NIX Solutions Team on SpringOne Platform
To swim over the seas and oceans, and to not miss a single grain of useful information on SpringOne Platform was a challenge that NIX Solutions experts accepted. Our guys share impressions from this trip, the reports, and the training.
It seems that Java developers from Pivotal and Spring became so bored with developing all of these platforms and frameworks, that these guys arranged a conference SpringOne Platform in Las Vegas. In a desert. In mid-summer.
The average temperature is 43 degrees Celsius at this time of the year! But this is Vegas … Here, on the main street, all you can see are hotels with casinos. Between some hotels, there are even trains; between others, there are air bridges. Walking through Caesars Palace, by chance we got to Bellagio—the “Ocean’s Eleven” hotel. Few people go out to the street, as the inside is a comfortable temperature of 19 degrees.
We arrived at the Aria hotel a few days before the official conference started, to attend a two-day training which was held by the organizers. We attended training on Spring Cloud Data Flow, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, and Big Data. Each of them was held by coaches from Pivotal Academy.
I was very lucky to get a ticket to attend “Development applications with Cloud Foundry.” Training focused on cloud technologies and examples of their use in real-world applications. The main focus was on their own product—Pivotal Cloud Foundry. The speaker was not a developer, but he presented all information in an accessible way for everyone. PCF developers also helped to answer questions from the audience. I was surprised by the extremely comprehensive answers they gave. Summing up the results of the training, I can say that it was very helpful to me, both in theory and practice.
Alexander, Java developer at NIX Solutions
I received training on Spring Cloud Data flow. Practical exercises were interesting, although quite simple. But the major problem, as always, was a properly configured environment on the machine.
The second day was less intense—probably because of the pauses in between. Nevertheless, as a result of this training, we have a good, solid foundation, and learned more about interesting technology.
Roman, Java developer at NIX Solutions
First, there was a Keynote presentation covering both aspects—managerial and technical. The technical presentation was a huge success, and Phil Webb’s report may be called the best of the Keynote.
The general level of reports of the first day appeared to be the strongest, but the starting session on the migration process from a monolithic architecture to microservices for a large healthcare product, disappointed us. It seemed topical, but in fact, we learned just a minimum of useful information. Then there was the report from Josh Long, famous in the Spring world, which was interesting, cheerful, and humorous as always. However, he had presented a good part of the information a year ago.
Among all of the sessions of the first day, we really liked the presentation from Phil Webb, head of the breakthrough project Spring Boot. The material was based on a recent release; the correct timing of the report, the English humor, and the complete absence of slides meant that it was the first time that a 90-minute report hadn’t bored us by the end.
First was a report on Ratpack and RxJava. The report read Dan Woods, author of books on Ratpack. After the lunch break, I decided to see a report on AWS and Spring Cloud. The day ended with Spencer Gibb with his report on Consul and Vault. As a developer of these libraries, the author was able to correctly highlight the problem that is solved by these tools.
Alexander, Java developer at NIX Solutions
The second day began with a session on migration to microservices architecture. The guys from PayPal talked about domestic framework. This was followed by a report on Cloud Data flow with a stunning demo. In addition to the Data flow the Big Data, Machine Learning, and Reactive UI was affected also.
Roman, Java- developer at NIX Solutions
The report that we were very pleased with on the fifth day, was by Oliver Gierke, Head of Spring Data development. He talked about the features of the Data Rest project and described the solutions to its common problems. However, thanks to the recordings, all these moments can be viewed again.
The conference ended at 15:00, so we had a lot of time to walk around the city and buy souvenirs. Also, we could not pass up the roller coaster that is built around the “New York New York” Hotel. We could not have foreseen that this would be so cool and exciting. Good thing we did not have a meal before it. :)
After that, we waited for a ve-e-ery long way home…
P.S. Breakfast each day was excellent and healthy. Great lunches for fans of Chinese, American, and Indian food. Lovers of Ukrainian meals were missing home food. :)
We plan not only to share new knowledge with teammates but also use this inspiration for ThinkJava #4. Thank you NIX Solutions for the opportunity to visit this large-scale event and expand our horizons—we will use the new knowledge and experience to the maximum!
Eugene, Java developers at NIX Solutions
