As I check out Is it CodeMash yet?, I see that the day has finally come. Yesterday, when I arrived at the Kalahari Conference Center, I was totally at a loss for words. This place is larger than life, simply amazing. I have had many people tell me about the awesomeness of CodeMash, and I think I'll see why they said all that they did.

Last night, I met some of the guys that Joe Fiorini talks about on Twitter. I also met some of the people who follow me on Twitter. It was great to meet the guys last night, and I look forward to meeting more people today. I'm not good at the initial face and name recognition, so please don't be offended if I don't say hi right away - come by and introduce yourself!

I will be hanging out at the CodeJam for a bit of the day. So if you're attending the Precompiler, come to the Indigo room and hack with us there!

Later tonight, there'll be a Panel Discussion and the .NET Rocks! Show with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell, so if you're arriving later, check that out.

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This is my first CodeMash, and I'm definitely looking forward to see what's in store. I hope to blog throughout the event, and I will be taking pictures as well. So for pictures, keep an eye on my CodeMash 2009 Flickr stream.

Hope to see some of you out here!

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette

Tomorrow is the start of my first CodeMash experience, at the Precompiler. There are so many tutorials that I want to check out, but I will mostly be hiding out in the CodeJam.

It all started in 2007, when my buddy Russ from work told me about CodeMash. He's gone to past CodeMashes, and whenever he talks about it, his excitement gets to me. I didn't meet him in time for 2007, but he could have talked me into 2008. However, I also was uncertain of my vacation time and how I would handle taking time off with my husband. Lame excuses, I know... but I didn't go to CodeMash in 2008.

Of course, I met more people who reminded me of my epic fail - including Jeff Blankenburg, Mike Eaton, Michael Letterle, and Joe O'Brien. Thanks to the push from all of these guys (and all the others who helped), I made it a point to set the dates aside. But I had talked with one of my friends earlier in the year, and he had figured that I'd go and enjoy my first year as an attendee and worry about presenting there the following year. As much as that sounded like a good idea, I knew better - it was pretty much expected that I'd submit talks for it.

So it's my first CodeMash, and I am going as an event co-lead (CodeJam), presenter (IronPython), and attendee. Thanks to my friends for encouraging me to attend. I've been looking forward to it for the past few months, and it's finally here.

If you are there and you see me, come up and introduce yourself! I look forward to meeting you there!

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, Jeff Blankenburg, Joe O'Brien, Michael Letterle, Mike Eaton

Today's countdown feature is the event known as Open Spaces.

While looking at the CodeMash schedule, you may find yourself not interested in any of the topics in a particular time slot. If you find yourself in that position, I'd recommend you check out Open Spaces and see what's going on there.

What are Open Spaces?

As noted in the Heartland Open Spaces wiki:

"The open-space meeting or open space meeting is a generic term describing a wide variety of different styles of meeting in which participants define the agenda with a relatively rigorous process, and may adjust it as the meeting proceeds. A large meeting of this sort is called an open space conference or unconference."

- From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-space_meeting

What can I expect?

Go with an open mind and some ideas, and come out enlightened. Although topics aren't decided until the conference itself (based on whatever participants propose), you may have ideas that you want to talk about. Propose a topic, post it on the open spaces board, and show up at the time you plan on talking. Or if someone else proposes a topic you're interested in talking about, check out their session.



Open Spaces topics may include talks on technologies, tools, methodologies, and everything else under the sun. Check out the Open Spaces area for more details.

If you are neither learning nor contributing in a session you are required to get up and leave and join another session in progress where you feel you'll be more useful and inspired. - the Law of Two Feet

Who is running Open Spaces at CodeMash?

According to @codemash on Twitter, the Open Spaces at CodeMash are being coordinated by Corey Haines, Steven Harman, and Alan Stevens.

Alan was the awesome facilitator for the Open Spaces at devLink 2008, where the Open Spaces board from above was used. I expect that the Open Spaces at CodeMash will rock just as much - so definitely check them out!

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, open spaces

I've chronicled my journey so far with Dude, I'm Not Getting a Dell - Part 1. It doesn't help the situation that the rep is on vacation, and all that his backup can do is say that it will ship soon. How long does it take to come up with a real explanation for the delay? And why are they evading the question?

They have put free overnight shipping on the order supposedly, but at this point, it doesn't matter. I don't have time to prep a new machine in time to use it for CodeMash. The damage is done - they haven't conveyed a reason at all for the delay.

This experience is enough for me to never consider buying a Dell for a personal purchase - not even with our employee purchase program. Although they may make decent quality hardware, their lack in communication to the customer when it comes to delays is enough to make me want to take my business elsewhere.

...

Apparently I'm not the only one out there seeing Dell's shipping issues. I hope others who search this see this thread on the Consumerist before they even consider buying a Dell Mini 9.

Labels: delayed shipping, Dell Mini 9

Last year, I wanted to learn another programming language. A part of me wanted to learn Ruby, since the cool kids were all doing it. But at the same time, I wanted to be different. One of my friends recommended that I look at python. When I saw that there was a .NET implementation, I decided to explore IronPython. Since about March of 2008, I've been reading up on IronPython and presenting on it a little in the area.

This year, I hope to get my IronPython resources section together here on CodingGeekette.com and blog about it a bit more. I will be talking about IronPython at CodeMash, PyCon, and quite possibly PyOhio. If other people want to hear me talk on it, just send me an email at sarah at codinggeekette dot com.

While looking at the session list, I noticed that there's a python implementation that's written in Java - Jython.

So today's languages are python, its Java implementation, and its .NET implementation.

Language: Python
Website: Python Programming Language -- Official Site

Language: Jython
Website: The Jython Project

Language: IronPython
Website: IronPython

Where will these be seen at CodeMash?

Python

• Precompiler Event CodeMash Code Jam


• Python Data Visualization and Imaging, presented by Zach Steindler

Jython

• JVM scripting with Jython, presented by Mark Ramm

IronPython

• Pumping Iron into Python: Intro to FePy, presented by Sarah Dutkiewicz

Where can I learn more about these languages?

For Python, check out The Python Tutorial, Dive Into Python, and Useless Python

For Jython, check out the Jython User Guide.

For IronPython, the places I tend to look the most are DevHawk's blog, The IronPython Cookbook, and Michael Foord's blog.

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, IronPython, Jython, python

My buddy Russ from work was one of the first people to mention Ruby to me. He was all excited about this language, and his excitement definitely got me a little curious. Within a few months after hearing it from Russ, I heard about it from Joe, Corey, and Mike. I was curious to hear more about it, and when I saw that we had Joe O'Brien coming to Cleveland Day of .NET 2008, I figured I'd check his "Why Ruby?" talk out. I didn't really look into it on my own because it seemed like "everybody's doing it". Unfortunately, I was busy in that first session, allocating swag and making sure things were running smoothly, so I didn't get a chance to see Joe's talk. To this day, I have yet to catch it, but he's one I'd like to hear more from on it.

There is a .NET implementation of the language called IronRuby. Mike Letterle happened to get into it, and whenever I want to find out more about IronRuby, I know that he'd be the guy to ask. If he isn't around, then I'd get in touch with Carey Payette, as she's also tinkered around with IronRuby.

So today's CodeMash countdown languages are Ruby and IronRuby.

Language: Ruby
Website: ruby-lang.org

Language: IronRuby
Website: IronRuby.net

Where will these be seen at CodeMash?

Ruby

• Precompiler Event: Ruby 101 with Jim Weirich and Joe O'Brien


• Ruby Desktop Application Framework, presented by Lance Carlson


• What? Threads Are Hard?, presented by Jim Weirich


• Ruby Isn't Just About Rails, presented by Adam Wiggins


• Developing JoeMetric for the iPhone, presented by Joe O'Brien


• Testing Rails, presented by Joe O'Brien

IronRuby

• IronRuby In The Real World, presented by Michael Letterle

Where can I learn more about Ruby and IronRuby?

If you're looking for people who eat, breathe, and sleep Ruby or IronRuby, check out the following blogs: Jim Weirich, Joe O'Brien, and Michael Letterle.

Other sites to check out include: Ruby Revival, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide, and Justin Etheredge's posts on IronRuby.

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, IronRuby, Ruby

Slow down, you move too fast.
You got to make the morning last.
Just kicking down the cobble stones.
Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.


When I had first learned about Java, I was in college. The first time I started working with it was at OOPSLA '99, when my team implemented a coffee vending machine in Java with Swing. I had never worked with it or had seen it, but having had other languages in my past, I was able to pick it up well. About a year and a half later, I had a class on Java, where I actually learned about it in more detail. However, I didn't get that interested in it, and I hadn't realized just how big it had gotten.

Java has grown from what I learned it, and it has a full track dedicated to it at CodeMash. There are 200+ languages out there that run on the Java virtual machine - including Groovy and Scala. A more comprehensive list can be seen here.

So today's language set includes Java, Groovy, and Scala.

Language: Java
Website: Developer Resources for Java (java.sun.com)

Language: Groovy
Website: Groovy - Home (codehaus.org)

Language: Scala
Website: The Scala Programming Language

Where will these languages be seen at CodeMash?

At the Precompiler, check out the full day tutorial of Java, Groovy, and Grails 101 with Chris Judd and Jim Shingler.

There is a full track dedicated to Java. From what I can tell, you'll see these languages at the following presentations:

Java

• Actor Concurrency, presented by Alex Miller


• Executable documentation with easyb, presented by Andrew Glover


• Spring 2.5 MVC, presented by Ken Sipe


• RIAs with Java, Spring, Hibernate, BlazeDS, and Flex, presented by James Ward

Groovy

• Rich Apps with Groovy's SwingBuilder, presented by Andres Almiray


• Dynamic Languages and the JVM, presented by Nathaniel Schutta


• Griffon in front, Grails in back, presented by Jim Shingler


• Groovy/Grails for non-Java developers, presented by Michael Kimsal

Scala

• Programming in Scala, presented by Venkat Subramaniam


• Practical Scala, presented by Dianne Marsh


• Actor Concurrency, presented by Alex Miller

Where can I learn more about these languages?

Java

• Java Tutorials on java.sun.com


• Java Tutorial on VisualBuilder


• Java 101

Groovy

• Groovy Beginners Tutorial on codehaus


• Grails & Groovy Tutorials


• Fluently Groovy, from IBM

Scala

• Getting Start with Scala


• Scala Blog


• The busy Java developer's guide to Scala: Scala and servlets

Labels: CodeMash, Coding Geekette, Groovy, Java, Scala