The day 2 started earlier than the day before. A bit too early for me. While hurrying to catch the beginning of the first presentation, however, a stranger with a big suitcase passed by me in an even greater hurry, a bit confused about which way to take. I grinned to myself as I recollected the familiar face from the speakers’ section of Geecon web page. Anyway, speakers are only human too…

Although latest and greatest themes in Java world these days are reactive programming, alternative languages, HTML5 and microservices, I decided to stay close to the ground at first. I chose jBMP presentation to get an update on how thinggus are moving in the old Java enterprise waters.
jBMP looks like a vivid yet mature project and it is promisingly evolving under the RedHat umbrella. In fact, the team have a strategy to focus on knowledge, business goals, their visibility and continuous improvement. Does that ring a bell? To me, that sounds quite close to what agile principles adhere to.

OK, enough business, we all want some fun too, right? And the next presentation certainly was about how to make fun and even conquer the world with home-made devices. (more…)

Eventually, a famous Java conference came to Prague. After planning to travel to Krakow some time, it was suddenly to be here at my finger tips. As a fresh freelancer, not yet fixed to any long-term project, I decided to invest the money to inhale the atmosphere of a big conference and enjoy presence of all the people interested in Java and all the tech stack around it. So here I was to see and listen to Neal Ford – the one from ThoughtWorks, so adored for their Radar. I came alone, as freelancers often tend to, expecting to meet some familiar faces from my previous jobs. What followed was much beyond my expectations, as so many of them started suddenly popping up. Great feeling to meet so many pleasant people after 2 years spent away from Prague.

“So this is the water!” – I told to myself while Neal was talking about continuous delivery, acceptance tests and all the supportive things aiding in software development, wiring together the effort of developers, testers, operations and project managers. Warm feeling rose even higher when the very book I’m currently reading appeared on one of Neal’s slides. He hit the nail again, when he stated that meta-work is more fun than real work. And it is often not productive at all, when the fun is not guided well. Damn, that is so true. Even though claiming to seek improvement in my daily work, the biggest power to drive me into my pet projects is the desire to do fun stuff to complement boring daily work. Boy, that’s a relief that I’m not the only one having problems with lack of fun! But then, banks are not ACID? Again, not ACID?? Then, how the hell can I be sure to get my salary on my account at the end of the day? Wait, banks are running auditing jobs after working hours to put everything in order. ACID is slow and inefficient in real world. Eventual consistency is enough in most cases. But remember to schedule the auditing jobs, guys, just in case. Immutable database – an oxymoron, sure? No, Datomic is here to keep track of all the past changes. The SQL is dead, long live NoSQL! 🙂 Jokes aside, now I seriously started thinking that some NoSQL solutions have really something to offer. Read NoSQL distilled if you want to know more…

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