Nathaniel Schutta

Architect as a Service

Nathaniel T. Schutta is a software architect and Java Champion focused on cloud computing, developer happiness and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books, appeared in countless videos and many podcasts. He’s also a seasoned speaker who regularly presents at worldwide conferences, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, meetups, universities, and user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches students to embrace (and evaluate) technical change. Driven to rid the world of bad presentations, he coauthored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough, and he also published Thinking Architecturally and Responsible Microservices available from O’Reilly. His latest book, Fundamentals of Software Engineering, is currently available in early release.

Presentations

To the Cloud?

8:30 PM MDT

Today you can't swing a dry erase marker without hitting someone talking about “the cloud”. From the CIO to the project room, the cloud is bound to be a topic of conversation. While there is no denying the buzz worthiness of the term, you probably should take a deep breathe before declaring your entire portfolio will be cloud native by the end of the year. In this talk, I will discuss a practical way of assessing your applications and how to create a thoughtful plan to move applications to the cloud - when it makes sense.

We'll talk about what factors to consider when surveying an application, why some systems shouldn't go to the cloud and what else you need to consider beyond the basics of picking a cloud vendor. Cloud based deployments have tremendous benefits to today's organizations - but as with any new technology, it must be introduced with care.

HTML5 Revisited Workshop

3:15 PM MDT

The technology space is a lot like the ocean - miss one wave and another will come along shortly; most shiny new things begin with a sizable amount of hype as everyone rushes to play with the new toy. This cycle is often met with a level of disappointment as we quickly discover our new bauble isn't all that and a bag of chips so we rush off to the next best thing ever.

A few short years ago, HTML5 was the new hotness but at the time browser support was spotty at best. Despite the spotlight moving on to something else, browser support has improved markedly and we even have new toys to play with! In this workshop, we will walk you through what is possible in today's browser as well as what other new features you might not be aware of. HTML5 may no longer qualify as bleeding edge, but it is still deserving of our attention.

HTML5 Revisited Workshop

5:00 PM MDT

The JavaScript Developer's Toolchain

9:00 AM MDT

Back in the day, web developers had to rely on their wits and a plethora of alert statements - to say our toolkit was spartan would be an understatement. But with the increased importance of web front ends and the rise of JavaScript MVC frameworks, a modern web developer toolkit is finally emerging.

We've evolved from text editors to full fledged IDE's with code completion and refactoring tools but our toolchain doesn't end there. With multiple testing libraries, mocking frameworks, test drivers and even code coverage tools, today's web developer gets to walk downhill on a sunny day.

Bulletproof JavaScript

10:45 AM MDT

Take a look at your codebase. Go ahead, this abstract will wait. Notice anything? Perhaps a few more lines of JavaScript than years past? JavaScript is no longer an outlier, a language for the interns, something we can just mash together. Today, JavaScript is a first class citizen. As such, we need to treat it will all the care and feeding we extend our server side languages. This talk will introduce you to a set of tools that will help you write bulletproof JavaScript.

Step one, make sure we aren't making any basic mistakes like using == when we really mean ===. To remedy these types of bugs, we'll leverage JSHint to statically analyze our code. In addition to walking through the setup, we'll discuss how to ratchet up the rules as you improve your codebase. Just like Java or C#, we also need to test our JavaScript code. We'll introduce Jasmine, a BDD style testing tool as well as other tools that make help in the testing process. Last but not least, we'll take a tour of Plato, a JavaScript source code visualizer. Taken together, these tools can go a long way to improve your JavaScript code.

React 101

1:30 PM MDT

For the last several years, the JavaScript world has been awash in various Model-View-Whatever frameworks and libraries with new implementations popping up like bunnies. With the popular React library, Facebook took a different approach to developing JavaScript user interfaces by focusing on the View in MV*. This talk will get you up and running on React, a library that gives us a declarative approach to designing highly performant interactive user interfaces. We'll dive into the basics of components, JSX, the virtual DOM and more. By the end of this session you'll have a solid foundation in what React brings to the table and how it might help you on your next project.

Angular vs. React: Framework Smackdown

3:15 PM MDT

JavaScript UI frameworks continue to evolve but centers of gravity have clearly formed around Angular and React. With both libraries boasting of big company backing and passionate communities, which one is right for your next project? While we cannot crown the one true framework, we will dive into the differences and the similarities with an aim to help you make an informed decision on your next web project.

Picking a framework is often fraught with clashing opinions, in this talk I'll try to help you make a good choice for your team.

Books

Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations

by Neal Ford, Matthew McCullough, and Nathaniel Schutta

Presentation Patterns is the first book on presentations that categorizes and organizes the building blocks (or patterns) that you’ll need to communicate effectively using presentation tools like Keynote and PowerPoint.

Patterns are like the lower-level steps found inside recipes; they are the techniques you must master to be considered a master chef or master presenter. You can use the patterns in this book to construct your own recipes for different contexts, such as business meetings, technical demonstrations, scientific expositions, and keynotes, just to name a few.

Although there are no such things as antirecipes, this book shows you lots of antipatterns—things you should avoid doing in presentations. Modern presentation tools often encourage ineffective presentation techniques, but this book shows you how to avoid them.

Each pattern is introduced with a memorable name, a definition, and a brief explanation of motivation. Readers learn where the pattern applies, the consequences of applying it, and how to apply it. The authors also identify critical antipatterns: clichés, fallacies, and design mistakes that cause presentations to disappoint. These problems are easy to avoid—once you know how.

Presentation Patterns will help you

Plan what you’ll say, who you’ll say it to, how long you’ll talk, and where you’ll present
Perfectly calibrate your presentation to your audience
Use the storyteller’s “narrative arc” to full advantage
Strengthen your credibility—and avoid mistakes that hurt it
Hone your message before you ever touch presentation software
Incorporate visuals that support your message instead of hindering it
Create highly effective “infodecks” that work when you’re not able to deliver a talk in person
Construct slides that really communicate and avoid “Ant Fonts,” “Floodmarks,” “Alienating Artifacts,” and other errors
Master 13 powerful techniques for delivering your presentation with power, authority, and clarity

Whether you use this book as a handy reference or read it from start to finish, it will be a revelation: an entirely new language for systematically planning, creating, and delivering more powerful presentations. You’ll quickly find it indispensable—no matter what you’re presenting, who your audiences are, or what message you’re driving home.

Pro Ajax and Java Frameworks

by Nathaniel Schutta and Ryan Asleson

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is the ultimate web programming methodology for producing dynamic, rich web experiences. Java developers are crying out for guides showing how to add Ajax functionality to web applications, and this book meets their needs with Pro Ajax and Java. This is the book every Java developer needs to become expert in Ajax. The authors provide the reader with the perfect Java/Ajax toolkit to get started quickly, exploring Ajax development in detail using the 4 most popular Java web application frameworks: Struts, Spring, JSF, and Tapestry.

Foundations of Ajax

by Nathaniel Schutta and Ryan Asleson

* Ajax is one of the hottest topics in the developer community right now! and this will be the first Ajax book that offers detailed explanation of how Ajax works and how to use it to best effect. Theory and practice covered immediately in one volume.

* Ajax works across many platforms and different groups of developers – this book is designed to be suitable for all those developers across all those platforms, who are interested in the hot new topic of Ajax.

* Demand for Ajax knowledge will be strong. Leading technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Adaptive Path, and Amazon are adopting Ajax techniques, and many other companies are doing the same in order to compete with Ajax. This book connect the developer community to the new Ajax functionality.

Extreme UI Design: The User is Always Right

by

You know about Extreme Programming, Agile cooperation, and continuous improvement, but did you know you can apply these to UI design? I'll show you how to make your end users happy all the time by applying what you already know about software development to the design and implementation of user interfaces. More and more, developers are being called upon to create user interfaces without designers. Extreme UI Design: The User is Always Right will show you how to use your well-honed programming skills to build measurably effective front ends.

It's all about usability, the software equivalent of flossing; you know you should do it, yet sometimes there just isn't time. For developers, there often isn't money to hire a designer. In tough times, developers who can design become essential, but most software engineers are schooled in algorithms and compilers and rarely in the intricacies of user interaction. This book is for all of you who find yourselves working on the front lines of software development and want to create an application that respects the maxim that all users are right.

Discover best UI design practices for software engineers.
Maximize usability right in your code with a few simple tools.
Write software that works for the user!

What you'll learn

Distinguish usability myth from reality
Give users both what they want and what they need (these aren't the same)
Use your application prototypes as test beds for usability
Apply rigorous heuristics to measuring UI effectiveness
See why CRAP is important to creating good interfaces
Identify and avoid common UI anti-patterns

Who is this book for?

Looking to get an edge in today's workplace? Worried about being downsized? As companies look to cut expenses, the developer who can do more has a better chance of survival. If the UI team gets the axe, can you step in and help run a usability test or whack out a paper-based prototype? After reading this book, you'll be more valuable to your software development organization, you'll have a more complete toolbox, and you'll create applications that don't make your users yack .

This book is primarily aimed at software developers who are tasked with front-end development. Considering that almost all software has some kind of interface, it should appeal to a large audience. Depending on how the book is slanted, it should also interest the agile community.