This is the first in a series of posts about the individual speakers lined up for…
Over the following days I’ll be introducing each of the speakers for NodePDX. The first speaker is someone pretty well known in Portland, has helped organize the JavaScript Admirers Group in town, and works for another well known Portland Company, Jive.
Jesse Hallett Doing the JavaScript Presentation ThingJesse Hallett
He’ll be presenting “Object-oriented Patterns in JavaScript” which is something I’d advise any new, experienced, or elder programming JavaScript to check out. Knowing these concepts is key to really digging in and creating manageable, readable, and usable JavaScript Code. Jesse provides a description of his presentation:
JavaScript is a language that is tremendously flexible, but that comes
with few clear conventions. Code organization is one are that has been
reinvented perhaps more times than there are JavaScript programmers.
I will examine a few tools that are intended to improve the experience
of writing object-oriented code.
Some of the specific tools that I plan to examine are [traits.js][],
[CoffeeScript][], [Prototype][], and [JiverScripts][]. The goal is to
get a look at different ideas to see what each approach has to offer.
We will discuss inheritance versus composition, and question when it is
or is not appropriate to use object-oriented code.
Audience participation is encouraged: if you have a favorite OO
implementation, or experiences with JavaScript code organization, feel
free to come and to share.
Got JavaScript curiosities, want to get in touch with Jesse, or just lurk on his twitter feed or blog? Here’s the info:
Coming up really soon is the PDX Node.js Conference. If anybody is interested in speaking, please submit a proposal. If you’d just like to attend, it is 100% free, just RSVP.
Node.js Magic Logo
Also, if anyone is interested in taking the train down to Portland, the last two departures that Friday will have a group of attendees going; Train #507 Departing at 2:20pm and #509 departing at 5:30pm from King Street Station. (Schedules) If anyone is interested in taking the train down please let me know and I’ll help coordinate so we can all get seats (preferably with tables) to hack together while enjoying the scenery.
Core Idea
The idea behind this Node.js Conference is a technology focused, node.js, JavaScript Lib, hacker conference. We felt that there needed to be a more tech focused event around the core technologies so Troy Howard (@thoward37), Jesse Hallet (@hallettj), and I thought “we’ll just get our own thing happening” and thus, PDX Node.js Conference was born.
So check out the site, come share your JavaScript chops, Node.js hacks, favorite js libs, or just come and check out the conference and meet some smart, cool, and sexy people in Portlandia, Oregon.
Click for a massive, full size, huge panoramic shot of Portland from the Aerial Tram.
It is day 3 of OSCON data & java, and the kick off to the main keynotes and core conference. There are a repeating topics throughout the conference:
The Web, It’s Still HUGE! Imagine that!
HTML 5, CSS3, JavaScript/jQuery/Node.js – This is starting to look like it will be the development stack of the web. If you use ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Java, or some other web stack these core technologies are here to augment or even in some cases completely replace traditional web stacks.
Node.js can replace web servers in some situations when core APIs or other fundamental simple services are needed. In addition to that the Node server will eventually, I have no doubt, be able to completely replace traditional web servers like Apache, Tomcat, or IIS for almost any web site. In addition to web sites though, Node provides a very valuable engine to develop and test hard core JavaScript, building reusable libraries, and other server oriented needs. The other huge boost for Node.js is the ability for a dev shop to be able to centralize development around a single language. Something that Java and .NET have tried in the past, yet failed to ever achieve. The big irony is JavaScript never started out with this intent, but here it is!
In addition to Node.js making inroads to the server environments worldwide, JavaScript in general is starting to be used for all sorts of tools, stacks, and frameworks outside of just the browser. It can be used to submit a request against Hadoop, it can create a way to access and manipulate CouchDb, MongoDb, and other databases. Javascript is becoming the one language to rule them all (please excuse my Tolkenism 😉 )
Cloud Computing or More Realistically, “Distributed, Geographically Dispersed, Highly Available, Highly Available, Resilient, Compute and Storage Segmented Functionality, and not to forget, Business Agility Oriented Utility Computing“.
Long enough title? There are numerous open source cloud platforms and infrastructure offerings available. At OSCON there was discussion and multiple session about OpenStack, the Open Cloud Initiative, Stratos, and other open software solutions for cloud computing. This is great news for developer working with cloud computing technologies, especially for ongoing efforts and pushes to gain adoption of cloud computing within Enterprise.
Companies will continue to push their own proprietary capabilities and features, but it would behoove the industry to standardize on an open platform such as OpenStack. Currently most major cloud/utility computing providers such as Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure lock a company into their specific APIs, SDKs, and custom way of doing things. A development team that is savvy can prevent that, but if the core feature sets around comput, storage, and otherwise were standardized this lock in issue could be resolved.
Half Way Mark, Check
So far the conference has provided lots of insight into the open source community. Announcements have been made that keep the open source community moving forward into the future. With that, some of the things to look forward to:
I’ll have some in depth coverage of products, product releases, and services for some of the top open source companies.
I will hopefully win a Github T-shirt, to go along with my score of t-shirts for Heroku and others that I’ve received!
I’ll dig into some of the bleeding edge technologies around cloud computing including the likes of DotCloud!
So stay tuned, I’ll be back with the action packed details shortly. Cheers!
I arrived, just after the keynote, because I was being lame on this Monday. Sounds like it was a great keynote with some great people speaking.
The first thing I did was get my directions straight for where all the rooms and expo area is. Once I did that I headed to Playful Explorations of Public and Personal Data that Andrew Turner was giving. His presentation showed some great information and data for or from GeoIQ, Geocommons, and others. The areas in which data can be used to overlay crime, friendly or unfriendly areas based on that, where there are dogs, coffee shops, and what can be derived.
I did notice though that a lot of the data is at a very high level. Leaders can make decisions on this kind of data, but it is dangerous making decision based on one or two of these data points. Leaders need to truly understand events and triggers at a macro level also. At the end of the session Andrew actually hit on the note that users of this data must be careful in what they correlate.
by adronbh If you’re at #oscon / #oscond head NOW to C123 to see @gleicon‘s talk on “Architectural Anti-Patterns for Data Handling”. There’s lulz + win
Presented by Tom Hughes-Croucher (Joyent). Learn how to build scalable Internet applications with Node.js, the event-driven server-side JavaScript framework. You’ll see how Node.js solves many scaling and speed problems that weigh down other web application frameworks.
This is the first session I lined up for myself. I’ve been on a Node.js kick lately and have still found myself not having much time to work with the technology. However, having a clearcut session dedicated to the topic, and tomorrow is Node.js day, I’m pretty stoked to really get to using the technology hard core!
Tom did a good job with this session, with a bit of lively retort thrown in here and there. The session covered installation, the basic apps that are displayed on the Node.js Site, and then into additional exercises that got us all running the bits like pros (ok, like total newbs I’m sure). The session was a decent pace, it gave me time to work through the exercises and also wrap up coverage of the 1st day of the conference. However, I’m still going to have to sit down and go through the exercises again and actually determine what Node is actually doing. There are some interesting going ons behind the scenes that I know I’ve missed, but sure will pick them up ASAP with a quick review. 🙂
Day Number One Summary
This is my first full size OSS Conference I’ve attended. I did attend OS Bridge, which was similar, but this one has a large price tag to it. So expectations are different. Overall I’ve been very happy so far. The Swag is awesome, the sessions have been good, and the Node.js Intro was very informative and taught me a few things I didn’t know. The one thing I regrest, is that I can’t attend more of the sessions. This however tends to be the problem with any conference that is worth the time! I’m looking forward to day two, for now, I’m off to socialize and try to do a few non-computer related things.
Keeping Up With the Conference
To keep up with today’s events, and ongoing events during the Conference follow/search the Twitter feed with the #oscon for the main conference, #osconj for the Java Track, and #oscond for the Big Data Track!
Microsoft announced today that they’ll be supporting an effort to get Node.js working on Windows. Mary Foley picked it up quick, but also so did Node creator Ryan Dhal. This, being the explosion of support for Node.js, is excellent news. This further enables JavaScript for the whole stack, on any operating system stack. Getting a good solid, stable, and supported version on Windows will enable some serious performance on that platform. Up until the release of the support, Node.js is primarily limited to Windows via software called CYGWIN, which emulates (or runs on?) Windows and simulates a Unix/Linux Environment.
I’ll have more information regarding Node.js, Node Package Manager, and the whole suite of packages to get started with Node Development over the next couple of days. So stay tuned if you’re interested in getting started!
Microsoft announced today that they’ll be supporting an effort to get Node.js working on Windows.
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