Tuesday June 16, 2015: “A Brief History of Java” – an irreverent look at Java through the ages.

And also a Lightning Talk on Heroku!

“A Brief History of Java” – an irreverent look at Java through the ages.

This somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the development of developing with Java from 1.0 beta in late 1994 through today examines the popular tools and technique of the language and how they have evolved over the last 2 decades, from a guy who has been with Java since the beginning.

Bio:

Kent Smotherman (@TwinFeats) taught his first lecture class for computer programming in 1980 at Kansas State University, at the age of 19. Since then, he has learned and programmed in over 2 dozen programming languages, including Fortran (that very first class), LISP, various assembly languages, C++, and Java, on platforms ranging from IBM Mainframes down to Android devices. Java is his favorite, however. “Java brings the power of programming to almost any platform on the planet, and the significance of that to the academic world of computer science as well as the practical world of Information Technology cannot be understated.” Kent has worked for most of Omaha’s biggest companies like Mutual of Omaha, First Data, and CSG. In his roles at these companies, he has traveled all over the country and the world as a specialist in programming, technology, and systems software debugging. But what really excites him is the web. “The explosion of the world wide web is an historic epoch in modern civilization. Not just in what everyone can do with it, but the fact that web development itself is so accessible. Combine that with the flexibility offered by Java, and you have an environment where the sky is the limit.”

Kent has taught web development technologies for government agencies such as the Florida Department of Education and Strategic Air Command, as well as free programs for kids that just wanted to learn how to make a web site. “It doesn’t matter what you know now, it only matters what you are capable of learning. And with the right attitude, a little hard work, and a good instructor – anyone can learn web development.”

Kent currently works during the day as the mild-mannered senior web application architect at NCR, and superhero Java web instructor at night for Interface Web School.

Location:Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska, 1919 Aksarben Dr, Omaha, NE 68180

Agenda:

5:30 Networking 6:00 Food – Courtesy of TekSystems

6:15 Lighting talk! Heroku by Naomi See (@colorful_n0mi)

6:30 Presentation

8-ish Drinks and more at DJ’s Dugout (Aksarben)

Please RSVP at MeetUp.com Also, in the FREE STUFF department, JetBrains has signed up to be an additional sponsor, and is giving us 1 free IntelliJ IDEA licenses to raffle away EVERY MONTH! So stick around for the drawing at the end of the meeting before we head to DJ’s!

(This past event was exported from Meetup.com) (43 people had RSVP’d to this event in Meetup)