NHJUG

I had the wonderful opportunity of being sponsored by No Fluff, Just Stuff Symposiums to speak at the New Hampshire JUG in Portsmouth on Tuesday. It was a lively crowd of 20 or so persons hosted by the excellent Ted Pennings, Matt Merrill, NHJUG, and Scott Curry.

We discussed Git, GitHub, IntelliJ, and eGit with regards to their importance to the broad JVM ecosystem. Many insightful questions were asked, such as “is the efficiency of the hard links to unchanged blobs maintained on Windows.” The answer was yes, because this is not actually a POSIX hardlink for commits, but rather an implementation like, but not exactly hardlinks inside Git tree objects.

CFMeetup

On Thursday, I had the equally delightful opportunity to speak to the CFMeetup online group, hosted by Charlie Aerhart and facilitated in part by Mike Henke, and supported by Tim Cunningham. It had a turnout of 35-45 persons, and has a significant additional viewership for the recorded sessions at Vimeo.

Resources

I promised some links to Git resources and they are as follows:

• Presentation slides in PDF format
• Curated Git links
• Git GUIs
• ProGit.org Free Online Book
• Gitorious open source web app for self-hosted Git repos
• GitHub’s unlimited free open source project hosting

Git workshop with Tim Berglund at OSCON 2011. It’ll be my first time at OSCON, and being the open source advocate that I am, I’m nothing short of thrilled to sit and attend a few sessions as well. I’ll be joined by some of my esteemed No Fluff Just Stuff compatriots such as Scott Davis and Daniel Hinojosa, amongst several others. If you are on the fence about attending, check out this partial speaker list, let the awesomeness settle in, and then book your ticket.

Oh, and last, but not least, our Presentation Patterns talk (with the venerable Neal Ford and well-known Nate Schutta) was also accepted as a talk at OSCON. Double win!

In the whirlwind last five weeks, I’ve taken Git on the road to five countries for Git and GitHub workshops and presentations. It has been a blast to bring a tool that I’m so excited about to folks that at first are skeptical about changing something as core to their jobs as a version control system. Within a few minutes and a few examples, converts are being made. I’ve found that the best way to share Git is to show how things are frequently done now. Heads nod in agreement. Then, how they could be made better if only… Heads shake, thinking such improvements are not yet possible. Lastly, a demo of Git’s solution to those current problems in an apparent space-age VCS utopia seals the deal. New Git-fanatics are born.

The first pair of recent stops began with ScanDev, a wonderful conference that brings agility, .Net, open source, and Java solutions together under one roof. I will continue to head back any time that I’m invited. Tim Berglund of August Technology Group and I paired up to teach a Git workshop before the conference. I was able to meet a student from Denmark that I had coached via the Internet on the topic of Maven, from years past. He was back to add Git to his skill set. The second leg of the trip after ScanDev routed me to Kraków, Poland for the 33rd Degree conference. I would rate the students there as some of the most intent listeners and passionate learners I’ve had the privilege to teach in the last year. I’m hoping I have an invitation to return to the 2012 instance of this show.

The second tour began eleven days ago and included my very first opportunity to teach Git at JAX in Mainz, Germany. This is a conference that Ted Neward and Neal Ford constantly say wonderful things about. I got to experience that first hand. A completely full room for the Git workshop was a wonderfully welcoming sight. The group and I had a great day together doing tons of hands-on Git repository manipulation.

Leg number two of this run took me to Linz, Austria for a combination of a full-day Git workshop followed by a Git talk at the eJUG run by the very professional Martin Ahrer. The group was chomping at the bit to return to work the following day and start converting SVN repos to Git.

The summation of this trip took me to Basel, Switzerland, which, I can report, is as beautiful as every other part of Helvetia that I’ve had the chance to see. Hamlet D’Arcy and the Canoo crew had me do two days of Git training in which both Canooies and external students attended. It was maxed out on both days — the room could not hold a single additional person. I squeezed in a walking tour of a quadrant of the city with Hamlet and his daughter on her skooter. I can see the attraction of living there with foot access to meals, shops, parks, the Rhein and flights to just about anywhere in Europe. It was in sum, a delight in every respect.

Attention turns to the future with the St. Louis instance of No Fluff Just Stuff right around the corner at the end of this week and a multi-day Git private training in New York City for the majority of the following week. Then, there’s the Salt Lake City JUG, and the Dallas NFJS. More Git fun almost every week of this year.

With this much attention on Git, there must be something to it. If you haven’t taken a look at it yet, set aside an hour (or six) of your time this coming week and do so. Let me know what you think. Maybe even sign up for a class if your interest is piqued.

This Summer I’ll be debuting a new talk at NFJS (and offering it a bit later at other conferences) that weaves together the combination of Game Theory and Software Development.

Some of you have been asking for a preview of the resources I used as references for this talk. Below is a non-exhaustive list to get you started:

• Prisoner’s Dilemma
  
  The most referenced volume in the realm of Game Theory
• The Teaching Company: Games People Play
  
  12 hours of high-quality video lectures by Dr. Scott Stevens, James Madison University.
• Rock. Paper. Scissors.: Game Theory in Everyday Life
  
  A basic introduction with diagrams and only a few math demands on the reader.
• Game Theory: A Non-technical Introduction
  
  A solid primer almost absent of math. Uses tables, graphs and diagrams as the visual channel.
• The Art of Strategy
  
  Recommended by Ted Neward. A different perspective and writing style from the other volumes listed.
• Your Career Game
  
  A focus on career advancement and recognizing Game Theory patterns in office behaviors.
• SuperCooperators
  
  A societal view of Game Theory.
• Beautiful Math
  
  A focus on Nash’s contributions to Game Theory.
• A Beautiful Mind
  
  Focuses on the psychosis of John Nash.
• Gambit
  
  Open source Game Theory software.
• Matthew’s Delicious Game Theory Bookmarks
  
  Set of curated bookmarks on the topic of Game Theory.

Many students and colleagues have asked me how to view the branch tracking information in Git. There are a minimum of three answers, each giving more verbose information. I’ve demonstrated each in the following gist at GitHub.