Friday, August 15, 2008

Using the Google Collections Library for Java

If you missed this meeting, it was recorded and it is now available on YouTube in two parts:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeO_J2OcHYM
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ni_KEkHfto

Please note: The slides within the video are easier to read when you choose the high resolution video option. However, you can also download a crystal clear version of the slides in PDF format from the Google Collections Library project's downloads section.

After a nice introduction by Josh Bloch, Kevin Bourrillion dived into his talk. I won't rehash it blow by blow here, but, Kevin made two important points at the beginning that I will reiterate. First, Jared Levy and Kevin are the two primary authors of this library at Google. However, many Googlers have made contributions to the library and Josh Bloch in particular has provided them with a lot of guidance in their efforts. Second, this library is not intended as a replacement for the JDK collection classes. Rather, they complement and extend the core JDK collection classes. Kevin strongly urged anyone that was not already intimately familiar with the JDK collection classes to spend some time with them before attempting to take advantage of the additional functionality in the Google Collections Library.

Thanks to Paul Masquelier, we also have this public Picasa web album to share with pictures from the meeting.




That's All Folks!