No Fluff, Just Stuff, Spring 2009 Day 2

Day two of the Spring 09 "No Fluff" conference is over. Whew! Another tiring (but rewarding) day.

The talks I went to were good (as usual). The first talk of the day was Programming Scala by Venkat Subramaniam. It was interesting stuff. I don't think I'll have any immediate need (or ability to put it to use) for Scala, but I was interested in the language. Venkat is working on a Scala book, which I'll probably pick up just for fun when it's out.

Talk number two was Architecture and Scaling by Ken Sipe. I attended two of Ken's talks yesterday, and this was good as well.

The third talk of the day for me was Introduction to JMS by Mark Richards. It was a real toss-up for me, though, because it conflicted with Neal Ford's Test Driven Design talk. I've seen Neal's talk twice, and was really tempted to go for number three, but in the end, I wanted to learn a bit more about JMS. The last time I used a messaging system (Spread) it was several years ago. I've never had the chance (or need) to work with JMS yet, but I'm sure it will come up eventually.

By far, though, today's "blow me away" talk was one given by Stuart Halloway. The talk was on Git (the source code control system) and was titled "Git Control of your Source." I know, I know, it sounds a bit hyperbolic to describe a talk on a source code control tool, but it really was. I was interested in this talk for a couple of reasons. One is that he seems like a very sharp guy, able to communicate effectively. I have one of his older books - "Component Development for the Java Platform," which contains the best description of custom classloaders I've ever run across. Second, if someone like him is doing a 90 minute talk on Git, there must be a darned good reason.

Anyway, back to the talk. Stuart is an excellent and engaging speaker, and really knew (and was passionate about) the subject. Second, after Stuart started talking about Git, I realized how game changing it is, both for source control and Open Source development in particular. Stuart has a recent blog post "Fork Everything" which sums up some of the cool things about Git, and does a better than than I can.

Here are some of the most memorable (for me, anyway) takeaways and quotes from the talk:

• It's a game changer for Open Source development. It makes grabbing a repository and forking your own changes easy, and even preferred.
• It removes the "One True Repository" mentality. Anyone can easily make contributions available, and allow other to use them (as well as push back into the "original" repository)
• "Git is like a versioned filesystem, with a good remote sync"

And my favorite line from the talk:

• "Every once in awhile things get better in this industry. This is one of those times." (referring to Git)

I guess this means I have to check this out, too.