Tales from the jar side: Java 14, User Group talks, and Hail, Poetry
Includes a series of entertaining tweets, so at least there's that
Welcome to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of March 22 - 29, 2020. This week I taught a class on What’s New In Java, helped give a similar talk at the CT Java Users Group, and spoke about Kotlin at the NY Java SIG, all of which were virtual, of course.
Quick coronavirus update
So far everybody here is still healthy. I know a couple people who might have it, but the testing story is still so bad in this country that we don’t know for sure. I do expect that situation to get better. If there’s one thing this country does well, it’s scale up manufacturing. It’s just that every day feels like a month right now.
Like everyone else, we’re sheltering at home. On the times we order out, I make sure to thank the delivery people profusely and give them a very big tip. I’m also making periodic contributions to the food bank in my town. I’m not sure what else I can do right now, but I’ll keep looking.
User Group Talks
The Connecticut Java User Group has always been smaller than the corresponding groups in New York or Boston, but it has been active for at least as long as I’ve been a Java developer. I gave my first talk there back in 1999, about Java certification.
This week the group went virtual like everybody else. We held a meeting on Tuesday during the day (11 am to about noon), which was unusual but worked well enough. The topic was What’s new in Java 14.
Ryan Cuprak organized the meeting and presented a slide deck showing all the new features in Java 14. Where I was able to contribute was with a GitHub repository with lots of code examples. Since I teach a similar class on the O’Reilly Learning Platform, I’ve already worked out all the details about how to get Java 14 working both inside IntelliJ IDEA and with Gradle 6.3. I was therefore able to walk people through the major new features, like enhanced switch statements, text blocks, and records. I believe our session was recorded, and when it becomes available I’ll post a link here.
(Note I would link to my similar class on the O’Reilly Learning Platform — what I generally refer to as Safari — but you need a subscription to access the platform. The best I can do is link to the learning platform site in general.)
As a publicly available resource, Mala Gupta has an excellent YouTube video showing how the new Java 14 features work in IntelliJ:
I knew most of them going in, but still learned something, and the video is a really good summary.
Thursday evening I gave a talk at the NY Java SIG (New York Java Special Interest Group) about Kotlin. We originally planned that talk to be live, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. The organizers (Rodrigo Graciano, Jeanne Boyarsky, and Frank Greco) arranged for that meeting to be held online.
I really enjoyed that meeting. I believe we peaked at over 120 attendees, and because it was online people came from all over the world. In the chat room attendees identified locations as far away as the UK, France, and Finland, and I’m sure there were others I’m not remembering at the moment.
I went through many of my slides (which are here in pdf form if you want them) and the rest of my time working through code examples and answering questions.
The event was quite successful and I expect them to continue with online meetings for a while. The only downside from my point of view is that I was looking forward to a trip to New York City, but now I’ll have to wait a few months for that.
NFJS Virtual Workshops Coming
I should mention that while the No Fluff, Just Stuff tour is suspended, the plan is to run a series of virtual workshops. I’m scheduled to teach three of them:
I’ll talk more about them as we get closer to those dates. See the virtual workshop schedule for details. They’re not free, but the cost is reasonable. I’m happy to do all of them, but I’m especially glad to get to work with Groovy again. :)
Hail, Poetry!
Last week I recommended a couple of older movies that I enjoyed when I was younger. I found another one this week, which is both newer than the others (1983) and older (the play it is based on was first performed on 31 December 1879 in, of all places, New York, so this is continuing a theme). Best of all, the movie is free on YouTube (which is especially nice if you have a YouTube premium account that leaves out the ads).
It’s the Joseph Papp production of The Pirates Of Penzance:
I love this movie. It may be my favorite Kevin Kline performance ever, and I’m a huge fan of Dave, A Fish Called Wanda, Soapdish, In & Out, The Big Chill (which he made the same year as Pirates) and heck, I’ll even sit through parts of Wild Wild West on occasion. He is a brilliant Pirate King. He won a Tony Award for the Broadway version of this show, and his performance is worth the whole movie by himself.
The movie also features Angela Lansbury, Linda Ronstadt (in her only movie appearance), and many other excellent actors. It is absolutely charming, and suitable for everyone. I did turn on the subtitles, which helps me with some of the rapid dialog, but they, too, are well done.
My wife and I have a long history with Gilbert & Sullivan shows. Our most active local community theater group that does them is the Simsbury Light Opera Company (SLOCO), and for several years after my son was born my wife and I used to take turns doing shows there. She’s actually been in Pirates three times, twice as Ruth and once as one of the sisters. Unfortunately I don’t fit the classic G&S lead tenor type, so I never got to be in Pirates or Mikado or Pinafore, but I did play leading roles in Trial By Jury and Princess Ida. My participation ended when I joined a training company and started traveling a lot, but we’ve always enjoyed the shows and we were both happy to be involved.
For those who don’t know, Hail Poetry! is a fantastic choral number that appears toward the end of Act I. It has great harmonies and a dynamic range that varies from pianissimo to the biggest forte you can manage. SLOCO parties always ended with everyone singing it.
This year SLOCO was planning to perform Pirates again at the end of March, but of course that’s not going to happen. Sigh. I know we have a long way to go, but I really want this plague to be over.
Interesting tweets
I’m sure some of my colleagues at O’Reilly Media will agree that I spend too much time on Twitter*.
*Picturing them nodding their heads right now, nervously wondering where this is going…
I saw a few clever coronavirus-related tweets this week. First, from my friend Craig Walls, author of Spring In Action:
Could happen to anybody
That one definitely deserves an “Ok, Boomer” comment, but it totally worked for me, because of course it did. On an unrelated note:
An interesting twist
Also this, from my friend Mark Heckler:
That’s a relief. I think.
Finally, in case you missed it, this is a highly enlightening thread:
I hope everyone is managing this crisis as best they can. My international friends are much further along the curve than we are in the US, so I can see what’s coming, unlike a lot of the willful idiots in the present administration, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
It’s probably time to watch that Pirates of Penzance video again.
Last week:
What’s New In Java, online at Safari
Java 14 talk at Connecticut Java Users Group
Kotlin talk at NY Java SIG
This week:
Spring and Spring Boot online at Safari
More writing, I hope
Find ways to handle the social isolation and hope nobody I know gets sick. Honestly, I’m more worried about that than myself. It’s going to be really hard to continue to function when people around me are suffering. So far, so good, though.