Sat, 17 Oct 2009
Hadoop Talk - SkillsMatter 2009
After an embarrassing tale of misunderstanding, wrong locations and blind
luck I recently ended up at the Introduction
to data processing with Hadoop and Pig talk over at SkillsMatter - and
it was excellent.
For those that don't know about Hadoop, it's an OpenSource Java framework for data-intensive distributed applications. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Hadoop was inspired by Google's MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) papers. I was aware of the basics but even in an hour I learned enough to know where to look for more details. Pig on the other hand is (to me) like SQL but for Hadoop, it's a lot easier to use than writing your own Java apps and simpler (and actually possible) for non-developers to read than the reams of classes required for custom jobs.
The speaker was excellent, the presentation was well timed, fluid, concise, paced just the way I like it and other than the question session the evening was very enjoyable. You can find the Hadoop slides online.
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Posted: 2009/10/17 19:17 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
JRuby Cookbook - Short Review
First a disclaimer, I'm not a heavy Ruby or Java guy. Most of my coding
for the last couple of years has been perl and shell - because I write
little things that I need right now and those two languages excel at
that (CPAN is still THE decision clincher).
I recently became involved in a side project that is written in Ruby and Java though and in an excellent timing coincidence a friend returned my previously unread copy of the JRuby Cookbook. The book isn't an introduction to either Java or Ruby (there are already excellent online and dead tree resources for that) but it shows where the two can meet and how to get started at those points. It's not really a book to read back to front but it is a good approach for a cookbook.
If you're curious as to how dynamic languages on static language VMs can complement each other this is a good book to flick through. Score - 6/10 - it's not the book for me right now but it does show a lot of entry points I'll probably come back to later.
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Posted: 2009/10/17 19:08 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
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