[series of entries regarding my trip to JIA]

Ramnivas really stepped up the level of the sessions with this one. I was extremely impressed with his delivery and with his content. He had a lot of concrete examples and he also presented common misconceptions that he explained. That seems to be the magic formula, concrete examples and myths. Those two things really make a session a lot more interesting.

Going into the presentation I had the assumption that while AOP was extremely powerful, it complicated things. By that I mean, you couldn't see everything that was happening in each method. What Ramnivas showed to countermand that myth was various IDE plug-ins that allowed you to see where your aspects would be applied in real-time. This myth really was one of the only things stopping me from using AOP, and seeing this made me download AspectJ for Eclipse that moment.

Another myth that was shattered was the idea that Aspects make your code harder to test, but Ramnivas makes an excellent point. If you use aspects, you can test the aspect, and then test the un-instrumented method and you've tested the entire thing. You get better separation and therefore have an easier time getting close to 100% on your test coverage.

One thing I've had a problem with so far has been the projector in the main ballroom. It seems that it's always blurry and if you don't sit in the first few rows you can't see anything at all. Some of the presenters have tried to alleviate this problem by having really gigantic fonts, with characters bigger than a man. But it only exacerbates the problem because they end up having to use the horizontal scroll to let you see all of the code.

But back to the AOP presentation, I really must commend Ramnivas on an interesting and engaging presentation that really sold me on the technology. I cannot wait to find an excuse to use AOP in my work now.