Day 2 of Gr8Conf IN 2017 – Hands-On Groovy Fun
After an exciting and eventful day one, we entered day two of GR8Conf IN 2017. Day two was pretty awesome with lots of hands-on coding and labs in each session.
The day had three parallel tracks with amazing speakers. The atmosphere, the sessions and the speakers really made the day wonderful.
Despite a cold day, we could feel the energy of the thriving and closely knitted Groovy and Grails community all day long.
Here’s some quick details on each session of Day 2:
Track 1 – Building Application with Grails 3 by Søren Berg Glasius & Puneet Behl
The workshop started with a quick introduction about Grails 3 and then moving on to solve a business problem which was “To create an application to order beverages such as Cappuccino , Latte, Espresso, Tea, Snacks, etc” onto your desk. There were various exercises around the same for attendees to get hands-on experience on the framework.
Presenters showcased the power of GORM and the power of Grails, as a full stack framework, which allows developers to focus more on the business rather than spending time over configurations.
Towards the end, the presenters shared their knowledge on the various plugins that are available easily and can be used to develop web applications faster.
Track 2 – Groovy with Java 8 by Kenneth Kousen
In the first half of the workshop, Ken discussed the functional programming used in Java 8 (including lambdas, functional interfaces, method references, default and static methods in interfaces, streams, optional class etc.). All the participants were given the opportunity to form a clear understand on lambdas and streams through hands-on exercises.
In the second half, the emphasis was on sorting objects using the concepts discussed earlier. One of the interesting exercises of the workshop was on sorting when the participants had to do the same operations using Java 7 then using Java 8 and then by using Java 8 concepts in Groovy.
Ken also discussed some important concepts from Groovy like annotations (@Memoize, @TailRecursive), closure composition, currying etc.
The workshop ended with a demo of a cool Groovy application that fetched images from Flicker in parallel and displayed them in swing containers.
Track 3 – Code Retreat by Naresha K
Naresha took the code-retreat workshop, which required all the participants to code in pairs. The theme of the workshop was to code Game of life in multiple sessions, each time starting from scratch, following TDD and with a different partner. Each session had different set of constraints which forced the developers to think differently while coding. It provided a great way to learn TDD.
Though the session got over by 5 PM but the participants looked absolutely fresh and full of energy. Some participants were really excited and took the opportunity to gain knowledge from the thought leaders.
The day and the event concluded with a group photograph with participants and the eminent speakers.
A very “BIG Thank You” to all the brilliant speakers for sharing their knowledge and experience and making this conference successful. Here goes a big “Thank You” to all the participants too for making this conference really GR8.
