5 great ways to take advantage of JavaOne
I’m in San Francisco where JavaOne is now halfway complete. This is my first time at the largest programming conference, and I have learned what JavaOne is really about and the best ways to take full advantage of the opportunity:
Talk to every person that is directly behind you in the queues
JavaOne is NOT just about learning, it is about networking. I challenge you to do this and I know that you will be well rewarded for it. You might even find out about good parties, more on that later. Making good connections will take your career a long way, and if you are hiring than you are bound to find people that suit just what you are looking for.
Visit at least half of the Pavilion booths
This is about learning what is out there. I have met with engineers from some of the coolest projects out there like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. If you can get to more than DO IT because you won’t regret it.
Take sessions that are out of your league
You will really learn more if you make a point to stretch yourself in terms of thinking differently. So far I have learned a lot about emerging technologies and languages such as Scala (I learned a 10-line quicksort) and JavaFX. You will feel stupid but inspired if you do this, and you will be a more well-rounded thinker for it.
Get invited to the best parties
All this talking and visiting will hopefully score you invites to some good parties. Get to the best ones because you will meet more amazing programmers. If you are able to do only 1 thing on this list, choose this one. I know it is the most difficult one but it is the most rewarding. Tuesday night, I went to a party and met none other than James Gosling, the creator of Java!!
Go to at least 2 Hands-On Labs
Nothing solidifies your learning better than doing. So far I have learned a ton about profiling in my IDE, and soon I will write some cool JavaFX animations!
Bonus: Feed a homeless guy
I’m serious! This is nothing technical, but there are a lot of homeless in the San Francisco area. Some would argue that it encourages begging but seriously noone chooses this lifestyle. You probably make a decent salary so make someone’s day. It will make you thankful to be in the profession you are in.
EXTRA BONUS: Meetup
If you are at JavaOne than I want to meet you! Contact me and I’ll buy you a beer and share some stories.
Popularity: 18% [?]
No commentsThis month in Bookmarks: April 2008
April was a GREAT month for blog readers. I pulled some mostly under-recognized posts and blogs from my del.icio.us bookmarks to share them with you. You can add me to your del.icio.us network if you want to keep up on all my bookmarks in real-time.
Firefox
Restore Firefox 3 Smart Bookmarks - If you really miss having Smart Bookmarks for Firefox 3, here is a simple about:config tweak to fix you right up!
Tracking down Firefox plug-ins - With all these new versions of Firefox you are using, it may be hard to keep track of which Flash, Java, etc. plugin a particular install of Firefox is using. Check this out for simple steps to untangle the plug-in mess.
CSS
Dynamically Load Stylesheets Using MooTools 1.2 - David Walsh has really been rocking the MooTools blog world lately. This is one of the best and I encourage you to check out the others if you are interested at all in MooTools.
Web Design
960 Grid System - This is a really cool and free web-design package that I will personally be using to redesign eriwen.com. It has Photoshop/GIMP templates and HTML that you can use to kick start a design. 960px can easily be divided by 2,3,4,6,8,10,12… etc. allowing maximum flexibility and balance.
Ajaxian » Yahoo! releases new performance best practices - A list of really, really good bits for high-performance websites. How many of these can we put into YSlow?
Groovy
The Disco Blog - Andy Glover (an author of Groovy In Action) writes a stellar blog about Groovy and TDD. If you follow either of these things you will want to subscribe.
Gant - Groovy with ANT. The most painful thing about Ant is implementing good logic in your builds. This allows you to leverage the power of Groovy/Java to enhance your Ant build and it is easy as hell.
Productivity
Up or Out: Solving the IT Turnover Crisis - The Daily WTF - This is one of the best articles I have read about the Cravath System. If I ever manage you, know that I am a subscriber to many parts of this system. A must read.
Command Line Shell
The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History - This is THE BEST post I’ve seen on command-line history. If anyone uses a shell for anything then read this!
Would you add any? Comment it up!
Popularity: 35% [?]
4 commentsGuest Post: Save Text Size Preference Using MooTools and PHP
I have posted a major update to my original post about Changing Text Size onClick with JavaScript at the David Walsh Blog.
It allows you to store your users’ text-size preferences in a cookie so that they don’t have to resize the text to their liking on every page. Check out the demo (remember to refresh the page to test the cookie!) and then check out how to Save Text Size Preference using MooTools and PHP!
Popularity: 12% [?]
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