2007-09-30
I've hit JAOO in Denmark, last week.
We’ve run the JavaBlackBelt Challenge. Participants sit down, click, and get 5 random questions that they answer as fast as possible. In fact, this challenge runs alone now... as more and more people know it. This gave me more time for attending the sessions, and I’ve been quite happy with what I heard.
JAOO is one of my favorite conferences because it does not focus on technology only. It focuses on developers, on people, on teams.
One of the main messages I’ve heard from big guys like Martin Fowler, Erik Meijer (Microsoft :-) and Robert Martin is: focus on simplicity and quality.
Focus on simplicity: don’t over-architect. Silver bullets usually fail. Do the simplest (elegant) thing that works. It doesn’t matter if you’ve to change it later when more needs come (in a further iteration).
Focus on quality: look at and think about your code twice. Use test driven development or other activity if it can help you to focus on that. Are your proud of it? If your are proud of it because it’s a complex thing that only a genius (you) can understand, then throw it away.
Robert Martin gave a wise definition of "good" code: the code reads such a way that every line of code is what you expected to be.
Really, clever guys are the ones who make it simple!
John Rizzo.
Picture: Christian Gasser (right), our Danish JavaBlackBelt member having won a free pass to the conference through the auction system, with me (left).
See the web Album.
2007-09-18
JavaBlackBelt V3 is available for preview on our test server.
The V3 includes new features such as ...
- New Design (xhtml compliant)
- Ajax features (Question pre-loading in exams, instant question rating and comments,...)
- Improved usability
- ...
Some functionalities are still under development and the design revamp as not been done on every page yet.
But we'd appreciate feed backs on completed features such as the home page, the exam pages, the forms in general, the whole functional behavior (we did a tremendous back-end refactoring) and mainly the AJAXED questionnaires.
I would really like to have a feedback from Safari (We did test on Safari, but just on windows) and Opera users.
Please report any stuffs related to this preview at aymeric [a.t> javablackbelt / dot / com (not on JIRA please)
The final version is coming soon...
2007-09-05
We've created a page to gather testimonials from the Community about JavaBlackBelt.
It's rudimentary for the moment, but it's a start.
You may send your testimonial to javablackbelt dot admin at sign gmail then dot com and we'll bring them to the page.
Moderators can edit the page and add their words directly.
2007-08-28
New 'Spring - Velocity integration' exam has been released by brown belt Henryk Konsek (from Poland).
New exam includes questions connected with the topic of Spring integration with the Velocity template engine as an alternative view layer for the Spring MVC technology. Now exam needs to be filled with the questions - we will appreciate your valuable contribution.
2007-08-23
We've participated to a few conferences now (usually invited, thank to all these conferences organizers!): JavaPolis 2004, TheServerSide 2005, JAOO 2006, J-Fall 2006, JavaPolis 2006, Q-Con 2007, Sun Tech Days 2007, J-Spring 2007, Jazoon 2007, TheServerSide 2007.
If you organize a conference and would like JavaBlackBelt to join, drop us a mail.
2007-08-18
Thomas Schroeder, from Australia released Java 5 New Base Library Features exam.
New exam includes 20 questions concerning such Tiger's issues as JMX, enhanced concurrency utilities, new security features and many others.
2007-08-12
Java SE Core - Intermed - Programming exam has been created. This exam is required to get a black belt. Once the exam will be released, the black belt will be available (yes, we plan to unlock the black belt in near future).
This Java SE exam is no multiple choice test. You didn't think about becoming a black belt without programming, did you ?
Your valuable contribution is welcome - we need to fill the exam with quality tasks.
2007-07-23
Amzad Basha from India reached 8.000 contribution points last month!
When we created JavaBlackBelt, we couldn't even imagine that people would get much more than 1.000. You are incredible.
We asked Amzad, who is one of our administrators now, a little text about his path:
How much time does it took to bag 8000+ contribution points?
Well, I joined JBB community in June 2006. The toppers that time were with 1000+ (Jeanne) only. I just thought of to cross that number and becoming top 1 contributor, and I could succeed it in Dec 2006 or Jan 2007 (Couldn't remember exactly. :)). It is really happy that still I am on top 3 list. I am very thankful to John Rizzo, founder of JavaBlackBelt, for providing such a beautiful platform, and also my heartful thanks to Jeanne Boyarsky, Administrator, for all her guidance during the initial days at JBB.
Did you expect to accumulate so many points when you started?
To be honest, NO. I just aimed at one of the top 3 contributors. Apart from simply posting the new questions, I was involved in repairing the questions, which were pushed in repair zone. Also, I cleaned up Java SE - Basic and Intermediate exams, so that we are able to have more Yellow beltees in the community, for which John granted me 1000+ points manually and sent JBB logoed jacket as a gift. :)
What you like most/less when contributing?
I like to see more and more code snippets, which are tricky enough, and conceptual based questions, which test the knowledge and exposure on specific areas. As of today I posted 864 questions, there may be some questions extracted based on the text from some reference books / URLs, but I tried my best to fine tune the text and frame it as a valuable question. I suggest the people to post genuinely framed questions, which really worth enough, but not the direct extracts from the references.
What areas you contributed the most?
My major contribution is in Java SE - Basic, Java SE - Intermediate, Java 5 Features, JSP - Basic, JSP - Intermediate, JDBC and also Struts exams.
What is your next goal in JavaBlackBelt?
I would like to bag 10000+ contribution points. Hope I will reach the mark by the end of Oct 2007.
Wow!!! Congrats for the effort!! And Goodluck for your new target!
Thank you very much!
2007-07-16
Welcome to our Admin Team! When you need an admin e-mail javablackbelt.admin AT gmail DOT com and one of us will get back to you.
The team is Ahmed, Arpan, HenryK, Amzad and Jeanne.
2007-07-12
Henryk Konsek published objectives for a Spring Transactions exam.
It's waiting for your questions...
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2007-09-22
I’m preparing a presentation “ Inside JavaBlackBelt” explaining the internals of the platform.
I’ll give this presentation for the first time at the JAOO conference next week in Denmark.
October 29th, our partner SkillsMatter organizes a free session of the same presentation in London.
Should you come to any of these sessions; please let me know in advance so I can take a few extra gifts with me (my mail address is my first name at JavaBlackBelt.com).
I plan to publish a few articles extending the presentation, this year and maybe a video of one of the sessions.
John.
2007-09-13
Amzad Basha (a brown belt from India) together with Piotr Kowalski (also brown belt, from Poland) released JSF 1.1 - Basic exam.
New exam includes 24 questions concerning JSF web framework version 1.1.
Special thanks go to Piotr not only due to his moderation effort but also because he is the most prominent contributor for this exam.
2007-08-31
'Algorithms - Basic' exam coordinated by John Rizzo is finally mature enough to change its status to beta.
New exam includes more than 20 questions concerning fundamental algorithmic topics such as basic data structures, sorting, trees or recursion. Special thanks go to Alejandro Tkachuk, the most active contributor of this exam.
2007-08-24
As you know we go to Denmark September 23-28 to JAOO.
You also know that you get 15% discount.
Now you know that you have one possibility to go for free :-)
2007-08-20
Amzad Basha, a brown belt from India released Struts 1 - Intermed exam.
New exam includes 15 questions concerning Apache Struts MVC framework.
Please everybody say 'thank you' to Amzad not only due to his moderation effort but also because he is the most prominent contributor for this exam.
2007-08-15
September 23-28, I go to Denmark again at the JAOO conference doing 2 things I enjoy:
Obviously, I won't miss the great JAOO technical sessions ... which are not all so technical. I must admit I like the methodology sessions also ;-)
As I write this news, I think it could be interesting to run an on-line competition with a free JAOO pass (3.202EUR), or to put it in the auction room... I'll come back with another news if we do that.
And if you plan to go to JAOO this year, JavaBlackBelt can get you 15% off.
Just drop me a mail at javablackbelt dot admin at sign gmail then dot com.
John Rizzo.
2007-08-10
Brown belt and moderator Chinh Nguyen published objectives for a Swing LayoutManager exam.
That's the first non-basic Swing exam (apart of the JGoodies exams).
Volunteers are welcome to write objectives for the next possible Swing exams: Table, Tree, EDT (EventDispatcher / Threading,...), Input (mouse, keyboard, focus,...), Graphs.
The Swing LayoutManager exam is waiting for your questions...
2007-07-28
Evgeniy Platonov has set the (GoF) Design Patterns exam "Beta".
You've been damn fast contributing on this one!
2007-07-19
Henryk Konsek (him again...) published objectives for a Velocity - Basic exam.
... and I've put some bonus factor on it for your contribution points.
2007-07-15
Nicolas and John visited a corporate customer from Belgium this week: USG Innotiv.
This consultancy company started using JavaBlackBelt Corporate edition 3 months ago. This week they invited their developers having at least a yellow belt, to a little party. They were 12, including 4 brown belts (yes, already 4 brown belts in 3 months).
We got a lot of interesting feedback in this party, and one bottle of champaign offered by the company for each succeeded brown belt.
Congratulations to these 4 guys (who will remain anonymous in this news, for protecting the privacy of this customer).
On the picture, from left to right: John Rizzo from JavaBlackBelt, brown1, brown2, brown3, brown4, Nicolas Brasseur from JavaBlackBelt.
2007-07-08
Mwanji, from our team, has been invited by TheServerSide team to their Java Symposium at Barcelona.
The ServerSide Java Symposium 2007 in Barcelona got off to an excellent start with Martin Fowler and Neal Ford's keynote on "Language-Oriented Programming and Language Workbenches." Some of the central elements of the talk were Domain Specific Languages, closures and the Fluent Interface idea. Used together, these can lead to more human-readable code and a more sophisticated modelling system than the tree hierarchies we're used to, especially in dynamically typed languages like Ruby. You can read more about it on Fowler's website.
Our stand was between Sun's and Google's, impressive company to say the least! The first Challenge we ran was a Java 5 test, but a lot of people told me they hadn't worked in Java 5, so on the following days, we switched to a Java 1.4 Challenge. This trend was confirmed during Eugene Ciurana's talk on "Architecting For The Future." He asked who was using Java 6 in production. I think two out of over 100 people raised their hands. A lot of people weren't even in Java 5 yet. A couple of very ashamed developers admitted to still working with Java 1.3.
Several prize draws were held in the Main Ballroom, and a funny tradition was created: every single time, the first person drawn at random wasn't in the room, someone else had to be drawn. I could only imagine how their facial expression changed when someone informed them: "Hey, you won a PlayStation 3! But then you lost it!"
Thanks to Mark, Kelli, Nitin, Katie and Ashley at TechTarget/TSS for putting on a really informative and enjoyable conference! Thanks to everyone who took the challenge and got interested by the JBB concept and technology. We handed out a lot of t-shirts, so if you see us at a conference, don't hesitate to step up!
Mwanji Ezana.
The first picture on the left is Mwanji Ezana, from JavaBlackBelt.
The second picture is Mateusz Kwasniewski, who won a free pass to the conference on JavaBlackBelt on-line competition, a few weeks ago.
2007-07-03
Patricia and Aymeric are back from the Jazoon conference (Zurich) where they talked to many of you. Thank you for having made JavaBlackBelt a nice success there.
The first picture on the left, are concentrated participants taking the Challenge.
The second picture is Neal Gafter taking the test.
The bottom picture shows some winners. From let to right: Felipe Gaucho, Julio Faerman, Perica Milosevic, Nikola Postolov.
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