GR-JUG

Using Selenium 2 for functional testing by driving real browsers

Thu, Oct 20

Presented by Bruce Brouwer

Selenium 2 can help to automate functional testing by running your tests in real browsers. This way you can know if your web app actually works in IE, Firefox, Chrome, ... by sitting back and relaxing while you watch your tests run automatically.

What's New in the Java Language

Thu, Sept 22

Presented by Andy Keller

Java continues to evolve as a language and the release of Java 7 includes many new language and API features. From simple syntax tweaks to concurrency, I/O, security, and networking enhancements to changes in the JVM to better support dynamic languages like JRuby-Java continues to evolve and improve. I'll give an overview of the new features and capabilities in Java 7.

Code Kata

Thu, July 21

Presented by Carlus Henry

How do you get better at something? You practice, practice, practice. This month's Java User Group meeting, we will be doing just that. Through the use of Code Kata's we are going to sharpen our skills as Java developers and write code. Bring your laptops, and put your thinking caps on, as we apply our development skills to some Code Katas.

Desktop application development with JRuby

Thu, May 26

Presented By Matt Fletcher

My team and I have spent about 1.5 years developing two different desktop applications using the JVM, JRuby, Java, and Swing. One of the applications was recently referenced in the definitive JRuby book as an example of JRuby's capabilities. In this talk, I'll share some of the Java and Ruby technologies used to develop the applications, our strategies for developing and testing the code, and how we bundled everything up for easy installation

Matt Fletcher is a developer at Atomic Object in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Matt and his colleagues at Atomic work with a wide range of customers to build customer software applications, ranging from server monitoring in Java to GUI desktop applications with Ruby.

Groovy and Grails

Thu, Mar 17

Presented by Carlus Henry

For a while now, we have seen the rise of web frameworks like Rails, Sinatra, TurboGears and Django all promising higher productivity gains for minimal amount of effort, while Java has seemingly sat idly by, strongly committed to Struts 2, Webwork, Tapestry, Spring MVC and other frameworks that leave you frustrated.

Introducing Grails. Grails is a light-weight web framework written in Groovy that allows Java developers to realize the productivity gains of the modern web frameworks, while still using the frameworks and libraries that we already know and love - namely Spring, Hibernate, Sitemesh. During this talk, I will give you a brief overview of Grails and how to get started using it.

Rosetta Code

Thu, Feb 17

Presented by Mike Mol

Rosetta Code is an open-edit wiki whereby languages are compared and demonstrated at solving tasks of varying degrees of various domains and degrees of complexity. It serves as a code reference for learners, a test reference for implementers, and a stomping ground for by-example advocates. The community is friendly, competitive and inclusive, and is normally allowed to take the site in whatever direction interests it.

Bio: (It's lossy compression, and dated, but it's still compression!)

Android Development

Thu, Nov 18

Presented by Dan Mikita

We will go through the basics of developing apps for the Android platform. Topics will include:

• How to setup your development environment.
• How to configure and use the Android emulator.
• An overview of the file structure.
• How to use XML to create a screen.
• An overview of the API and various layouts and widgets.

Dan Mikita is currently an Intern at Gordon Food Service located in Grand Rapids Michigan. He is currently in his senior year at Grand Valley State University and will graduate this May. His main interests lie within mobile application development and creative business solutions.

Links:

• Android Developer homepage
• Source for Dan's Pizza Project

Discussion and Pizza

Thu, Oct 21

No agenda - come and get to know some people, and talk.

Aug 20-21: BarCampGR

Using Git with Subversion

Thu, June 17

Presented by Carlus Henry

After watching Linus Torvalds Google Talk about Git, I was eager to start using it immediately due to all of the productivity gains. Unfortunately, I work in an environment that uses Subversion and using Git was out of the question....until I learned about git-svn.

During this presentation, I will show you how to use Git with Subversion. I will also share with you real life experiences that Git has allowed me to do things that would have been impossible with Subversion or at least extremely difficult and time consuming. If you are working in a Subversion environment and you want the productivity gains that comes with the use of Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS), then this is the talk for you.

The Basics of Eclipse using MyEclipse IDE

Thu, May 20

Presented by David Kirvan

We will go through the basics of using Eclipse as an IDE for developing java programs. Topics will include

• Understanding the basics about perspectives and when to use them and how to switch to the different perspectives (Java, Debug, Database Explorer, etc...
• Opening views within the perspective.
• Setting your own preferences for development.
• Creating and maintaining a project.
• Adding capabilities to projects, like struts, hibernat...
• How to know where a class is being referenced in a Java project.
• Eclipse says I have an error but everything looks okay what can I do.
• Packaging a project into a jar to be used by other projects.
• Packaging a project into a War file for execution from tomcat.
• How to install a plug-in into Eclipse.
• Questions and answers

David Kirvan is a Senior Programmer/Analyst for Agri Stats Inc, located in Fort Wayne Indiana. He has worked in the I.T. field for over 25 years programming in many different languages including Clipper (DB4), Cobol, RPG, Easel (ESL), VB6, C++, Java, and Javascript. He has been working with Java for the past five years using MyEclipse, Struts, Hibernate, and JSP's.

Groovy: Scripting on the Java Platform

Thu, April 15

Presented by Todd P. Staron

This discussion will be a brief introduction to Groovy, the first official alternative language of the Java Runtime Environment, primarily focusing on using the JRE and Groovy for platform-independent scripting.

Todd works at ISD Corporation, where he is a Senior Engineer in the Core Java Development group. With nearly a decade of experience, Todd specializes in application development in the payment management space. His experience ranges from writing applications for embedded systems using C and Assembly language to large back-office and server-side applications using technologies such as Java and C++. Recently, Todd has taken an interest in exploring the Java Runtime Environment as a platform for hosting alternative languages such as Groovy.

Jython: Python in the JVM

Thu, Mar 18

Presented by Adam Tauno Williams

An overview of Jython and particulars of Python in the JVM including Jython specific features, using 'traditional' jar assemblies in Jython code, and Pythonic things that do not work.

Adam has been a Network & Systems Administrator for Morrison Industries for almost 20 years; dealing with a variety of primarily Open Source products in an enterprise environment, including Cyrus IMAPd, OpenGroupware, Samba and OpenLDAP among others. He is also a developer in the OpenGroupware project and lead developer of OpenGroupware Coils (a Python port of OpenGroupware).

Scala

Thu, Feb 18

Presented by Carlus Henry

Scala is a programming language for the JVM that is gaining popularity. This statically typed, type inferenced language is difficult to classify because it is a scripting, object oriented, functional programming language all in wrapped into one. Come to the February meeting where Carlus Henry will be presenting on the Scala programming language and why he has decided that it will be the language that he will be focused on learning this year.

Driving Behaviour with Cucumber on the JVM

Thu, Jan 21, 2010

Presented by Zach Dennis

This talk introduces Cucumber, which can be used to drive development from the features requested by the stakeholders down to the underlying implementation - working outside-in. This style of development comes from Behavior Driven Development and while Cucumber came to life as a ruby tool it as evolved in a language-agnostic BDD toolset, operating on the JVM, the .NET platform, Ruby, Python, and Flex.

No December Meeting

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

Thu, Nov 19

Presented by Andrew Miller

With so many great JavaScript toolkits available on the web, what makes the Google Web Toolkit different? Instead of writing JavaScript yourself, you write Java and it compiles your class files into highly optimized JavaScript. I'm going to give an overview of GWT and provide some techniques for building large web applications using GWT.

MongoDB

Thu, Oct 15

Presented by Dave Brondsema

MongoDB is a fast non-relational database. It stores JSON documents, uses indexes, replication, and a custom query language. It supports Java and many other languages; this talk will not be language-specific.