In this talk we are going to (re)discover the keys to achieving mastery and maintaining perspective. We'll draw lessons from three books: Mastery by George Leonard, The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell, and Code by Charles Petzold. Each will teach us something about our trade and maybe ourselves as look at programming from the inside-out, the outside-in, and the bottom-up.

Even in this day and age of HTML5, there are still times when a desktop application is the way to go.  Get a head start by building your next desktop application on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).  You'll get features like drag-and-drop views, editor auto-completion, and more, with very little code and effort through the use of existing Eclipse plug-ins.  We'll develop a simple application during the talk, and also cover some of the new features available for developers targeting Eclipse 4.

Slides here: www.crazysmoove.com/memjug/eclipse_rcp/Eclipse_RCP/slides/#slide1

Eclipse Workspace here: www.crazysmoove.com/memjug/eclipse_rcp/Eclipse_RCP/workspace/

Functional programming is often proposed as the solution to scalability and the effective use of multi-core CPUs. But what does this mean for Java programming? Is it necessary to change languages, or even execution platforms, to obtain benefits from the functional approach to programming?

This talk takes a pragmatic look at "classical" OO, pattern-oriented OO, and functional programming in the context of working Java code for each of these styles, and discusses some trade-offs among these approaches, all of which are options for a developer using Java 5 or later.

Our main event this month is a coding dojo.  From codingdojo.org,
"A Coding Dojo is a meeting where a bunch of coders get together to work on a programming challenge. They are there to have fun and improve their skills."

Tom Langston will describe the concept to the group before we start (for those
who weren't there last month).  He'll also supply the programming exercises,
so bring your laptop and be prepared to write some code! This event is not limited to Java. Feel free to bring a laptop outfitted with any programming language development environment, the exercises are language agnostic.

Local Speaker and Memphis JUG founder Matt Stine will be starting off 2012 with a talk on using the Geb and Spock tools to automate development tasks. Come start you year by learning and socializing with other developers.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. GWT is used by many products at Google, including Google AdWords and Orkut. It's open source, completely free, and used by thousands of developers around the world. Come learn about GWT from local Java developer, Hao Qin.

The Eclipse ecosystem makes available a wide variety of plug-ins to add function on top of the Eclipse Platform. Come listen to speaker, Gautam Dev, eat, and socialize with fellow developers.

Spring is the leading platform to build and run enterprise Java applications. Led and sustained by SpringSource, Spring delivers significant benefits for many projects, increasing development productivity and runtime performance while improving test coverage and application quality.

Come learn about the framework and network with your fellow developers.

Our main event this month is a coding dojo.  From codingdojo.org,
"A Coding Dojo is a meeting where a bunch of coders get together to work on a
programming challenge. They are there to have fun and improve their skills."

Joel Neely will describe the concept to the group before we start (for those
who weren't there last month).  He'll also supply the programming exercises,
so bring your laptop and be prepared to write some code!

July has been a big month for developers with the release of Java 7. The Memphis JUG is going straight to the source by showing the Java 7 event webcasts.  Afterwards, we'll have an open panel on the ramifications of Java 7 for developers.

We have time for lightning talks as well, so bring your slide decks.