Spring scheduled for april 16th. I’ve entered a session proposal. I’m hoping they’ll think my proposal is an interesting one. Right now I’ll keep the details to myself, but hopefully there is more to come.

Also of note is that the conference’s by the NL-Jug are getting more popular every time.

Last night Peter and I gave the Eclipse University session Eclipse 3.3: Mylyn-Monkey. Based on the initial reactions from the attendees it was a hit. People liked the format of splitting the night in two with a presentation of 90 minutes followed by a labs exercise of 90 minutes.

Here are a few shots of the evening.
University session
University Session
University session

Last Wednesday I attended the J-Fall conference by the NL-Jug. Driving home I was already thinking about doing this blog post. But as you can see, it’s two days later now. When I got home after the J-Fall I immediately took a shower en jumped into my bed. I felt exhausted. Yesterday morning I felt really sick and today it is getting a bit better. Things like dizziness, head ache, belly ache and nausea. Fortunately I am not feeling feverish. Right now I actually feel good enough to get hit by some boredom as well. But reading up a book or just stretching my brain a bit just hurts like hell and makes me feel sicker. So this blog posting won’t involve the most enlightening opinions I guess.

Anyway, about the goodies at the J-Fall. I actually scored two very nice books. There was a company standing next to Sun’s booth and they provided these little scratch cards with which you could “win” a book. I actually was lucky enough to win a book. So I immediately dragged one of the stand workers from my companies booth to have a go at it as well. He scored as well. Unfortunately for him there were no books on display that he liked so he asked which book a would like and he got it for me. Also because I was a speaker at the J-Fall I was presented with a speaker present at the end of the conference. I didn’t really count in that to happen. So after attending numerous conferences I finally was able to score some real conference goodies beyond mugs, mouse pads and t-shirts.

Now I’m back to bed again. I think I over estimated how fit I was when I started writing this.

On October 11th I gave a presentation at the Dutch NL-Jug’s J-Fall conference. As this post was prepared before-hand and posted automatically during my presentation, I will put up another blog post reflecting on my performance during and reflection on the reception of my presentation.

First of, here are the book recommendations I made during the presentation:

Now concerning the presentation itself: It is in Quicktime format posted here (2.3 mb).

Enjoy!

Yes my fellow Dutch Java friends. I hope you all registered again for another edition of the NL-JUG’s J-Fall. Looking at the program, I must say they’re still on the right track towards becoming a must see for all Dutch Java developers.

Also, make sure to visit my presentation of you are attending. I won’t tell you any more details right now. But it will be a presentation which you will find a bit different in a good way. I have one of the last slots of the day, but that’s just another reason to attend my presentation. Because I will do my best to keep you interested and awake. It would be a shame to doze off during the last round of presentations. “Because of the free beer and all that is.” Also, to my colleagues not attending the J-Fall, don’t despair, on the 25th I will do the same presentation on our fortnightly ISKA gathering.

Now about my presentation… I can’t resist. Here’s a little peak-a-boo: Frontpage InfoSupport Slidedeck

This year the NL-JUG’s J-Fall conference will be held on October 11th. Details are available at the NL-JUG’s website. The J-SPRING and J-FALL are the place to meet your fellow Dutch Java programmers. To me it has become a biannual gathering of past colleagues and sometimes even friends.

On a more personal note: My proposal to the NL-JUG to host a session has passed. I am thrilled about this. Especially because my proposed subject is such an interesting topic. It is not a very technical subject in itself. But I am going to talk about one of the more fundamental choices a project has to make about their product.

I am curious about the interest in my session. Since it is the in the last slot of the day and it is not about framework X or Y. But what I can promise everybody is that it will be something most of you have never seen before.

As a final note I provide you with an English translation of the proposal I sent in.

Session: Which user interface do I choose for my Java Application?
Speaker: Jeroen Leenarts, Info Support

Abstract: In this presentation you will receive an overview of the pros and cons of web and rich client technology. The differences between the various technologies will be clearly illustrated by means of practical examples. A number of technologies will be evaluated, including AJAX, Eclipse Rich Clients, Netbeans Applications, Web 1.0 (as in Web as we already know it) and Swing interfaces. A wide spectrum of technologies indeed, but they have something in common. All are very decisive about the way the resulting application will look and feel. Often one of these technologies is chosen without much thought about the suitability to the situation at hand. Don’t let your end-users down and choose a solution in the interest of your end-users. After my presentation you will be better equipped to make those decisions about which technical interaction model you want for your application.

One of the most visible effects of choosing either web or desktop technology is the way the resulting application will appear. Right now there are a couple of development frameworks to take into consideration. These are in no particular order:

• Basic web application
• AJAX
• Netbeans/Eclipse Rich Client
• Swing/SWT application

(This list is Java oriented.)

All of these have advantages and disadvantages. The list above can be divided into two main categories. To no surprise these are Web and Desktop. Anyway, right now I’m working for my employer on a document which ellaborates on these differences. Also I’ve submitted a proposal to the NL-JUG’s upcomming J-Fall to do a talk about this subject for my employer. I hope they’ll agree with me that it’s an important subject to reflect on a bit.