TSS Symposium Preview – Throw Away All The Rules. Now What Process Do You Follow?

I'm Speaking at TheServerSide Java Symposium As previously mentioned, Scott and I are both be presenting talks at TheServerSide Java Symposium in March. In preparation for the conference, we are providing sneak peaks of talks this week on the blog.  Scott gave a sneak preview of his GWT lecture.  He has so much information it didn’t all fit in his slides!

I’m giving a talk titled Throw Away All The Rules. Now What Process Do You Follow?” Here are just a few points from my upcoming conference talk:

  1. Testing – for anyone who knows me it isn’t a surprise that I consider regression critical.  But it isn’t always easy to get started.  And yet, the pain of not having it is large.  See how a testing strategy can evolve.
  2. Deployment – a repeatable deployment sounds like a corporate bureaucratic thing.  Yet knowing what is in production and how to get there quickly is an agile concept.
  3. Leader – Note I said leader and not project manager.  Even if you don’t have a project manager, someone needs to be running the show.  Or in the case of Scrum – the team is the leader.

Hope you enjoyed this sneak peak of my conference talk.  For more, consider coming to my session at the conference. If you register with the coderanch discount code, you can save $200.

TSS Symposium Preview – GWT Roundup

I'm Speaking at TheServerSide Java Symposium Google Web Toolkit As previously mentioned, Jeanne and I will both be presenting talks at TheServerSide Java Symposium exactly one month from now. Here is a preview of two of the topics I will be discussing at my talk “GWT Roundup: An Overview of Google’s Web Toolkit and Hybrid Integration” : GWT Image Bundles and Speed Tracer.

1. GWT Image Bundles

One of the more interesting features that GWT offers, beyond what most developers using indirect Ajax frameworks could build on their own, is the concept of Image Bundles. Even GWT developers who use Image Bundles may not have any notion of what is going on under the covers because the implementation details are so well abstracted. The idea is to take a large group of images and combine them into a single image with an interface for accessing each image. This may sound like a strange notion, but the performance advantages of doing so are manyfold:

  • More responsive UI since all images are downloaded together
  • Faster than downloading them individually since they are not downloaded in serial (HTTP 1.1 limits number of outgoing connections to 2 per domain)
  • Bundles use less bandwidth than separate images since multiple image headers are reduced to a single header

2. Speed Tracer

New to GWT 2.0 is the ability to validate such non-functional requirements as user interface performance, using the Speed Tracer tool, a Google Chrome extension. For example, if a particular asynchronous RPC call is causing delays in the user experience, Speed Tracer will help you identify it. Speed Tracer provides two graphs that show user response information and offers “hints” of spikes in response time that could be causing problems in your application.

  • Sluggishness Graph: Shows UI responsiveness
    GWT Speed Tracer - Sluggishness Graph
  • Network Graph: Network activity and latency
    GWT Speed Tracer - Network Graph

See you in Las Vegas!

I hope you enjoyed this preview of the talk I will giving next month. I will also be taking part in a panel hosted by Cameron McKenzie called “Client Side Development Smackdown” . Oh, and it’s not too late to register for TheServerSide Java Symposium 2011. We hope to see you there!

TheServerSide Java Symposium – Preview Week

TheServerSide Java Symposium 2011 Jeanne and I will both be presenting talks at TheServerSide Java Symposium in March. In preparation for the conference, we will be providing sneak peaks of talks this week on the blog.

I’m giving a lecture entitled “GWT Roundup: An Overview of Google’s Web Toolkit and Hybrid Integration” which provides a review of GWT for old and new GWT developers alike. It also covers many of the new features released in GWT 2.0 and 2.1. I will also be speaking as part of a panel hosted by Cameron McKenzie called “Client Side Development Smackdown” .

Jeanne’s presentation is called “Throw Away All The Rules. Now What Process Do You Follow?” and is about what processes are important if you aren’t being forced to follow any. It uses the CodeRanch forum conversion project as an example.

It’s not too late to register for TheServerSide Java Symposium 2011. We hope to see you there!