QCon London 2009 Tutorials Day 1

So today was the first day of the QCon tutorials, and was a good day... we'll leave aside what TFL did to my oyster card, I don't want to get into a rant - lets just say if you buy Oyster online, don't try and get a travelcard and prepay on the same card.

GET Connected: A Tutorial on Web-based Integration


First tutorial was with Jim Webber on using the Web as an Integration platform. Jim was in his usual self-deprecating mood, keeping things light hearted with the ocassional rant. (I've known Jim a while, and I nicknamed him Mr.Angry, whilst he nicknamed me Mr.Grumpy - but thats for another post)

It was actually a great session, my only disappointment was that it wasn't a full-day as there was certainly enough material for it, Jim had to skim through the last third to the most important points. The presentation for me though was especially good, as it gave me a chance to reflect on what it really means to leverage the web - it also gave me some ideas on solving current problems by using ATOMpub to handle some eventing stuff.

Domain-Driven Design - a complete example in a current technology stack


This session wasn't as good in my view, the choice for the example I thought was pretty good, but I didn't find it engaging. It lacked something, and the code examples I felt could do with some more work. It didn't help that the first thing brought up in the IDE was a WSDL, something that sends a shiver down my spine - especially when you've just had a session on using the web and talking about hypermedia aware restful interfaces.

However one of the best parts of the day was at lunch being introduced to Michael Nygard author of one of my favourite books, ReleaseIT. A very interesting guy though I must admit I felt stumped on what to talk to him about aside from "love your book by the way". Thanks for the "FanBoy" comment Jim - at least I only bought the book once ;)

I met Ola Bini - one of the Guys behind JRuby and Ioke - interesting guy to say the least. Also met Sam Aaron, another Ruby guy and who will be running the Advanced Ruby session I am going to tomorrow. Had an interesting discussion with him and Michael about Ruby, SmallTalk, MetaClasses, Secret Classes and some other stuff that went over my head with my limited knowledge of Ruby and even more limited knowledge of SmallTalk.

A good day, and am looking forward to tomorrow.