Response to last week’s GWT 2.0 training was pretty enthusiastic! So much so, that we’re running another week of training: 2.2.2010 through 2.5.2010. If anyone is interested in joining us in Irvine, for all or just part of the time, please contact me (@bmaso on twitter, or use the contact form). We can offer some pretty good prices for the remaining last-minute seats!

In addition to normal GWT, here’s the super cool topics we’ll be covering:

• Code splitting — dynamically download different parts of the GWT app for efficiency
• GWT integration with poplar toolkits (e.g., jQuery, ExtJS, etc.) through JSNI
• Code generators and resource generators
• Mashups and cool service integrations
• Lots more!

This course is especially good for J2EE developers who don’t feel completely (or even at all) comfortable in JavaScript or the browser environment — you will end your time with us with some amazing “Browser Fu“!

Odersky’s Scalable Component Abstractions is an absolute must read for anyone planning on mastering Scala. The paper explains the purpose and use of three important Scala idioms you’d probably take a long time to figure out on your own:

1. Abstract Type Members. Prior to reading the paper, I figured abstract type members are just another way of expressing type parameters — that is, generic type params in Java. Not so! Abstract type members turn out to be an incredibly important  way of promoting code re-use through subtype parameters.
2. Traits. “Module mix-in components” is the term used in the paper, but in Scala this means traits. The paper explains how traits promote code re-use through much more flexible composition than Java’s interfaces+single base class.
3. Explicit Selftypes. Not so mind expanding as abstract type members and traits, but definitely a concept that needs anchoring for someone coming from Java or similar OO languages.