Agility vs Quality

“People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it”.
Agility without quality is an illusion 😉 for long term sustainability.
Quality without agility is again an illusion because change is the only constant.
Cutting quality reduces agility. The long-term cost of cutting quality ( in planning, processes and procedures, execution, design, people development,…) will EAT any attempt to change rapidly.

Jazoon 2012 – Call for Papers

„JAZOON’12 Call for Papers – We invite you to share your experience and knowledge
We are proud to invite you to submit proposals for presentations at the JAZOON’12 conference to be held from June 26 to 28, 2012 in Zurich, Switzerland.”

See details here: http://jazoon.com/2012/Contribute

Call-4-Papers  ends 26 February!

JAZOON’12 welcomes JUG and DUG Members

JAZOON welcomes all Java User Group (JUG) and other Develompent User Group Members (DUG) to be a part of JAZOON’12!

You can find all the details about the conference here: http://jazoon.com/2012/

The JAZOON’12 Team together with Java User Group Switzerland is proud to welcome all JUG and DUG Members from all over the world in Zurich.
Be a part of  JAZOON’12, the ideal venue for connecting with other JUG and DUG Members, and save the dates 26-28 June 2012 in Zurich!

JUG Cluj-Napoca is proud to support this conference !!!

DZone VIP Software Professionals in Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Join this meetup group here: http://www.meetup.com/DZoneVIP-Cluj-Napoca/

 

Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform

I am writing this review as a Java developer with limited experience in C# and the .NET Platform, who was given this book to enhance my C# and .NET knowledge.
The size of the book (about 1700 pages) was a little intimidating and my first thought was to just skip the parts I do not find interesting or I will most likely not need in the immediate future, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the whole book contained relevant and useful information that I could not miss. Maybe a more experienced C# developer would have found some parts elementary and could be skipped, but as I am still new to this, it wasn’t my case.
I think the author’s writing is clear and concise and the author did a good job explaining the complex material in a simple, easy to understand fashion.
As a Java developer diving into C# and .NET, what I found really useful were concepts like .NET assemblies and CLR(Common Language Runtime) which were covered in quite detail and explained in a way someone new to the concepts could understand. Also, the later sections that show more specific ways to solve common programming problems like how to deal with I/O, how to connect to databases with ADO.NET or using newer technologies like LINQ were really useful and presented in a great way.
As a beginner in C# and .NET, I would have found useful some more examples here and there, but all things considered, I found this book very helpful, it is a great addition to a programmer’s library and I would recommend it to anyone looking to improve their C# and .NET skills.

A collegue in our JUG Cluj-Napoca (Cristina Nistor)

Visual C# 2010 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

I really like the recipes found in this book, btw what you get are a lot of recipes.
The cookbook format is perfect for someone like me that is not a C# expert or for someone that does not have extensive experience. Looking at the code was a good way I learn things.

Don’t expect to learn all about Visual C# by only buying this book but be sure you will learn a lot about .NET 4.0.
I am sure that after reading this book you will be able to solve common problems with good code samples.
It is not a replacement for a reference book, so does not dive soo deeply in all the features but more a practical book for common daily dev issues: don’t have an available peer to share with you a piece of code? probably you will find that piece of code in this book.
Visual C# 2010 Recipes is a great addition to the book „”Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, Fifth Edition”, Apress” so I would recommend to read them together.

 

 

Accelerated C# 2010

Please don’t take too serious the comments about the poor quality of this book, they are not true.
Indeed the book is not a complete reference, nor a collection of recipies but is a nice book if your purpose is only to learn C#, let’s say is a comprehensive review of the language. A very good job in describing the C# Language.
The examples are also great, so if this is your first C# book, this is the right one.

Jazoon’11

Dear all !

We are proud to be one of the supporting JUGs for Jazoon 2011.

You are invited to Jazoon’11 – The International Conference on the Modern Art of Software!

21 – 23 June 2011
Arena Filmcity, Zurich

Early bird tickets are available until 13 May 2011

Please find the list of speakers and Abstract titles here: http://jazoon.com/Portals/Jazoon2011/Content/downloads/brochure_jazoon_206x291_web%20v2.pdf

This is a conference you do not want to miss !!!

Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer

A colleague of mine that was recently hired in our company was very impressed about this book.
Here is his review:
„I am a junior developer who jumped from the oldest but goldies C++ and some Java, right to this new world of dynamic web programming.

When I first touched this ground I was hungrily searching for a good book to somehow make me feel this new wave.
So I put my hands on „Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer” and I must say that Venkat Subramaniam did a great job with this book. I had no difficulties at all to assimilate Groovy’s dynamic concepts, since the book is well written and descriptive enough even for a junior developer like myself.

The first two parts of the book are a good introduction to Groovy, while the third part of the book, the one about MOPing, is very useful for those developers that are interested in writing code testing because it give a fairly image of Groovy injection, method interception and mocking.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn a new, refreshing, dynamic language. Still, you need some previous programming knowledge to understand the concepts presented by Venkat.

PS: I also liked the small jokes that add spice to the book.”

Do I need to say something else? If you want to learn Groovy go buy this book, it’s very good.

Ionel Condor,
Cluj, ROMANIA.

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Crockford

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Crockford is written to be a quick and small reference for the javascript programmer.

It is not an exhaustive reference but rather a small collection of guidelines on how javascript code should be written.
The book touches on the major aspects of the language: objects, functions, prototypes, inheritance (with all its flavours), arrays and regular expressions.

Maybe the most important part of the language is given the most pages: functions. The chapter on functions gives a good understanding on function invocation patterns, on closures, callbacks, scope, augmentation, memoization, currying and function arguments.
Another important chapter is on inheritance and explains different inheritance styles. Although nice to read in general, the book also has some boring parts, like chapter 2 where javascript grammar is represented in many diagrams, one for each language construct.

There are some nice appendix chapters on the awful and the bad parts of javascript, which warn the reader of the possible pitfalls of using these parts of the language.

Alltogether, it’s a must-have book for every javascript programmer, not necesarrily to take up all ideas but at least to understand the point Douglas Crockford has and only adopt the agreed practices.