A little over a year ago I launched WebJars with the goal of bringing some simplicity and sanity to how client-side JavaScript and CSS libraries are used in the JVM ecosystem. Since then WebJars has grown to 237 libraries and around 40,000 downloads per month! Check out the stats from Maven Central:

Note: It seems that some of the download stats for September are counted as October since averaging the two produces a more likely curve.

IntelliJ IDEA 13 has been released! My favorite new feature is the sbt project support that alleviates the need to generate project files for Play Framework apps. Here is a short screencast that will show you how to create a new Play app with Typesafe Activator and then open that project in IntelliJ IDEA 13:

Pretty sweet stuff!

I’m becoming a technology curmudgeon. For as long as I can remember I’ve used a traditional window manager on Linux. Maybe I’m just stuck in my ways but I’m convinced that the combination of Focus Follows Mouse (with a 450ms auto-raise delay), the ThinkPad TrackPoint, and middle-click scrolling is the most efficient way to navigate windows. So Ubuntu’s neglect of that paradigm in favor of something that feels too much like my wife’s Mac has caused me to seek greener pastures.

Reactive apps are all the rage lately. The Reactive Manifesto now has over 2000 signatures and all of my recent presentations about Reactive have been packed. I’ve just recorded a screencast that explains the async and non-blocking aspect of Reactive. This screencast walks through how to do Reactive Requests and Reactive Composition with the Typesafe Reactive Platform. Using Play Framework it is easy to handle async and non-blocking requests (Reactive Requests) and compose them together. This can be done with both Java and Scala but for this screencast I use Scala. Check it out and let me know what you think:

Tomorrow night, October 15, I will be presenting in Austin Texas about Building Reactive Apps. Here is what I will be talking about:

Non-blocking, asynchronous, and reactive programming models are all the rage today. This session will explore in-depth why these patterns are important in modern apps. We will drill down and see how to apply them to event-driven web, mobile, and RESTful apps. To illustrate the concepts, we will use Java, Scala, Akka, and the Play Framework as examples.

This week I will be in New York presenting about Play Framework and Reactive Apps. Here is the lineup:

Diving Into Play Framework’s Deep End - Tuesday, October 8

Play Framework is simple to get started with, but it also has some very advanced and powerful features. This session will explore some of these features, including Action Composition, Filters, Reactive Requests, WebSockets, Advanced JSON, and Dependency Injection. Through lots of code, you’ll dive (or be thrown) into the deep end of Play.

Next week I will be at and around JavaOne for a number of events and presentations. Here they are:

On Monday I will be leading a BYOL Hackathon at the new Typesafe office, followed by a roundtable discussion and a party. RSVP now to get a spot!

On Tuesday at JavaOne I will be presenting two sessions:

Web Fundamentals

Many of us have worked with abstractions over Web technologies such as HTTP, but REST, HTML5, and WebSocket are requiring us to understand how the Web really works. What actually happens when a Web browser opens a Web page? What is the connection between session state and cookies? How do HTML, CSS, and JavaScript work together? This session starts at the beginning and walks through the Web’s fundamental building blocks.

Tonight (Sept 11, 2013) I will be presenting Going Reactive! Building Software for the Real-Time Generation at the Denver JUG. Here is what is on tap:

Non-blocking, asynchronous, and reactive are all the rage today. This session will explore why the patterns are important in modern apps and how to apply them to event-driven and RESTful apps. To illustrate the concepts, Java, Akka, and Play Framework will be used as examples.

Next week at SpringOne 2GX 2013 I’ll be presenting a session about Building Reactive Apps. Here is the description:

Non-blocking, asynchronous, and reactive are all the rage today. This session will explore why the patterns are important in modern apps and how to apply them to event-driven web, mobile, and RESTful apps. To illustrate the concepts, Java, Scala, Akka, and Play Framework will be used as examples.

Hope to see you there!

It is becoming pretty clear that Reactive is the next big thing in software. But there aren’t very many resources yet about how to actually build a Reactive application. Recently I hosted a webinar about “Building Reactive Apps with the Typesafe Platform” where I tried to explain Reactive in a tangible way using the Reactive Stocks sample app from Typesafe Activator. Here is the recording of that presentation:

Let me know what you think. Thanks!