Kenneth Kousen

Upgrade to Modern Java: 2025 Deep Dive

9:00 AM MDT

Over the past few years, the basic idioms and recommended programming styles for Java development have changed. Functional features are now favored, using streams, lambda expressions, and method references. The new sixmonth release schedule provides the language with new features, like modules and local variable type inference, much more frequently. Even the new license changes in the language seem to complicate installation, usage, and especially deployment.

The purpose of this training course is to help you adapt to the new ways of coding in Java. The latest functional approaches are included, including using parallel streams for concurrency, and when to expect them to be useful. All the new significant features added to the language will be reviewed and evaluated, with the goal understanding what problems they were designed to handle and when they can be used effectively in your code.

Key Gradle Concepts And Practices

8:30 AM MDT

Gradle has been described as the open source project with the most documentation that doesn't help. Key concepts, like the different steps Gradle takes at initialization time, configuration time, and execution time are not obvious, but must be understood to use Gradle effectively. This talk will cover those topics, as well as how to use source sets, IDE integration, testing in parallel, the build cache, and multi-project builds.

New topics to be included based include writing your own custom tasks, using version constraints, archiving and expanding files and folders, and incremental builds for efficiency.

Recently revised to include dependency conflict resolution, lazy task creation, the TOML file for versioning, and more.

Modern Android Development

10:30 AM MDT

The process and preferred practices for developing Android apps changed dramatically over the past few years. Google now recommends Kotlin as a development language of choice. In addition, Google introduced the Jetpack suite of libraries, like ViewModel, LiveData, and the Room ORM model for persistence. The recommended architecture now combines the components with networking libraries like OkHttp and Retrofit. Even dependency injection frameworks, like Dagger and now Hilt, are part of typical applications.

This talk will discuss how Android development has changed, and illustrate the newer, component-based approach to building robust mobile applications.

Java Testing Workshop With JUnit 5 and Mockito

1:00 PM MDT

The fundamental testing libraries in Java have undergone complete redesigns in the past few years. JUnit 5 redesigns the most well-known tool in all of testing. The most popular mocking library, Mockito, has also been rebuilt. This workshop will introduce the new features, help you use them as intended, and discuss experimental ideas still in the pipeline.

JUnit has been remarkably stable over the years and is one of the most widely adopted frameworks in the Java world. The latest version, JUnit 5, takes JUnit to the next level. Full of new features like conditional test execution, parametric testing, labeling and filtering tests, and more, it brings all the modern thinking on testing into the JUnit world. It also takes advantage of the functional features added to Java since version 8 to create a powerful, new library for testing your code. With the release of Mockito 3, the mocking library now requires functional features from Java 8 and takes advantage of them in interesting ways. This workshop helps you work with both libraries.

Java Testing Workshop With JUnit 5 and Mockito

3:00 PM MDT

The fundamental testing libraries in Java have undergone complete redesigns in the past few years. JUnit 5 redesigns the most well-known tool in all of testing. The most popular mocking library, Mockito, has also been rebuilt. This workshop will introduce the new features, help you use them as intended, and discuss experimental ideas still in the pipeline.

JUnit has been remarkably stable over the years and is one of the most widely adopted frameworks in the Java world. The latest version, JUnit 5, takes JUnit to the next level. Full of new features like conditional test execution, parametric testing, labeling and filtering tests, and more, it brings all the modern thinking on testing into the JUnit world. It also takes advantage of the functional features added to Java since version 8 to create a powerful, new library for testing your code. With the release of Mockito 3, the mocking library now requires functional features from Java 8 and takes advantage of them in interesting ways. This workshop helps you work with both libraries.

Latest Features In Java

5:00 PM MDT

Java is now on a six-month release schedule, with new features being added all the time. This talk summarizes the features that have been added to Java, including collection factory methods, private methods in interfaces, records, the enhanced switch statement, and more. The goal is to show not only what has been added, but why and where to use them.

Additional topics will include Local Variable Type Inference, the new HTTP client, the pattern matching, and text blocks. This talk will be updated throughout the year as more features are added to new releases.

Help Your Boss Help You

7:30 PM MDT

Conflict between technical professionals and traditional managers is inevitable, because you want different things. Worse, most employees feel that when conflicts arise, their only options are either to go along with what the manager wants, or leave. Neither option gets you what you want when you want it.

This talk discusses a third option: how to build a relationship over time that makes your boss an ally. The goal is to build a productive relationship that allows you to push back against decisions you don't like, while maintaining a constructive, loyalty-based relationship that satisfies both sides. Topics will include the two messages to keep in mind whenever you interact with the boss, how to use solutions to the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma problem to resolve conflicts, how to structure communications in way most likely to be heard and understood, and more.

Functional Programming in Java, Groovy, and Kotlin

9:00 AM MDT

See how features of functional programming are implemented in three different JVM-based languages. Examples include how lambda expressions, method references, and streams are handled differently, as well as higher-order functions, closure composition, trampolining, currying, tail recursion, and more.

Kotlin, Groovy, and Java are all object-oriented languages with functional features. It's interesting to see what capabilities they implemented in similar ways and which are unique to that language.

Kotlin Features That Surprise Java Developers

11:00 AM MDT

Kotlin is a JVM-based language, and many of its features are borrowed from related languages like Groovy and Scala. It is designed to work well with Java and to be easy for existing Java developers to learn. Nevertheless, Kotlin contains several features and practices that surprise Java developers. This talk will review several of those features, and help existing Java developers understand them and use them productively.

Examples will include how to create static properties and methods without a static keyword, overriding properties as well as functions, defining objects rather than classes, the Unit and Nothing classes, why const is useful when you already haveval for final, and more.

Kotlin Workshop

1:30 PM MDT

Learn the basic syntax and semantics for the Kotlin programming language. Kotlin is an alternative JVM language that provides null safety, static typing, and powerful IDE support. This workshop will give you the chance to code in Kotlin, highlighting its similarities and differences from Java, how to use functional programming skills, work with collections, access restful web services, and more.

This workshop will examine features of Kotlin at a greater depth than most tutorials. Coroutines – the most popular feature of the language – will also be covered, as well as higher order functions, reduction operations like reduce and fold, and lambdas with receivers. Those topics progress toward building DSLs and builders in Kotlin. Terms like “apply”, “let”, “use”, “also”, and “with” will be covered along with their typical use cases.

Details of the type system, including the Any, Unit, and Nothing classes, will be included. Examples will be provided on how to define extension functions, infix operators, and inlining functions for efficiency.

Kotlin Workshop

3:15 PM MDT

Learn the basic syntax and semantics for the Kotlin programming language. Kotlin is an alternative JVM language that provides null safety, static typing, and powerful IDE support. This workshop will give you the chance to code in Kotlin, highlighting its similarities and differences from Java, how to use functional programming skills, work with collections, access restful web services, and more.

This workshop will examine features of Kotlin at a greater depth than most tutorials. Coroutines – the most popular feature of the language – will also be covered, as well as higher order functions, reduction operations like reduce and fold, and lambdas with receivers. Those topics progress toward building DSLs and builders in Kotlin. Terms like “apply”, “let”, “use”, “also”, and “with” will be covered along with their typical use cases.

Details of the type system, including the Any, Unit, and Nothing classes, will be included. Examples will be provided on how to define extension functions, infix operators, and inlining functions for efficiency.

Kotlin and Spring: A Winning Combination

5:00 PM MDT

Most developers are aware that Kotlin is the language of choice for Android applications, it can also be used effectively on the server side. The Spring Framework in particular makes excellent use of Kotlin features. Spring supports Kotlin data classes and reified types, provides extension functions and small domain-specific languages for bean configuration and testing, and more.

This talk will show how Kotlin fits into the Spring ecosystem and how Spring developers can benefit from its null safety, strong typing, and powerful support for concurrency.

Spring MVC

9:00 AM MDT

Spring is still the leading open source framework in the Java world for building web apps and web services. This workshop will walk through creating both, with special emphasis on deployable restful web services. In addition to the basic code, the workshop will look at how Spring operates, including the proxy design pattern, interceptors, managing singletons, and more.

=== Spring MVC architecture

• Major concepts
• Processing HTTP requests and responses
• Configuration options
• Test support

=== Spring Boot Features

• Spring MVC autoconfiguration
• HTTP message converters
• JSON serializers
• Serving static content
• Using template engines

=== Special bean types

• Handler mappings
• View resolvers
• Filters and interceptors
• Exception resolvers
• Content negotiation and REST

=== Annotated controllers

• Request mapping
• Handler methods
• Model objects
• Data binding and validation

=== Functional endpoints

• Handler functions
• Router functions and beans
• Deployment options
• Alternative language features

Spring MVC

11:00 AM MDT

Spring is still the leading open source framework in the Java world for building web apps and web services. This workshop will walk through creating both, with special emphasis on deployable restful web services. In addition to the basic code, the workshop will look at how Spring operates, including the proxy design pattern, interceptors, managing singletons, and more.

=== Spring MVC architecture

• Major concepts
• Processing HTTP requests and responses
• Configuration options
• Test support

=== Spring Boot Features

• Spring MVC autoconfiguration
• HTTP message converters
• JSON serializers
• Serving static content
• Using template engines

=== Special bean types

• Handler mappings
• View resolvers
• Filters and interceptors
• Exception resolvers
• Content negotiation and REST

=== Annotated controllers

• Request mapping
• Handler methods
• Model objects
• Data binding and validation

=== Functional endpoints

• Handler functions
• Router functions and beans
• Deployment options
• Alternative language features

Mental Bookmarks and the Fractal Nature of Success

1:30 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.