IBM has brought their own barrista to the exhibition area – so all our cravings may be met – Long blacks, Flat whites, Espressos, Macchiatos, etc.

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Wuhu!

At JAOO Australia we have invited, among others, James Ward, who will share with us how to develop sexier software with Flex. James’ focus is that the user will enjoy the sexier software, but I can assure you, it will also be good for you.

Another hot topic at this conference is iPhone app development, where Patrick Linskey will take you through the process of building an iPhone app in 45 minutes.  Imagine building an application, that will be available to all iPhone users in the world, in only 45 minutes! This is surely democratizing the mobile development for all developers.You might even be able to quit your day job. The number of iPhone users is growing by the hour. Luckily not everybody is an iPhone user yet, otherwise, as Stacey Higginbotham says; “we’d never get anything done.”

I am an iPhone user, but not yet an iPhone developer. And you? Are you about to quit your day job to become an iPhone developer?

And the winner is… – Linda van der Pal.

Linda has won a 3-day-ticket to JAOO Aarhus 2009.

We would like to thank everyone who left a comment during JAOO – your input is very much appreciated. Hope to see you next year.

This year, it happened so that his “Programmer’s Dozen” has been mentioned to me a few times and really interested me – and not only because it’s apparently a dozen with thirteen items.

In the list of advice offered by Kevlin, not many will find things they haven’t been heard a hundred before times before. Many of the items might even seem obvious, like advice any modern developer agrees on and lives by.

But in a talk like this, it becomes obvious that they’re not. What Henney adds to the soup of well known phrases is his own exquisite blend of:

• Code samples violating the advice in either obvious or not so obvious ways. Code samples I think everybody recognize – as code they’ve been writing themselves, although we all agree on the guideline just presented
• An enormous dose of wit and oral agility when making fun of himself, the audience and the entire world of IT professionals
• The courage to actually take a stand and give concrete advice on what to do facing the fact that you somehow seem to be driven towards making your own code bad.

If you missed the talk, the video people was there, so the talk will show up here on the JAOO Community blog in the coming months.

The talk hit a dry spot for me personally, as my work for Trifork has allowed me to do some .NET development for the coming couple of months.
I was really enlighted to see lot of fellow Java developer’s in the audience. Some was there with the same need for immediate knowledge of the platform as me, but at least as many just went to explore other view points and opportunities for solutions to common problems – which is exactly what JAOO is all about.

The pure amount of technologies Ronnie walked us through in a live demo coding bonanza was impressive: LINQ to SQL, ASP.NET AJAX, WPF, XAML, ADO.NET REST Data services, WCF, Silverlight etc.
And as if the pure number of acronomyms covered wasn’t enough to guarantee satisfaction, every one of them was described very competently and with only a very discreet dose of Microsoft Marketing tone (Ronnie’s signature phrase seems to be a rhetorical self questioning: “Can I… [insert favorite technical desire]? Of course!).

And yes, the demo ghost did roar it’s frightening head more than once, so hat’s off to Ronnies coollness under fire.

Now all I’m waiting for is some months of travelling around in the new land of Microsoft developers, finding out whether .NET is the exception to the rule that the things that looked so nice and clean when used in the hands of the instructor as tools for solving classroom sized problems tend to give a somewhat messy impression when the humble students apply them to real world problems…