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I want to summarize my impressions and thoughts from JAOO this year. I’ve barely had the time to adjust to the ordinary life and spent the weekend not thinking too much about these things.
Besides going to a lot if interesting talks (not to mention the tutorials), and getting a lot of new ideas from that, the main thing has been that I’ve met a great many interesting people. This is what is good about JAOO, the speakers are very interested in talking to the other participants, and the schedule facilitates this with the parties and other activities.
I already mentioned meeting Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob), Dave Thomas and Kevlin Henney. Dave also introduced me to Brian Berry who was his co-godfather of Eclipse. I also had a brief chance to speak with Martin Fowler, but he’s more like a rock star these days. Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce of jMock and NMock were also two people I had the pleasure to meet. I especially got to spend quite some time with Steve, and we had quite a few discussions on agile development and computer science fundamentals. Another interesting guy was Adam Bien, an independant consultant from Germany. He has some down to earth views on how to develop J2EE applications, and in his talk called Are Java Fat Clients Dead?, he discusses alternatives to the thin client which are very similar to what we’re trying to do with TOPS.
Of course I also talked to a lot of other guys too, and all of the different people have something to add to the conversation. This is what makes JAOO such a good conference, this and the extremely good program and set of speakers.
I hope to be back next year.