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  • Roundup: Scala as the long term replacement for Java

    Scala has been receiving much attention lately as a possible candidate to replace Java in the future. James Strachan creator of Groovy advocates in favor of Scala as James Gosling, creator of Java and Charles Nutter JRuby Core Developer, have done in the past.

  • COBOL to Java Automatic Migration with GPL'ed Tools

    During the NACA project run by Publicitas Ltd., 4m lines of COBOL were automatically trans-coded (migrated) toward their Java equivalent. The company claims that the recurrent annual savings in cash-outs amount to a total of 3m euros and has released the tools from the NACA project under GPL.

  • Presentation: Democratic Political Technology Revolution

    The state of the art in political technology evolved radically 2004-2008. In 2004, software development in Democratic political campaigns consisted of a few rag-tag hackers taking shots in the dark and building applications. In 2008, political start-ups built innovative social applications that raised nearly 1/2 billion dollars, and elected a President.

  • Doing Agile After Layoffs

    Part of a development team has been laid off, the team is down to four developers with a part time Scrum Master and no dedicated Product Owner. Is Scrum still applicable? What options are there? How does one adapt?

  • Tips to Improve Retrospectives

    Advice from Esther Derby, George Dinwiddie, Jo Geske, Mike Sutton and Ilja Preuss on how to make retrospectives better. The ideas include tips for the facilitator/Scrum Master and new ways to use the burndown chart.

  • Overcoming Resistance to Change

    Any change whether an Agile implementation or re-arranging the office furniture is going to encounter some resistance. The real question is how we react when that happens. Dave Nicolette and Lasse Koskela's workshop - was designed too help us understand where resistance comes from and how to handle it.

  • Software Development: A Traffic Jam Waiting To Happen

    Software development is Hard. One of the main reasons is that it is a complex adaptive system. Agile - when done right - seems to do a very good job of providing stabilizing feedback. We take a look at what it means for something to be a 'complex adaptive system' and what particular practices in Agile help us out.

  • Programming Processes

    Whether deep inside the brain, within software, or even within the teams which develop software, how do processes work, how do they misfire, and how can they be altered to achieve the desired results?

  • Rewards to Improve Team Habits?

    Sometimes teams have trouble starting new habits: writing unit tests, fix compiler warnings, not breaking the build. How do we help the team change these habits? Clint Shank designed a game to help people transition.

  • Creating The Culture For An Agile Environment

    Greg Smith offers an in-depth practical perspective on making your agile transition just as much about culture change as it is about process change.

  • Interview with Joseph Pelrine: Agile Works. But HOW?

    Joseph Pelrine has come full circle: from university studies in Psychology, journeying through SmallTalk, XP and Scrum, and now back to broader questions: Why and how does Agile work? In this interview, Joseph talked about Complexity Science, and how story-telling, "sense-making," network analysis and speed-dating's gut-feel approach may prove more useful than our old toolkits for managing teams.

  • First (Forgotten?) Rule Of The Retrospective: Follow Through

    Even the very greenest of agile teams clearly recognize the word 'Retrospective'. But, alas, it is often overlooked that a retrospective may be a wasted effort if not used to initiate an actual improvement that the team follows through on. Jim Shore gives advice on how to make the most of your retrospective and reminds us of the activity's ultimate place in the agile heartbeat.

  • QCon Panel: What will the Future of Java Development Be?

    In this panel from QCon San Francisco, Joshua Bloch, Chet Haase, Rod Johnson, Erik Meijer and Charles Nutter discussed and debated the future of the Java language and APIs based upon the lessons we have learned from the past. Topics included static versus dynamic languages, removing code from Java, forking the JVM, and the next big programming language.

  • Debate: Should the Java language stop adding new features?

    Recently, there has been a lot of debate over the future of the Java platform, with some arguing for more features to compete with languages such as C# and Ruby, and others saying that Java should become a more stable language lest it become too complicated to use. Bruce Eckel started a new round of debates by stating that Java should stop adding new features entirely.

  • Closures and Preserving the Feel of Java

    During the last few years, there has been wide-ranging discussion about adding closures to the Java language, either as part of Java SE 7, or in some future, unspecified release. At Javapolis, Joshua Bloch presented his opinion about the controversy, and why he feels that CICE is a more suitable approach.

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