Well, goodness, time really is a thief. Can you believe that it's been nearly a year since our last Bash, and I can only blame middle age for it feeling more like a month.
Anyway, our humble apologies about the delay, but we're back and we have a number of events planned for the coming months.
To start things off, we have 3 great speakers lined up to talk about 3 completely different topics. There's a kind-of JVM theme running through 2 of the talks, and then we have something a little more left-field (and all the more interesting and enjoyable for that).
As it's winter and the nights are still long, we've booked the Blackbox, along with a free(ish) bar and some belly-warming food. The good folks at Rapid7 are kindly sponsoring the Boojum Burritos. Instil will cover the beers and venue. Happy days.
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What Lies Beneath (Maurice Naftalin)
What really happens when your Java program runs? After the transformation from Java source through bytecode and machine code to microcode, and the various optimizations that take place along the way, the instructions that are actually executed may be very different from what you imagined when you wrote the program. This session shows you tools and techniques for tracing that path. You’ll see what a simple program actually looks like when it really hits the hardware.
About Maurice
Maurice Naftalin has over 30 years' experience in IT - as developer, designer, architect, manager, teacher, and author. He is a certified Java Programmer and has worked in every release of Java to date. Maurice's experience in Java and business gives him a unique perspective on the fundamental change that comes with introducing Lambda expressions in Java. He is a frequent presenter at conferences worldwide, including the annual JavaOne and GOTO events.
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Why you should be more like a surgeon than a GP - beside the money (Arnaud Roger)
In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea of the 10 000 hour rule to achieve world class expertise. The idea behind this rule is based on the work of Anders Ericsson a Swedish psychologist whose main study is the nature of expertise and human performance.
Unfortunately there is a gap between Gladwell's simplified rule and the research. Based on the book by Ericsson, Peak, we will go through some of the actual research and see how it can inform one's career.
About Arnaud
Arnaud Roger is Software Engineer at Rapid7. Of uncertain origin - rumours place his origin in France, Belgium or even Craigavon.
Arnaud has been hitting the keyboard for a very long time with varied success - only one company went bankrupt, Lehman Brothers. The jury is still out as to whether or not there was any causation. Performance is a strong interest of his, and he can be regularly seen blankly staring at the asm output of the hotspot vm.
He is also known to be generally sceptical of most things including Docker and Kubernetes. Also, he thinks he has a sense of humour, there is still no proof that this is actually the case
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The Great Scala Makeover (Garth Gilmour)
Scala was once the heir presumptive to the JVM crown. But concerns about its complexity, new competitors and limited applicability have drastically slowed its adoption. The upcoming version 3 aims to reverse this trend, with root and branch reforms. There is a new compiler and macro system plus a bunch of fresh features. But more importantly many existing features have been dropped, restricted or replaced in an effort to simplify and streamline the language. This talk will provide an overview of these changes and evaluate if they are enough to reverse Scala's fortunes.
About Garth
Garth is the Head of Learning at Instil. He speaks regularly at international conferences including GOTO and KotlinConf, and when not at the whiteboard he coaches Krav Maga
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