❯ Guillaume Laforge

Apache Groovy and Google App Engine at JavaOne

groovy java google-cloud app-engine

I’ll be back at JavaOne in San Francisco in October to speak about Apache Groovy and Google App Engine.

Apache Groovy

I’ve been involved with the Apache Groovy project for 14 years now, it’s a long time, and it’s interesting to see how the language has evolved over time, how it was influenced by other languages, but also how it influenced those other languages itself! Let’s see which operators or syntax constructs evolved and moved from one to the other.

Google App Engine

These days, the hype is around containers, containers everywhere! We tend to relegate Platform-as-a-Service solutions to the side, but it’s still one of the most convenient way to deploy and scale an application today. After all, Snapchat and others are able to take advantage of a PaaS like App Engine, so why couldn’t you too? (and you don’t need to scale to their level anyway, but you’d still get the convenience of easy development and deployment)

Anyhow, I’ve invited my friends from Heroku and Oracle to join me for a panel discussion on the theme of Java PaaS-es. We’ll see how Java PaaS-es are relevant today, more than ever.

The abstracts

So if you want to lear more about those two talks, here are their abstracts.

[CON5034] How Languages Influence Each Other: Reflections on 14 Years of Apache Groovy

Languages have been influencing one another since the dawn of computer programming. There are families of languages: from Algol descendants with begin/end code blocks to those with curly braces such as C. Languages are not invented in a vacuum but are inspired by their predecessors. This session’s speaker, who has been working on Apache Groovy for the past 14 years, reflects on the influences that have driven the design of programming languages. In particular, Groovy’s base syntax was directly derived from Java’s but quickly developed its own flavor, adding closures, type inference, and operators from Ruby. Groovy also inspired other languages: C#, Swift, and JavaScript adopted Groovy’s null-safe navigation operator and the famous Elvis operator.

[CON5945] Java PaaS – Then, Now and Next

Java developers want to deploy their apps easily. Fortunately, there are great solutions for them in the form of Platform-as-a-Service for Java. In this discussion panel, we will share the views of Oracle, Heroku and Google engineers about their respective Java PaaS-es, how this space has evolved over the past few years, and what makes a great developer experience for users today. We’ll discuss the future of PaaS in light of new technologies like microservices, containerization, and serverless architectures. Finally, we’ll open up the space for an interactive discussion with the audience.

(with Joe Kutner from Heroku, Shaun Smith from Oracle, Ludovic Champenois from Google, and Frank Greco from NY JavaSIG as moderator)