Code Generation 2009 – Review

From 16th to 18th of June 2009, Code Generation 2009 conference was held in Cambridge, UK. It was the first time that I have been to that conference and it was a great experience for me. The event was very well organized. I want to say thank you to Mark Dalgarno and his team who have managed to organize a beautiful event. Also I want to say thank you to all the speakers and sponsors. Whitout them the event wouldn’t have been possible. Almost all of the sessions that I attended were really interesting and informative. The weather was fine and the food was lovely, in contrast to a common prejudice. And I met a lot of interesting people, all sharing the same interest in model-driven software development. I definitely plan to visit Code Generation 2010 next year.

Here is a link to a video on youtube that nicely summarizes the event.

A lot of attention was given to domain specific modelling, especially to the question of whether or when textual, graphical, tabular or form-based modelling is best suited for the modelling of software systems. The number of choices and quality of modelling tools seems to become bigger theese days. That’s good news since it makes it easier to find a modelling tool that is best suited to solve a given problem.

On the last conference day, I was speaking about Legacy Application Modernization – Experiences in a real-world MDA/MDSD Project. The people in the audience were asking quite some questions that I was happy to answer thoroughly. One listener had approached me after my talk and we had a fruitful discussion on modelling and code generation.

Last but not least, I took the chance to collect new ideas through the course of the conference to improve our own tools for model-driven software development. Those ideas are already part of our release planning process.

See you next year in Cambridge. Code Generation 2010 surely has something for you, too.

Domain Specific Languages – another Babylonian Language Confusion?

I just have googled for “domain specific language” (DSL) and I got more than 13 millions hits. Not least from this you can see that the issue domain specific language is a popular issue. Using one or more DSLs for the development of software might bring in additional productivity features and new capabilities. However, the more different languages you use in your development process, the more skills the developers need. Also, the developers more often have to switch between different languages in their minds. There is an analogy for this in real life:

OOP 2009

Last week I had been attending this year’s OOP conference in Munich, Germany. Loads of delegates had been attending the conference. The exhibition was fully booked in respect of available booths. Compared to the OOP 2008 I had the impression that this year’s exhibition was not as well attended.
I learned some new things and got a good overview on what’s hot in the IT business. Specifically the sessions held by Juha-Pekka Tolvanen (CEO of MetaCase) and by Markus Völter (independent researcher, consultant and coach for itemis AG Stuttgart) I found great.

OOP 2009 – Preview

Next week I will be attending this year’s OOP conference in Munich, Germany. There are quite some interesting tracks that are related to model-driven software development and that I plan to take part in. Here is a shortlist. If you would like to meet me in person there, feel free to come up to me.

Generate your Success

Welcome to Generative Software’s corporate weblog. Topics around software development, in particular model-driven software development are covered here.

In this weblog you will find entries written by people of Generative Software. An entry’s content represents the opinion of the person having contributed the entry.