Day 1 @Gr8Conf EU 2015
The day one at GR8Conf EU June 2015 Copenhagen, Denmark was really awesome. It started at the IT-University with a jam packed hall full of eager registrants with a welcome note from Søren with a history of how the Gr8 conf started. Then, Gulliame went through the state of affairs around Groovy & Grails and addressed the concerns around the Pivotal breakup. The first day of the GR8Conf went beyond our expectations. The atmosphere, the sessions and the speakers really made the day wonderful. We could feel the buzz and energy of the thriving and closely knitted Groovy/Grails community all day long.
Here are some of the highlights of the day:
- #Rapid Web Application Development with groovy Ratpack By: Andrey Adamovich
Demo led session showcasing the ease with which one can run a web-app using Ratpack. All you need is just a single file!! Andrey also touched upon the latest release and how to create a Ratpack app and the goodies around it.
- #Little Did He Know … By: Burt Beckwith
It covered the dark alleys of Groovy & Grails. Burt talked about little things that we as Groovy & Grails developers tend to oversee if we do not tread carefully.
- #Grooscript in Action By: Jorge Franco Leza
Here came a session which opens up a new avenue for Groovy, one that is fairly unexplored. Jorge talked about how we can use Groovy for the front-end. He showcased how easy and productive one can be with using Groovy for the front-end and how the groovy code gets converted to javascript. I really feel excited about this one as it opens up a whole lot of unexplored avenues for Groovy.
- #Geb for testing your Grails Application By: Jacob Aae Mikkelsen
Jacob delivered an awesome session. We love to test our applications. And Geb is the perfect tool for functional testing our application. He re-iterated the fact that how easy it is to use Geb with it’s jquery like syntax and Page-Object Model.
- #Grails under the Hood By: Jeff Scott Brown
We love Grails. We love how easy it makes our lives. How it brings back fun to development. But at times we tend to overlook and understand the things that the framework is doing under the hood. Jeff talked about how Grails use Meta-programming to provide it’s ultra-productive magic. He also demoed how some of these features would have been implemented using Closure, AST Transformations, etc
- #Stateless authentication for microservices By: Alvaro Sanchez-Mariscal
In this session, Alvaro touched upon OAuth, OAuth 2 and its related architecture. Then he talked about stateless vs statefull. Tips around being stateless and using JWT. How we can use it more effeciently to tap into it’s full potential
- #Grails Worst Practices By: Burt Beckwith
This was one of the best sessions of the day. Burt’s delivery of worst practices with a straight face made it difficult to grasp if he is serious or kidding :D. He highlighted the worst practices a Grails developer can follow(or should I say, should not follow ;)). All in all, a great session which talked about a lot of obvious gotchas
- #No-Nonsense NoSQL By: Jennifer Strater
Jennifer talked about the various NoSQL options that we as Grails developers have. She touched upon the various types of NoSQL databases that we have. She talked about the best way to integrate them in our Grails applications. Then she answered the mother of all questions: “How do I decide which one to pick?”. Jen: “You don’t have to!!”(check from slides) Ever felt the need to be able to script the debugging. Now that wish has be
- #YouDebug – Scriptable JVM Debugger By: Wolfgang Schell
YouDebug is a scriptable java debugger which can help you debug your remotely running application.
Allows you to script breakpoints, trace class loading and method calls, etc. Wolfgang also explained the use-cases that Youdebug can solve. It looks very interesting and something that I’ll definetely want to try my hand on
- #Macro features of Groovy language By: Sergei Egorov
Think about if in some way we can have compile time code replacement. We can do “compile-time meta-programming” without the of AST. Thatis what Macros bring to Groovy. Though, it is yet to become part of the Groovy core, but it sure felt like a killer feature which can help us make our code a lot cleaner and readable
- #Groovy on the Shell By: Alexander (Sascha) Klein
Alexander a.k.a Sascha showed how we can use Groovy on the shell. Groovy is a powerful language. The Bash shell is a powerful tool for any developer. What happens if you combine the two? Sascha talked about executing Groovy scripts like commands on the shell. He really showcased the power that one can get from combining the two. Sascha also displayed the rich support that Groovy has for executing bash commands.
- #Groovy, with style! By: Guillaume Laforge
Full pack hall , Guillaume in his talk, covered the good practices that can make our code more Groovy!! He covered a lot of things like when to use “def” and “no need of return” etc. He made the session very light with his some interesting quizes to guess the topic. Overall, It was must to attend session.
- #Git and how to contribute to Groovy and Grails By: Daniel Hyun
We also say that we want to contribute to open source, but we rarely get around to that. Daniel showed us how easy it can be to start contributing. Daniel even showed live demo and made two pull requests. He showed that, Its not just about contributing to code only but one can contribute to documentation stuff as well. It was pretty interesting to see, how much its easy to contribute.
- #All your desktop apps are belong to Griffon By: Andres Almiray
This session had started with the release of Griffon 2.3 version and In this session Andres talked about the features of new version and he showed, how you can manage the stuff using Griffon and also How it supports to Spock and other stuff around groovy eco system.
After awesome sessions, We had greet & meet with awesome beers brewed by the Gr8 crew and Indian cuisine dinner to follow it. That was all about the first day at this wonderful conference. Stay tuned for more exciting and the latest updates about GR8Conf EU right here. Check out a sneak peek into the first day below! 😉
