Monthly Archive: April 2016

Devoxx

Devoxx Poland 2015 – Java Conference Summary

There are a lot of interesting tech conferences in 2016. If you want to stay up-to-date with the technology you are developing with (and you have available time and budget), there is some conference out there for you. Just do a simple google search to explore the possibilities. If you are quick enough in making up your mind and registering for a particular conference, you will most probably be able to get an early bird discounts. Last year I’ve visited Devoxx Poland in KrakowDevoxx is an annual European Java, agile, mobile and web conference. It was originally created by Belgian Java User Group. Last year the conference took place in Belgium, UK, France, Poland and Morocco. Many top industry speakers were talking about interesting topics. More than 10.000 developers visit those conferences annually.

Although it’s usually possible to watch all the presentations online (even for free), visiting a conference gives you some additional perspectives. One example: every day we got used to work in a team with some 5-10 other good Java developers. Just imagine how you would feel when you are at the same place with e.g. 2000+ other Java guys. And many smart people who present out there at the stage. It’s something you need to experience.

Devoxx Poland is my top choice for 2016 as well. For many reasons. Very well organized conference, great topics, great speakers, affordable price, to mention a few. Visiting Krakow in June is a nice experience, too.

In this post I will write a short review of the conference last year (2015).

Read about my summary of Devoxx Poland 2015

Functional programming

The Need for… Functional Programming

A Hardware Issue Became a Software Problem

During the last decades we are all witnesses of computer systems constantly improving in speed, efficiency, increasing space for storing data and decreasing the size of the components. The popular Moore’s law was a correct prediction that the number of transistors of the largest microprocessors will double about every two years, since 1970s. But increasing the number of transistors on a chip and increasing processor’s frequency, among other things, also requires exponentially more power.

Processors were originally developed with only one core. Around 2005, in order to continue delivering regular performance improvements for general-purpose processors, manufacturers such as Intel and AMD have turned to multi-core designs, sacrificing lower manufacturing-costs for higher performance in some applications and systems. (source Wikipedia)

Traditionally, computer software has been written for serial computation. To solve a problem, an algorithm is constructed and implemented as a serial stream of instructions, executed one at a time. In order to use the resources of a multi-core processor, some kind of parallel or concurrent execution approach became a need. Suddenly, due to the change applied by hardware manufacturers, software developers must rethink the design of their programs.

Read more…