Memphis/Mid-South JUG

Who's Coming?

Need a goal for 2010? How about sharpening your skills by reading some books? But what to read? Look no further. Four of your fellow Memphis JUG members will share their "top reads" at our first meeting of 2010!

Speakers:

• Joel Neely

  

  I’m slightly older than the computing industry, and have been programming since my undergraduate days. My cellphone now has more raw compute power than some of the computers I used in graduate school. It's an exciting time to be doing software!

  I listen to the Java Posse and Software Engineering Radio.

  Topic: Books every developer should read

  This talk focuses on a few technical books that have been very important to my growth as a developer/programmer. (I hope there are a few surprises in the list.) It concludes with a perspective on what I regard as one of the greatest dangers facing our profession.

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• Chris Roberts

  

  Chris is a senior consultant with Data Directions, Inc. in Richmond, Virginia.  He's also one of the authors of "Ask the PropellerHeads," a newspaper column and radio spot dedicated to technology.  His current interests include the Eclipse Rich Client Platform and Groovy + Grails.

  Topic: Java A La Carte

  Busy developers don't always have time to sit down and read a book from cover to cover.  I'll discuss three books that present Java-related concepts in small, easily-digestible chunks.  

  Reading the books straight through will enlighten you, but picking tips to follow at random will make you a better developer too.

  Books covered include:

  • Effective Java by Joshua Bloch
  • Refactoring:  Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
  • Practices of an Agile Developer by Venkat Subramaniam
  • Bonus book: Groovy in Action by Dierk Koenig

  Slides are available at www.crazysmoove.com/memjug/javabooks-slides/javabooks.html

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• Matt Stine

  

  Matt is the Group Leader of Research Application Development in the Research Informatics Division of Information Sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital here in Memphis, TN. Matt has been developing and supporting enterprise Java applications in support of life sciences research for St. Jude since 2001. Matt is a committer to multiple open source projects and is the founding member of the Memphis/Mid-South JUG. Matt earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Mississippi, and was a graduating member of the inaugural class of the Sally McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College. His current areas of interest include Groovy/Grails, cloud computing, Java concurrency, and functional programming.

  Topic: Delivering Value

  What is it that we're really paid to do as developers? Writing code? Not a chance. Organizations pay us to deliver value. I'll be looking at three books that help us deliver more:

  • The Passionate Programmer - Chad Fowler
  • The Pragmatic Programmer - Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas
  • The Productive Programmer - Neal Ford

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• Pankaj Gupta

  

  Pankaj works as a Bioinformatics Application Developer in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He is enthusiastic about Linux and other open-source technologies.

  Topic: Useful reads for programmers

  In this presentation I'd like to talk about some important programming tips discussed in the following books:
  - Programming Pearls (Jon Bentley)
  - Practice of Programming (Kernighan and Pike)
  - Effective C++ (Scott Meyers)

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