CodeCamp Presentation

2009-10-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

What a great CodeCamp! 1800 people and 145 sessions in two days.
Overall the qauilty was great and the Agile classes are so revealing while being fun to participate in.

My presentation was well attended by a cross section of developers and we discussed some things in detail despite running on a borrowed laptop. Yes my laptop died 10pm the night before.
http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx?ForceSortBySessionTime=true&id=310

The presentations are available here:
http://www.slideshare.net/event/silicon-valley-code-camp-2009

CodeCamp2009

2009-09-23T00:19:00.000-07:00

This year I will be speaking at CodeCamp 2009 on the subject of FastCGI.

As some of you know I worked closely with Microsoft this year to implement a SIGTERM handler for the FastCGI library so that FastCGI applications can clean up before they are terminated by the OS. I detailed this journey into the complex inner workings of this second generation FCGI library (libfcgi2.dll) in a white paper. However, I will only talk briefly about this. The focus of the presentation will be on using FastCGI in practical settings.

FastCGI is supported by most servers deployed on the internet today.
* Apache
* Microsoft IIS
* SunOne
* Lighttpd
* Premium thttpd
* MyServer
* Pi3Web
* Aprellium Abyss
* WebSTAR (Mac OS)

FastCGI is supported by most languages in common use for web back end development:

* PHP
* C/C++
* D language
* Java
* Perl
* Ruby
* Python
* TCL
* Lisp
* Goanna Eiffel
* Smalltalk
* Basic

FastCGI is deployed by large on-line business like Amazon.com

The presentation will be geared toward developers that want more control of the communication flow for either security or large binary transfers. FastCGI applications can be created very simply using the same language the desktop application was written in within a few minutes.

A basic working knowledge is all that's required to start issuing requests and receiving responses from the server. Building upon this to create a protocol and library that is unique to your application the becomes a simple matter.

Since applications often need to reach out across the web, and learning php might not be able to fit into your schedule, FastCGI offers a simple way to implement web functionality using your existing skill set.

Unlike a ISAPI module running in windows IIS, a FastCGI process runs in its own space so it cannot take down the server if it crashes. This makes testing on a deployed server a non issue, but for really fast development, I will be using the excellent Aprellium Apache server available for download free. It has a very light footprint and can be run on demand. The setup is detailed here.

Since the concepts translate to all languages and servers, it will be interesting to see who attends. If you have any suggestions or requests, add them below as a comment.

Check the CodeCamp Website for schedule details in the next week or so.