Category Archives: Java/Java EE

[dev nexus 2024] teaching your kid programming from the perspective of a kid

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Speaker: Cassandra Chin

@cassandraonjava

For more, see the 2024 DevNexus Blog Table of Contents

General

  • Steven Chin’s daughter.
  • Worked with coding and YAML in MInecraft
  • Starting teaching kids to program at 14 at conferences
  • Junior in college
  • Creating podcast at internship for younger people (ex college)

Tech diversity

  • 20 years of feale tech panels and still need
  • Women who try AP Comp Sci in high school ten times more like to major it.
  • Black/Latino students seven times more lilkely.
  • Need to provide opportunity
  • Even at 6 year old, kids think computers are more suited to boys. Fifth grade it tapers down so sweet spot for starting.

Kids and code

  • Schools mandate human/world languages, but not coding languages
  • Since schools dont always provide, parents need to
  • Not all screen time is equal
  • Limit youtube
  • Minecraft in middle
  • Best use is learning to code – ex: Scratch
  • Redirect computer use vs taking away

Mistakes for parents to avoid

  • Don’t leave your daughters out. Bring to tech event
  • Computers at home matter – an actual computer, not a tablet. Lets do more than play mobile games
  • Don’t need to be good at math. While Assembly requires math, nobody uses anymore Modern programs use logic, not math
  • Kids dislike math the most followed by foreight language. Computers is third highest. Both things above are types of art.
  • Don’t start with books like Discrete Math
  • Give examples of programmers that they can relate to
  • Don’t start with boring parts like what an array is. Better to start with legos
  • Don’t do the code for the kids. They won’t learn. Never grab mouse or keyboard. Means content too har

Geniuses

  • Anyone can learn to code. Don’t have to be super smart.
  • Kids told programmers are genious do worse than kids who think practies will make them better

Books

  • Phippys AI Friend – comes with online workshop that takes about an hour. Actually use boo as prop
  • Coding for Kids Python
  • GIrls who Code

Helping kids

  • Relate to your kids hobbies. Ex: discuss who built
  • Lego Spike – build robot and do block coding
  • Mbot (Make Block). Uses screws instead of legos. Don’t have to use blocks
  • Hour of Code. Lots of themes
  • Choose age appropriate. Often we choose twoo hard
  • Squishy circuits for 3-9 year olds
  • Raspberry Pi and Arduino – 9-15 years old
  • Groups of two works best. When three kids, the younest will often feel left out
  • Take kids to localy run workshops – ex: confernces, girls who code

My take

I like her responses to Todd’s mini interview a the begining while they dealt with AV issues. Great humor. I liked that she made a joke about her dad being there to tell jokes. I also like “I’m not the daughter of Steven Chin; I have a name”. Great content throughout hether new to the topic or not.

The content resonated well. I gave my best friends five year old (daughter) a toy robot for her fifth birthday. I enjoyed seeing her play. I now have a gift idea for next year!

I also liked the demo from her book!

[devnexus 2024] moving java forward together

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Speaker: Sharat Chander

@sharat_chander

For more, see the 2024 DevNexus Blog Table of Contents

General

  • Began with a survey of how long people have been using Java. A lot of people at 25+ years and a small bunch for all 29 years! (Java turns 30 next year)
  • Tech we have now used to be impossible – ex: phone
  • Sci fi shows what possible
  • Trap : “move fast and break things” At a point, speed causes harm. Remember the user experience
  • If long out window on train, goes by too fast. But if look farher out, can see. Need to look beyond that window
  • People first. Technology second. Remember the users.
  • Avoid “get shit done”. Innovation in of itsel is not innovating. What purpose if not helpfu
  • What power do you have in your environment. One person can do a lot.
  • Need to prepare next generation befoe age out

Quotes

  • “Move thoughtfully and build things” – Sharat’s dad. Meants to be careful and thing before break
  • ”You know less than you know” – Sharat’s dad. Recognize learning opportunities
  • ”Mastery is not the destination; only be the beginning” Sean Phillips

Java DevRel Team at Oracle

  • Stewards of Java
  • Learn, share, contribute
  • Foundational Programs – Oracle academy, Oracle university, Open JDK, Java User Groups, Java Champions
  • 10-20% of audience raised hand as not being part of a JUG (Java User Group)
  • New/Digital program – inside.java, dev.java, youtube.com/java

Awards

  • Called up latest Java Champion
  • Pratik and Atlanta JUG for lifetyime achievement award. 20 years of DevNexus!

gson supports records

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I like using records in Java and getting rid of the boilerplate on my immutable objects. I also like using gson (google’s serialization/deserialization library) for my lightweight JSON needs. All I need is an annotation to use a different field type. (For complex parsing I use Jackson)

Suppose I want parse this

var json = """
   {"first":"Mickey",
	"last":"Mouse",
	"birth_year":1928}
	""";

For example before records, I would write:

class Name {
	 private String first;
	 private String last;
     @SerializedName("birth_year") int birthYear;

     // boilerplate methods
}

I needed to use my IDE to generate a constructor, getters, and a toString(). And additionally, equals/hashCode if needed for that class.

In Java 17, I switched to records. I didn’t realize I could use them with gson annotations until recently. Turns out all I need to write is:

record Name(String first, 
   String last, 
   @SerializedName("birth_year") int birthYear) { }

The parsing code remains the same

var gson = new Gson();
var name = gson.fromJson(json, Name.class);
System.out.println(name);