Android Development Challenge experience

Did anyone hear about ADC2? It is a challenge organized by Google in order to promote Android.
I've heard about it in May 2009.

We have a lot of experience in writting Java code so we thought that participating would be a very good idea. Therefore, we started learning Android.
After working with it on a daily basis for some time now, I have a few considerations I want to make about its features. It implies:
- simple java based API;
- very good layers organization;
- powerfull system calls;
- small learning curve.

We have chosen one of the company ideas about a product and decided to implement it in Android.
A team of 6 Java developers started to implement it and we were ready by the end of August.

On the 30th of August 2009, we submitted the application to ADC.
When the first phase of the challenge ended, we were hoping that someone would review our application :) (I'd say that Google could improve the process a little bit: we were expecting at least one confirmation email, but it wasn't the case.)
We got our first feedback over email, eventually (a reviewer said the application is COOL).

On the 6th of November we finally got an email from Google saying that we were in the Finals (we were very happy). (thought the email went in SPAM :)).

This morning (December 1st, 2009) we received a message with an amazing news: "Your application, Trip Journal, was chosen by users and judges as the #1 winner in the Travel category." 
What can we say :)? --> JOS PALARIA :).

Are you curious about our application? Here's a short description of it:
Trip Journal is the ultimate trip tracking and sharing solution currently available on Android powered Smartphones. Impress your friends by sending them real time updates from the places you are visiting. GPS route tracking, record waypoints, photos & notes, trip statistics, KMZ & Picasa exports, incorporated Google Maps.

More information on: http://www.iqapps.eu/tripjournal

See you all soon on the Android market!! 

RIA with Java?

I was searching for a briliant Java framework to let me to create a RIA in 2 hours :).
It seems that I was really really naive :(.

I was attracted by:
- Flex
- Java Fx

Flex looks very promising. It has even an UI builder. Good. I've started the download, then I installed it.

I've spent 20 minutes to figure out how the hell I can link all those UI widges. I've started the tutorial to find out how :(. The documentation is cryptic and pretty dummy :(. Where the hell is "hello word" example. I see examples of complicated things but not a simple "how to configure and use it" example :(. This is really nasty.
I gave up :(.

Let's try the JavaFx.
There are some marketing materials which look promising. Ok. Let's search for a builder or for a plugin.
The only good plugin is for NetBeans :(. So I have to get used with a different IDE. Very good :(. Wait:) I see the light: JavaFx for Eclipse. Come on, that is a joke:(. I do preffer to use text editors instead of using that plugin.
I see there is a coming release for JavaFx. I registered to their site 3 times to get an invitation. Nothing in 1 week. Ok, it seems that JavaFx is a BIG SECRET. Ok SUN guys keep your technology for yourself. Maybe you will be the only user of the "new" JavaFx ....


I am really disapointed. Is it so difficult to find a good framework to let you to build simple CRUDs for 5 entities in less then 2 hours :(?
I expect from a RIA framework to have the following:
1. simple custom scripting language
2. simple configuration
3. simple deployment description
4. simple integration with the bussines logic
4. UI designer
5. to be able to build non-ajax/ajax like UI
6. to have the same UI code both for a web and for a desktop application :)
7. to let me code in Java

Does anybody know such framework?

Supermarket anti-pattern

Consider the following scenario:
- dozens of classes used to define the object model
- one class to manage their update
- one class to manage their creation
- one class to manage their deletion
When the model had only 3 objects the class did not look so bad. But let's see what happen when the model was extended to 20 objects:
- nobody thought of refactoring the classes
- these classes have now 40-60 public methods

Problems:
- they have almost no cohesion
- almost unreadable
- full of duplicated code
- unstable

What the project achieved by doing it like this:
- one big class which does all
- few code dependencies; the rest of the code has to depend on only one class :)

I call this kind of "design" a Supermarket anti-pattern because we have everything in one single place :).

Don't do this in your projects!!

Jazoon '07 - day 3

Keynotes:

Eclipse way to Jazz
Eric Gamma(do I know him from somewhere? … hmm … GoF ? J) presented the development process that his team is using in developing different Eclipse projects.
The motivation of Jazz is to reduce the “boring tasks”. He said “devs do not like to read” J. It is so true.

The features of Jazz are quite interesting:

- Management of release plans

- Management of deliverables

- Management of builds

- Cooperation support for devs

- Nice web and desktop interfaces

I look forward to test Jazz. I will check if it is able to use another tool stack than that presented by Eric: Equinox, Derby and Tomcat.

I was nicely surprised to see Eric’s interest in defining and implementing a development process. I hope that I can make our clients more aware of the need of the process. The like Eclipse, so it would be a good reason to develop the project in the same way as Eclipse is developed. I see at least a light in the darkness.

Technical presentations

Persistence with EJB 3.0
It was a good presentation with expressive examples about how can we should use the new JPA in our projects as ORM.

Spring 2.1
Juergen presented some nice features from Spring 2.1 such as:

- annotation configuration

- auto-wiring via annotations

- component scanning

He also pointed out that a lot of performance improvements and fixes had been included I this release. So if you use Spring in your project keep an eye on the release date and switch to the new version.

Java FX
I am not a UI developer. I can say that I am not too enthusiastic about the way in which Java supports UI development, BUT JAVA FX IMPRESSED ME.

It is not yet another scripting language. Here is why:

- It is simple, powerful,

- has a syntax close to Java,

- can use Java objects easily

- can produce extremely nice examples

I do not say these because the speakers had said it, BUT because they shown us.
Flash is dying, long live Java FX!!!

Die hard 4
The organizers had a surprised for us: Die Hard 4, the movie. It was nice to relax after 3 days of conference. I am not a movie critic, but I would say that it is more violent and has more special effects than the previous one. By coincidence or not, the action from the movie is related to IT and hackers J. So go and see Die hard 4 if you like Bruce Willis and you want to see an action movie J.

Conclusions:
The third day was the best one, because of the topics and the speakers ;).

As a summary I would say that it was a nice experience to participate to this Java conference; there were a lot of new things that I had found. Some things to improve:

- extend the time for one presentation – 40 minutes in some cases is to less

- invite known speakers;

- do not accept some presentations only because the company is a sponsor

- do not feel the gaps with a lot of useless presentations from sponsors employees

Jazoon '07 - day 2

Keynotes:

A little REST and Relaxation
The author of the HTTP spec made a good presentation about his latest creation REST
He presented it as a good alternative to the SOA. It curios to have a look to it and the current implementation.
I look forward to get his presentation to check some details.

Fighting the Java heterogeneity - a system integrator's perspective
The speaker presented his company technology’s stack used to implement the enterprise project.
It is almost the same stack that we are using, so we are on a good track ;)

Technical sessions:

A developers guide to SOA
Presentation was held by a lead developer of JBOSS BPEL.

He pointed out:
- SOA is not Webservices

He shown some nice practices to reuse by SOA some existing components developed in a "smilo" way.
I found out a new buzzword :): SMILO. It seems to be known on american industry for defining the "old" way of doing web application with 2/3 tiers.

Even if the guy was from JBOSS he was pretty objective and presented implementation using also Spring :).

Are Open Source SOA stacks ready for prime time?
It started with an exaggerated presentation of the company. I would like to get this kind of information on private if I would be interested to find out.

Some of the ways of making moneys from open source, since the Iona sustains a lot of open sources:
- proprietary offerings
- dual licenses
- subscription
- value-added services

Some good strategies about how can be evaluated the OSS. I should consider them when I will decide in the future which OSS I will use.

The following stacks have been presented:
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python). See: onlamp.com
- CAMEL != Apache Camel
- Mule based one

It is good to know about them and to consider them when a new project is started.

The new Hibernate Search API was presented.
He presented a life example about how easily can be replace the common Hibernate query usage with the new Hibernate Search - Apache Lucene.

It seems to help a lot the implementation of full text seach features. The usage and configuration of the new tech is pretty easy.

It is good that they have released it ;).

Webservice security with Java
The presentation was held by a SUN representative which is involved in defining security standards.
He pointed out the pros/cons of using SSL around the SOAP and the WS-Security.
He provided a comprehensive description of the WS-Security.
He exposed the features of the XWSS 2.0.
The quality of the presentation was under-average :(. He had a lot of deep knowledges, but he should improve his presentation skills.(e.g get ride of "You know" usage. A funny used expression: You know that you know ... :)). It was pretty hard to follow him :(; that was bad since the topic seemed to be interesting.

Ajax for enterprise applications

It was a very nice presentation about the current Ajax frameworks and the new jMaki framework developed by SUN.

They shown the strengths of the new framework comparing with the existing ones. For me seems to be a framework more oriented to JavaScrip devs and for designers than for Java developers. He said that GWT is not as good, but I think that was only propaganda. Anyway I will look forward to play a little bit with jMaki.

BOF
It was pretty strange to see that a BOF session with Juergen Hoeller gathered only 4 people and a JUG BOF gathered 15 people.
What are they doing? Java? ... I do no know, maybe that are telling jokes :(.

Anyway I am happy that I am one of those 4 which met Juergen. We had a very interesting discussion opened by my question about how will react Spring on Juice.

Juergen prefaced the presentation that he will keep tomorrow, and told us some of the nice features provided by Spring 2.1.
Then we discussed about how to migrate a given existing application to a new version, of course using Spring.
One of the discussion members asked Juergen to summarize for him, which is new to Spring, the main features of Spring.
I really enjoyed how he explained some of the most important ones.
For sure, it worth to meet Juergen, which is a Spring evangelist, but not an aggressive one.
I look forward to see his presentation from tomorrow.

Conclusions
Overall, the presentations from today were better than those from yesterday. I think that my strategy to go only to known speakers, or speakers from known companies was a success. I would say that 80% of the presentation was OK from my point of view.

Jazoon '07 - day 1

The conference started with an exciting presentation of Ted Neward about “Why the Next Five Years Will Be About Languages”. He talked about the Java language history, his cousins(Ruby, Groovy, .NET, etc) and feature perspectives. He summarized the efforts needed to develop a new language and shown the biggest challenges and creating a good one. It seems that in the next years it will be hard to appear new languages build from scratch, but the existing one will evolve and some will be created on top of existing ones.

What's wrong with Java? A look over the horizon.
The speaker seems to be Ruby, Groovy evangelist.
He gave some "Nice" example of using Groovy, Ruby:

- you do not need to write gettter/setter ... they now properties and Java not yet. What a big deal :)?

The given an example about how to write a simple web application to implement a simple knowledge base

- Java + Hibernate 3.2 -> 4 Kloc, 1 week

- Ruby - 1 Kloc, 1 week

- Groovy - <>

His examples were forced to reduce the power of Java and the need of effortless development languages. I would say this is a poor marketing strategy L.

I think he is one of the Groovy authors or he does not know java :). I am joking, I appreciate his interests in new languages, but I had expected more from the topic. I did not expect to see marketing material at such core topic.

UI Automated Testing of Java Applications
Poor guy, it was stressed about the presentation, that was not really able to keep the presentation cursively. It was embarrassing for me to leave the room, but I thought that I can find another presentation more interesting than this one kept by an inexperienced speaker.

Sun SPOTs
Nice presentation and demos about the SUN Spots. I know now which will be my next wished present: “Spot development kit”. Look to: http://www.sunspotworld.com/. This is a real cool technology; for sure I will like to play with some of the new gadgets.

Enterprise application testing using Open Source tools
It was a very good presentation about functional and UI testing. It were presented the following frameworks:

- fitness

- selenium

Java SE 7

The estimated release of Java SE 7 is end of 2008; but I guess it will be beginning of 2009.

Cool features in Java SE 7.0:

- JavaFX

- Powerfull and performant Swing

- JAM

- Super packages(expose only specific interface to the client of a package)

- Modular JRE

- Quick starter for JRE

My impressions after the first day:

- very good organization

- some good speaker

- some amateurs (SUN came with a bunch of devs from Praga. Some of them are really unexperienced)

- a lot of marketing. I did not expect this from such conference

Let’s hope that tomorrow more interesting topics will come.

JSeamless

It seems that my view about having an abstract UI framework which make transparent the target device, it is shared by other people to.

Just have a look to: http://www.jseamless.org

They claim that you should not worry about the target device when do a UI. I will try it to see if the same UI can be used for:
- web
- j2me
- desktop

I will come back with my remarks after I will complete a small test.