Ken Kousen is a technical trainer, software developer, and conference speaker specializing in Java and open source topics, including Android, Spring, Hibernate/JPA, Groovy, Grails, and Gradle. He is the author of the O’Reilly book “Gradle Recipes for Android” and the Manning book “Making Java Groovy”. He also has recorded several video courses for O’Reilly, including two on Android, three on Groovy, two on Gradle, and one on the Spring Framework.
In 2013 was awarded a JavaOne Rockstar award. His academic background include BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from M.I.T., an MA and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and an MS in Computer Science from R.P.I. He is currently President of Kousen IT, Inc., based in Connecticut.
Learn to use the new features of Java 8, including lambda expressions, method references, and the streaming API.
Exercises will include using lambdas and streams, refactoring existing code, working with map/filter/reduce, and sampling the new java.time package.
Knowledge of earlier versions of Java is assumed. The exercises will be independent of IDE, but IntelliJ IDEA is recommended.
Groovy is unusual among programming languages in that it doesn’t seek to replace its predecessor. You can freely mix Groovy with Java on a class-by-class, or even line-by-line, basis. If you are working with Java, there’s no reason not to make your life easier by adding Groovy where it helps the most.
Groovy helps Java in many ways, especially when processing XML or JSON data, replacing anonymous inner classes, adding tons of library methods that Java has needed all along, vastly simplified file and database manipulation, and much more. This talk will demonstrate how you can add Groovy to Java applications and simplify your development job immediately.
The Gradle build tool is one of the most successful projects in the Groovy ecosystem because it addresses a difficult problem – every major build is a custom build. Gradle builds are written in Groovy, so the full power of the language is available if you need it. Gradle supports Maven project structure and repositories and uses Ivy dependency management without being bound by their normal constraints. With major systems like Grails, Hibernate, and the Spring Framework moving to Gradle, this is a technology worth taking the time to understand.
This talk will cover the basics of Gradle both through simple examples and by examining the build files for major open source projects.
