Glenn Vanderburg, Independent Consultant

Glenn Vanderburg is a consultant at Relevance focused on cutting-edge software development technologies and techniques, including Ruby, JavaScript, Ajax, and state-of-the-art development practices.

Presentation: "Craft and Software Engineering"

Track: Software Craftsmanship

Time: Thursday 10:35 - 11:35

Location: Westminster Suite, Fourth Floor

Abstract:

The software craftsmanship movement is filling a void left by the collapse of confidence in the notion of software engineering. That's not surprising, because craft and engineering are often perceived as opposites. "Engineering" is not an appropriate metaphor for software, many believe, because it is instead a craft.

But craft and engineering are not incompatible. It's true that traditional software engineering leaves little room for the exercise of craftsmanship. The problem, though, is that traditional software engineering is not really engineering at all; it is a caricature of an engineering discipline. Real engineering principles, properly applied to the unique field of software, point to a very different kind of software engineering -- one in which craftsmanship plays a vital role.

Presentation: "Clojure and the Web"

Track: Functional Web

Time: Friday 15:35 - 16:35

Location: St James’s Suite, Fourth Floor

Abstract:

Clojure is a relatively new functional programming language, but its Lisp heritage and JVM integration have attracted a lot of programmers and quickly resulted in a lot of progress. Several web development libraries have already been built for Clojure, and numerous applications are already in production using some of those libraries.

This talk will explore web programming using Clojure, focusing on Ring (a simple Clojure interface to web servers), Compojure, and various options for functional generation of HTML and XML.