Kenneth Kousen

Android Development, Part 1

8:30 AM MDT

There are currently over two billion Android devices in the world, ranging from phones to tablets to wearables to automotive apps. Each of them supports development using the open source Android operating system. This talk will show how to create an Android project, work with Activities and Intents, and work with the underlying Gradle build system.

The talk will work with the current version of Android Studio and include tips and tricks on its use.

Android Development, Part 2

10:30 AM MDT

Building on Part 1, this talk will add REST capabilities, discuss how to work with SQL databases, and perform asynchronous methods in Android.

Code will make use of popular Android libraries, like ButterKnife, Retrofit, OkHttp, and Room.

Accelerated Gradle

1:00 PM MDT

The Gradle build tool has been adopted by the vast majority of open source projects and is growing rapidly in industry as well. Gradle provides a powerful DSL for customizing and managing your build, with flexible configuration features and sophisticated dependency management. Gradle is also actively supported by a commercial entity, and in partnership with companies like Netflix and LinkedIn is currently being optimized for performance.

Topics will include:

• Projects and tasks
• Initialization, configuration, and execution times
• File system capabilities
• Incremental builds
• Script and binary plugins
• Dependency management
• Multi-project builds
• Build scans
• The build cache
• Creating your own plugin

Accelerated Gradle

2:45 PM MDT

The Gradle build tool has been adopted by the vast majority of open source projects and is growing rapidly in industry as well. Gradle provides a powerful DSL for customizing and managing your build, with flexible configuration features and sophisticated dependency management. Gradle is also actively supported by a commercial entity, and in partnership with companies like Netflix and LinkedIn is currently being optimized for performance.

Topics will include:

• Projects and tasks
• Initialization, configuration, and execution times
• File system capabilities
• Incremental builds
• Script and binary plugins
• Dependency management
• Multi-project builds
• Build scans
• The build cache
• Creating your own plugin

Mental Bookmarks and the Fractal Nature of Success

8:30 PM MDT

Good discussions are supposed to diverge from their intended path. Free association is a feature, not a bug, and helps you see new connections between ideas. Without structure, however, it can be difficult to add context to new ideas and understand how they relate to more immediate problems. This talk discusses the technique of mental bookmarks – how to remember where you were when a discussion diverged. In addition to giving you a reputation for having an amazing memory, the skill also helps with personal awareness in general.

To give the technique context, we'll look at the fractal nature of success – the way we tend to see our current environment in relative terms, always comparing ourselves to those slightly more successful and slightly less successful.

Kotlin: Safe, Pragmatic Interoperability on the JVM

1:30 PM MDT

Kotlin is a practical language designed for the JVM. It focuses on pragmatism and safety, with an emphasis on interoperability and tool support. Kotlin is statically typed and includes null checks in the type system itself. The language runs anywhere Java does, from microservices to Android apps. This workshop will show how to use Kotlin to simplify anything you originally planned to do in Java.

Kotlin combines object-oriented programming with functional features like lambda expressions, functional types, and data classes. Since it comes from JetBrains, the company that produces the IntelliJ IDEA development environment, its tool support is excellent. IntelliJ even provides a Java-to-Kotlin converter to help you get started.

This presentation will cover the basic types, defining and calling functions, programming with lambdas, higher order functions, and DSLs. The goal is to give you enough background to be productive while you continue to learn and grow with the language.

Kotlin: Safe, Pragmatic Interoperability on the JVM

3:15 PM MDT

Kotlin is a practical language designed for the JVM. It focuses on pragmatism and safety, with an emphasis on interoperability and tool support. Kotlin is statically typed and includes null checks in the type system itself. The language runs anywhere Java does, from microservices to Android apps. This workshop will show how to use Kotlin to simplify anything you originally planned to do in Java.

Kotlin combines object-oriented programming with functional features like lambda expressions, functional types, and data classes. Since it comes from JetBrains, the company that produces the IntelliJ IDEA development environment, its tool support is excellent. IntelliJ even provides a Java-to-Kotlin converter to help you get started.

This presentation will cover the basic types, defining and calling functions, programming with lambdas, higher order functions, and DSLs. The goal is to give you enough background to be productive while you continue to learn and grow with the language.

Gradle In Depth

5:00 PM MDT

Gradle is the build tool of choice in the open source world, and rapidly becoming the standard in industry as well. Anyone who works with Gradle on a Java project knows the basics of the Java plugin and how to write simple tasks in Groovy. Gradle can do much more, however. This talk will demonstrate how to write your own custom task classes and how to create Gradle plugins from them. Other Gradle features will be demonstrated as well, including file manipulation, incremental builds, generating the Grade wrapper, and resolving conflicts in dependencies.

Gradle Inc also provides a free build scan capability to analyze build files. This too will be demonstrated, as well as profiling your build, determining dependencies, and more.