Title: Invest in your Java Katalog: Managing Java Version Changes on the Rapid Release Train
Speaker: Don Raab & Aditi Mantri

See the table of contents for more blog posts from the conference.

Links to Katas

• Oriinal Katas – http://codekata.com
• On GitHub: https://github.com/BNYMellon/CodeKatas

Kata

• Hands on programming exercies to hone your skills through practice
• Styles
  • Refactor  code and tests should keep passing
  • Fix the code – write code to make tests pass
  • Fix the tests – write tests using API
  • Sandbox – free  form

Learning by teaching

• Must learn something better to teach it
• Develop katas to teach others
• Practice through repetition

How to build a kata

• Identify what want to learn (ex library feature)
• Design a problem to solveWrite unit tests demonstrating how feature works
• Implement code
• Add helpful comments and hints so becomes standalone
• Delete parts of code that want someone to learn

Live coding

• Java lambda kata – refactor the code style
  • showed Java 10 var
  • showed effectively final
  • showed converting anonymous inner class to a lambda – used IntelliJ to do conversion. Showed casting so could keep using var. Said don’t recommend [I would have shown it without var. Using the type is far better than using var there]
  • showed converting lambda to method references
• Deck of cards kata – fix the code style
  • Showed code using stream APIs and custom APIs
  • Showed Java 10 Collectors.ofImmutableList()
  • showed Java 10 Map.copyOf() to make immutable map
  • Showed using some of the APIs in   Eclipse Collections
• Donut kata – fix the code style
  • Showed code using advanced Eclipse Collections
• Calendar kata – fix the code style
  • showed Java  8 dates, Eclipse collections, etc
  • showed three ten library (extension of Eclipse collections?)

My take

I like the emphasis on using  live code (doing the katas) to reinforce the concepts taught earlier in the session. I learned about an API in Java 10 that I missed as well.  I  was a little confused by the “Eclipse Collection style of Kata” comment. That’s a kata, not one of the described type. Then I realized it was still part of the deck of cards kata so a “fix the code” style one.