Devoxx day 1

Well, everyone seem to be posting about day one on Devoxx, so why not join? We've started with Scala. After a usual bullshit about Java convoluted code guys switched to a standard Scala tutorial. Informative, but extremely boring. Second part, Scala as Agile enabler was enthusiastic, but even more loaded with bullshit. We've found out that Scala guys are clever and nice talking to. Java developers are apparently morons as I an, so being a moron, I've just checked a quickie about the "no accessors" claim in Scala. Shared mutable state, anyone? Here's a public variable for you as default visibility. Well, I do admit Scala is a decent language, but the impression wasn't nice; OTOH, Ruby and Groovy guys have exactly the same problem: they blame some made-up Java code in made-up situations, never caring that noone would write this crap. Moreover, if you don't care enough to encapsulate your state, you can easily write in Java something much more concise: it's just that it would be way beyond any acceptable norm. On the second session, we've split: Olga went to HTML5 session, and I've joined the @jclouds guys. @jclouds is basically a uniform wrapper over all the cloud storage APIs: S2, EBS, ninefold, you-name-it. Not particularly fluent API, but it works — and, to be honest, neither are any of the cloud APIs. So all in all a great work; will use it when I need it. Other than these two sessions, there was a GC session by not Kirk Pepperdine, but Ben Evans. Given that he was only notified in 2h before, it was a great talk. Well, it was an ok talk by Kirk's slides, but a great topic to think about. I wish I'd listened it 2 years ago, just before I needed to tune my server. As for the evening, sad news. Kulminator is closed; Het Elfde Gebod is renamed to Het Kafedraal and doesn't serve snacks after 18:00 anymore. Good news are, Kulminator will be back by 16th, and there's a new (new?) bar called Bier Centraal next door (and apparently under the same management as) Kelly's Irish Pub. Great choice of Belgian beers, good food. What else a developer needs to be happy? See you tomorrow at Devoxx!