Dianne Marsh

Open Source Software at Netflix

Dianne Marsh — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:47:18 +0000

Netflix has decided to open source many projects, contributing to the mindshare for cloud development. Follow the Netflix Tech Blog for the latest news, but I’ll also highlight things that I think might be interested as I have time.

The Simian Army is Netflix’s solution to keeping your cloud working well. From the Chaos Monkey (which improves your overall, long-term resiliency by shutting down your instances) to the Janitor Monkey (which detects and cleans up instances you no longer need), the Simian Army is worth investigating if you use the Amazon cloud. It’s available as open source, so you can use it and even choose to contribute.

Today, another team at Netflix open sourced Garbage Collection Visualization (gcviz). Being able to look at garbage collection as events is essential to understanding its impact on outages.

Oh, and if you REALLY like the Simian Army, maybe you will come join my team. We’re hiring for work on the Simian Army and Edda.

Gradle and Build tools at Netflix (OSS)

Dianne Marsh — Wed, 08 May 2013 06:28:02 +0000

Interested in what Netflix is doing with Gradle for Build Tools? Check out this slideshare by Justin Ryan, Senior Software Engineer in Engineering Tools, from the San Francisco Gradle Meetup this week.

http://www.slideshare.net/quidryan/sf-gradle-may

FYI: The Gradle Summit is in Santa Clara, CA, June 13-14, 2013, and early bird pricing ends May 20.

Ann Arbor Scala User Group to meet May 15

Dianne Marsh — Wed, 08 May 2013 05:10:00 +0000

While I will be out of town, Nathan Dotz of Detroit Labs has graciously offered to help manage the Ann Arbor Scala Enthusiasts Group. The meeting scheduled for May 15 will continue as planned, with the Scala Koans. The koans are a way to learn Scala in a self-paced way, either in a group or individually.

The meeting will be held at 6 pm on Wednesday, May 15, at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104.

Enjoy!

New Adventures: Managing (my) career …

Dianne Marsh — Fri, 03 May 2013 04:00:48 +0000

One of my favorite topics is career management. I like to remind those that I mentor that they need to be in charge of their careers. I’ve said that while your employer may manage your job, the responsibility for making sure that The Next Big Thing is in line with what YOU want to do is solely yours. At my keynote at 1DevDay in 2011, I described how to manage your career path, and gave examples of I have been actively managing mine through speaking, continual learning, and community participation. My book, Atomic Scala, co-authored with Bruce Eckel and recently published, satisfied my technical leanings, and participation in local and national conferences (OSCON, CodeMash, and the Java Posse Roundup) was a further demonstration of my commitment to both learning and to professional networking. Guiding your career along a path consistent with your lifelong goals, particularly as they evolve, is a big responsibility and requires active participation.

No one, at any level, should ignore this responsibility. You owe it to yourself and to your organization. If your current position isn’t working for you, either adapt it to work, or find something that does. In Open Spaces conferences, we call this the Law of Two Feet, and it’s quite liberating to apply this thinking broadly.

SRT Solutions recognizes that employees are most effective when fully engaged. This translates to better software, better communication with customers, and to being a better co-worker. And, to being a better boss. Even business owners are not exempt from needing to follow their passions.

So what’s my passion? I like bringing people together and building great software to match what they need. I’ve had a lot of opportunity to do that in my 13 years at SRT, but I’ve decided that I need a new adventure. I could have stayed at the company that Bill Wagner and I built until retirement, but I decided to use the Law of Two Feet to find my next adventure.

I’m excited to say that I will be joining Netflix in Los Gatos, CA, next week as Director of Engineering for Cloud Tools. I will be working with an amazing team as they build software to support cloud deployment and management, used both internally and often released as open source tools to the broad community. I’ll be working with the other teams to ensure that they know what our team builds, and to help ensure that what we build is useful for them. This is an amazing opportunity for me, but not one that I made lightly. It required not only asking Bill to take on full managerial responsibility for SRT but also moving my family across the country. I remain committed to SRT’s success, and to watching the personal and professional growth of the SRT staff.

My nine year old daughter is wise. She said, “Sometimes change is good”. Indeed, indeed it is.

Ann Arbor Scala Enthusiasts March 20 — Scala 101: Come for the Collections, Stay for the Functions

Dianne Marsh — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 02:20:12 +0000

Interested in learning more about Scala? Please join us on Wednesday night at 6 pm. We’ll have an introduction to Scala, demonstrate how sanity can be achieved by having consistent collections (who would have thought of that?!) and include some cool stuff that you can do with functions too.

In other words, we hope to lure you in!

The meeting will be held at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI. It’s free and open to the public, but please RSVP on the meetup site so we will know how many folks are coming. You never know. I might bake cookies. Or not.

The speaker:

Dianne Marsh (yes, that’s me) will be speaking on Wednesday night. I will be actively recruiting additional speakers for upcoming meetings, so please volunteer! We already have a speaker for our April 17 meeting, but will be recruiting for meetings after that!

Ann Arbor Scala Enthusiasts March 20 meeting

Dianne Marsh — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:47:02 +0000

The Ann Arbor Scala Enthusiasts are on meetup and that allows me to post a poll regarding what folks would like for the March 20 meeting. Please vote! If you don’t like any of the topics, please comment here with suggestions.

The Ann Arbor Scala Enthusiasts will meet at 6 pm on March 20, 2013, at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. The meeting is free and open to the public. Please join the meetup group and RSVP if you are planning to attend so that we can gauge interest and tailor content.

Annual trek to Java Posse Roundup

Dianne Marsh — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:10:17 +0000

I’m here in Crested Butte, Colorado, for the annual Java Posse Roundup. Of course, the Java Posse delivers the podcast that keeps programmers on the JVM up to date, and this conference brings together a group of those listeners every year so that we can say, in person, what we’ve been screaming at our mobile devices 51 weeks out of the year. And, given the open spaces format, we choose topics for discussion all week. We also hack on special projects and generally enjoy the intellectual experience.

I’ll report throughout the week, but for those who might be curious what we do here, I’m posting the “Master Schedule” below.

Sunday

6pm: Welcome Barbeque.

Monday

Hackathon Day workshops

9:30 pm at the Majestic Theatre: “Possibilities”: A selection of TED Talks Designed to Inspire New Thinking, presented by the Java Posse Roundup. Free admission, all are welcome.

Tuesday

8:30am:
Conference Overview
Introduction to Open Spaces
Initial talk topics and organization
Session 1
10:30am-12:00pm: Session 2
Afternoon: lunch/hackathons/free time
Evening: Groups go to dinner or informal barbeque & discussion
Lightning Talks 8pm – 9:30 pm
End the evening with private gathering at Princess Wine Bar.

Wednesday

8:30-9:30 am: Session 3
10:00-11:00am: Session 4
11:30-12:30pm: Session 5
Afternoon: lunch/hackathons/free time
Evening: Groups go to dinner or informal barbeque & discussion
Lightning Talks 8pm – 9:30 pm
End the evening at the Dogwood Cocktail Cabin.

Thursday

8:30-9:30 am: Session 6
10:00-11:00am: Session 7
11:30-12:30pm: Session 8
Afternoon: lunch/hackathons/free time
Progressive Dinner (5 pm?).

End the evening at the Lobar with Karaoke.

Friday

8:30-9:30 am: Session 9
10:00-11:00am: Session 10
11:30-12:30pm: Session 11
Afternoon: lunch/hackathons/free time
Dinner at either Django’s or the Yurt (x-c ski or snowshoe to get to the Yurt, rentals at Nordic Center)

Scala as a new library for Java?

Dianne Marsh — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 00:00:29 +0000

I posted “Scala as a new library for Java” on the Atomic Scala site. The article is based on a blog written by Graham Lea in mid-February, challenging all of us to think of Scala as a new library or framework, rather than being frightened away by the fact that it’s a “language”. Let me know what you think!

Adventures with Single Page Apps

Dianne Marsh — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:07:55 +0000

Single page gurus Brian Genisio and Dennis Burton teamed up with SRT’s creative staff John Lucas and Anthony Williamson to build Choose Your Own Application as a fun and engaging way to investigate single page applications. You can choose from several popular Javascript libraries, web frameworks, and cloud platforms to build a single page app in many different ways. There are currently 22 paths through the system, and you will earn badges for completing the various paths, as well as for other achievements.

Gamifying learning — why not?

Looking forward to Java Posse Roundup 2013

Dianne Marsh — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:50:46 +0000

I’m always excited to attend the Java Posse Roundup, but this year more than ever! The Roundup is in its 7th year (if I’ve done the math correctly) and I’ve made it to every one, so why is this one so appealing?

First of all, our private google group, for attendees, has been hopping with ideas about what sessions people are interested in, and what the open hacking day will be. People are talking about hardware this year: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and 3D Printers. And there’s lots of excitement around programming NFC stickers. Software excitement is in the air as well: lots of discussions around Javascript and Node.js and Coffeescript. And of course there will be discussions about Groovy/Gradle, Java, Scala, and Go.

Many of the veteran attendees share houses in the town so that the geekery doesn’t have to stop when people go back to hotel rooms. The number of repeat attendees at this conference is very high, but it offers a good mix of newcomers each year as well. I see the newcomers offering great suggestions on the group, so they’re jumping right in too.

As far as I know, there’s still time to join in, although time may be getting tight to arrange travel. The conference is February 25 to March 1, and it’s held in Crested Butte, CO. Registration is at http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/JavaPosseRoundup/. Hope to see you there!