[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

As a minor developer on a framework, I was quite interested in the content of this session. To be able to see someone go through, code, and explain how frameworks differ would be a very useful thing for not only my development work but for the extension of RIFE.

Earlier on Matt took a poll on what frameworks are being used and what the audience knew. Which is quite a nice idea for presenters. It provides a way for you to gauge your audience and really tailor your presentation. FWIW it seemed everyone and their dog was using Struts.

Matt's presentation style is more of an informal style and it was fresh entertaining and nice. Although I might chalk it up to the early morning coffee. Later on in the presentation he had some code demonstrations that completely failed and merely wasted time, but live code demonstrations are never very easy. Preparation is always a good idea. I've seen other presenters prepare all of their code in steps beforehand, test it thoroughly and still have issues. Scripted and simulated “live” code demonstrations are probably the only safe method.

The presentation had a lot of content, but the slow demonstrations really brought the whole thing to a standstill. The earlier slides about the architecture and design of the framework were quite instructive and even a little frightening in the case of JSF, who's diagram consisted of no less than 20 individual parts. Compare that to Webwork or Spring which had at most 5 or 10.

In conclusion, the information in the first hour or so was interesting, but after that it just dragged and fell apart. Complete with mumbling and complaining about Apple and their Java implementation and fumbling for a power cord. So in short, presenters: Please, have a backup plan. This was quite possibly the longest three hours of the entire conference.