Re: [birmingham-jug] JUG Status, the year 2015, and the verification of real humans

[Greg Machamer]

I'd be up for it.

On Dec 29, 2014 7:31 AM, "Mykel Alvis" <mykel...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi JUG,

It's been quite a while since this group had any activity and I expect that essentially everyone has a filter for it.

However, as I'm now back in B'ham essentially full-time, I'd like to gauge interest in restarting the local JUG.

Here's how I'm going to do this:  

• The group has 130 members, more or less.  
  
• If at least 13 responses indicate that they'd like to have the group meet again by 2015-01-31, then I'll call that a start.
• On or around the 15th of January, I will re-send a link to this post to the actual individual email addresses of the members that I have access to (to briefly circumvent their filters :) )
• I will attempt to verify that all responders are actually willing and able to attend physical JUG meetings in or around Birmingham.  
  
• This will basically involved a personal email from me with the expectation of a response from a real human who can with some veracity state that they're in or around Birmingham, AL USA.
• As has generally been the case, recruiters are generally welcome here (in a non-intrusive way) but you don't count toward the goal of 13 people.
• If I can verify at least 13 people (to my satisfaction), I will reassert the effort necessary to crank this group up again.
  
• If not, then I will delete the group and its owning email address.  
• There aren't very many old threads with a great deal of value anyway.
• I think this will make the email and name of the group available to someone in the future assuming there's a renewed interest

NOTE:  

To cast your vote for "B'ham's JUG is a lost cause", do nothing.

To cast your vote for "Reboot the JUG", you must reply to this thread.

M

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[Will McCalley]

Reboot the JUG

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-Will

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Will McCalley

[Steven McCartey]

I would up for it!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/birmingham-jug/CAN-djXQ-J%3DcFscJvRSGpO33_aLQSegH-nKVAUY-mQj_H6P%3D%2BLg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Mark Freeman]

I'm up for it. Rusty offered the McLeod office for hosting, should space be needed.

Mark Freeman
 

[andrew]

Reboot the JUG. 

[Mike Wells]

Thanks for your initiative and energy getting this going Mykel, Bham is lucky to have you!

I am not going to join (Because I moved out of state), but just to offer my 2cents.  I think the reason the JUG has not been doing well, there and in every other city is because there are getting to be fewer and fewer just Java Guys, and the guys that are Just Java guys are obviously not interested in improving their skill sets so they are not going to come either.  It seems like if you could somehow frame it as (The Group that Started with Java and then found interesting things, technology and jobs around that and want to get together and talk about what we all know) I am sure someone who is not still drunk off egg nog like me could find a good acronym for this ;)

I don't know if y'all already have a "New Tech" group, but that one is very popular here too.  That is a little too broad of a group though, and may deviate too far from the goal. I think that something we all know is people who ARE or WERE java guys are the people you want to join because they are the smartest.

-- The Armchair Organizer

Mike Wells

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Mike Wells
(205) 821-3928

[Mykel Alvis]

Thanks, Armchair Guy!  Your check is in the mail. :)  

And thanks for the card!  I got it about 10 minutes ago.  We didn't make one this year because our kids hadn't gone to the groomers.

[Chris Hardin]

I agree with Mike... Java is too narrow a focus in today's world... Most of the folks that are still doing Java in Birmingham, and that isn't many, are happily living their existence dwelling in the long dead world of J2EE... I'm doing Java right now on a new project, but it is a rare occasion that I start a new project with Java in this city... 

You can get as many votes as you want to reboot it, but few would actually show up... even fewer still would be interested in getting outside the shackles of their company's ideals of how Java is utilized. 

My two cents...

Just another A-hole... ;)

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[Steven Wyatt]

Reboot

On Dec 29, 2014 7:31 AM, "Mykel Alvis" <mykel...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi JUG,

It's been quite a while since this group had any activity and I expect that essentially everyone has a filter for it.

However, as I'm now back in B'ham essentially full-time, I'd like to gauge interest in restarting the local JUG.

Here's how I'm going to do this:  

• The group has 130 members, more or less.  
  
• If at least 13 responses indicate that they'd like to have the group meet again by 2015-01-31, then I'll call that a start.
• On or around the 15th of January, I will re-send a link to this post to the actual individual email addresses of the members that I have access to (to briefly circumvent their filters :) )
• I will attempt to verify that all responders are actually willing and able to attend physical JUG meetings in or around Birmingham.  
  
• This will basically involved a personal email from me with the expectation of a response from a real human who can with some veracity state that they're in or around Birmingham, AL USA.
• As has generally been the case, recruiters are generally welcome here (in a non-intrusive way) but you don't count toward the goal of 13 people.
• If I can verify at least 13 people (to my satisfaction), I will reassert the effort necessary to crank this group up again.
  
• If not, then I will delete the group and its owning email address.  
• There aren't very many old threads with a great deal of value anyway.
• I think this will make the email and name of the group available to someone in the future assuming there's a renewed interest

NOTE:  

To cast your vote for "B'ham's JUG is a lost cause", do nothing.

To cast your vote for "Reboot the JUG", you must reply to this thread.

M

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[jim]

On 12/29/2014 7:31 AM, Mykel Alvis wrote:


> Reboot the JUG

It has always hibernated. The only signs of life a pizza at Dave's.
OTOH I have seen Great Excitement that went nowhere. After great
passion, the only signs of life, a pizza a Dave's.

The problem is and has always been what is its purpose other than a
lifeline when someone has a problem and others rush to aid.

[Mark Hutter]

reboot the JUG! Thanks

[Henry McBride]

I am always up for a reboot!

--

-

Regards,
Henry McBride
skype: mcbrihk
Cell: (205) 908-2682
Twitter: @mcbrihk
Setup meeting: https://calendly.com/henry-mcbride
CV: http://www.linkedin.com/in/henrymcbride

[Mykel Alvis]

We have well over half the (very low) number of replies.  I think as of today we're at or around 9!

[Jim.J...@sungard.com]

I would be up for this, but as another responder noted, a larger focus than just Java might be in order.

Perhaps some of us have expertise in the items below.

Off the cuff, language wise, I can think of the following:

1.       Objective-C

2.       Swift

3.       Other JVM based languages, such as Scala or Groovy

As for technologies,

1.       eclipse stardust

2.       git

3.       Arduino

 

 

And also, selfishly, hosted @ McLeod would be very convenient for me.

 

Thanks,

 

Jim

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[Archie Cobbs]

I'll vote for reboot.

Also I can't resist responding to Chris' flame bait... :)

On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 11:42 AM, Chris Hardin <chrisl...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree with Mike... Java is too narrow a focus in today's world... Most of the folks that are still doing Java in Birmingham, and that isn't many, are happily living their existence dwelling in the long dead world of J2EE... I'm doing Java right now on a new project, but it is a rare occasion that I start a new project with Java in this city... 

You can get as many votes as you want to reboot it, but few would actually show up... even fewer still would be interested in getting outside the shackles of their company's ideals of how Java is utilized. 

Back when Java was relatively new (talking about in the 90's), it was pretty much the only "comprehensive" frameworks for building real web applications. So it got used a lot. At the time, that was the good news, but the bad news was that Sun built a bunch of overweight and poorly designed API's and libraries to fill out the ecosystem.

Fortunately, eventually lighter weight and more cleanly designed stuff inevitably evolved. E.g., I started on a big Java-based project back in 2004 and at that time the biggest productivity boost came from Spring, Hibernate, and lots of other open source projects, not from any J2EE stuff (which we didn't use). Today there are even zillions of more options, both Java-based and otherwise, which is great. These days the "official" Java API's are followers, not leaders (e.g. JPA).

So I'd also draw a big distinction between Java as a programming language vs. Java as an "ecosystem" as officially proscribed by anyone. I'm a big fan of the former but skeptical of the latter in any form.

Re: web stuff, there are lots of great tools for building stuff that runs in a web browser that are easier than doing that with Java. However, for the serious server-side/enterprise applications Java is great (IMHO). The two should be separated by a clean (e.g., RESTful) API anyway, so in any case you can have the best of both worlds.

Some people complain that Java has a verbose syntax (this is being improved in Java 8), but I don't think that's the #1 criteria for evaluating a language. Code is only written once, but maintained forever. So you will eventually spend much more time trying to understand, maintain, modify, and refactor code that's already written than you will writing brand new code. So what's more important than syntax is whether the language and tools help or thwart that effort. This is why (for example) Java's strong typing is valuable.

-Archie

--

Archie L. Cobbs

[Simo Sentissi]

> birmingham-j...@googlegroups.com

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I am a human and I approve this message! count me in!

[Simo Sentissi]

Just push the reboot button!! Count me in!

Here are subjects we can talk about and Demos:

1- Ninja-Framework
2- Guice
3- Jooq vs JDBC vs JDBI
4- Dopwizard


Cheers!
-Simo

[Matt Davis]

Way delayed response but...

Reboot the JUG