Neal Ford

ThoughtWorker / Meme Wrangler

Welcome to the web site of Neal Ford. The purpose of this site is twofold. First, it is an informational site about my professional life, including appearances, articles, presentations, etc. For this type of information, consult the news page (this page) and the About Me pages.

 

The second purpose for this site is to serve as a forum for the things I enjoy and want to share with the rest of the world. This includes (but is not limited to) reading (Book Club), Triathlon, and Music. This material is highly individualized and all mine!

 

Please feel free to browse around. I hope you enjoy what you find.

Upcoming Conferences JavaOne San Francisco, CA May 6-9, 2008 No Fluff, Just Stuff Greater Atlanta Software Symposium May 16-18, 2008 Dynamic Languages World 2008 Karlsruhe, Germany May 26 - 28, 2008 RailsConf 2008 Portland OR May 29 - June 1, 2008 Software Architect 2008 London June 3-5, 2008 News [February 13, 2008] Speaking at Twin Cities JUG I spoke at the Twin Cities JUG on Building DSLs in Static and Dynamic Languages, which is talk I've given in some form or another for several years. But, I've continued to add new content to it (I've updated all the JMock examples to the latest version, which is very nice) and giving it has expanded my understanding of this topic a lot. For me, the more I'm "forced" to talk about something, the more I verbalize it, the better I understand it and all it's nuances. At any rate, I had a good time delivering this talk (despite the fact that the projector refused to show red). The slides from the talk are here. [February 6, 2008] Podcast about Groovy and G2 The 2G-Groovy/Grails Experience is just around the corner, and my buddy Scott Davis asked me to chat a bit about the talks I'm doing there ("Design Patterns" in Groovy, Groovyizing You Day Job, and Comparing JRuby and Groovy). That chat is now cast into pod, at this PodCast. [February 5, 2008] Speaking again at the Gateway JUG This is my third trip to St. Louis to speak at the Gateway JUG, and I always have fun there. The first time was about SOA (very practical), the second was about Agile project management and Mingle (very agile), and this time it was about Building DSLs in Static and Dynamic Languages (very futuristic). It was a great crowd and I hope I get back to St. Louis again soon. Slides from my Building DSLs talk [2008-01-22] Talking Head Video from CodeMash I got ambushed by someone with a video camera again, but it wasn't too painful. Just after my keynote at CodeMash, someone from Enerjy approached me and asked if he could film me chatting about some of the themes I suggested in my keynote. Well, it isn't hard to get me to talk about software, so he filmed some short segments. He also nabbed some of the other speakers and asked them similar questions, putting them together in themed video shorts. The first one is here: myself and my friend Andy Glover talking about the perpetual argument of art vs. science in programming. [January 18, 2008] My Blog...in Brazilian Portuguese Occasionally, I get requests from developers who want to translate my blog entries to other languages. This time, it was my Developer Productivity Mean vs. Median blog entry from back in October. Always happy to spread my scattered ramblings far and wide, you can read it in Portuguese here. [November 21, 2007] JRuby Podcast with Andrew Glover My good friend Andy Glover interviewed me for a pod-cast for the Java World site recently, and it has magically appeared. From the blurb on the site: Neal Ford and Andrew Glover are both well respected Java developers, as well as big fans of Ruby. In this in-depth discussion, Ford talks about why he believes Ruby is the most powerful language you could be paid to program with today, and explains the particular benefits of programming with JRuby. Ford also reveals why he believes Java developers will continue to migrate to languages other than Java, even as many continue to call the Java platform home. This is an essential, engaging discussion for those interested in learning more about JRuby and the trend toward what Ford calls polyglot programming. Old News News that isn't news anymore.