Codetown ::: a software developer's community
Time: August 22, 2018 from 6pm to 7pm
Location: Chicago 1871
Street: 222 W. Merchandise Mart Plaza 12th Floor
City/Town: Chicago, IL
Website or Map: https://www.meetup.com/Google…
Event Type: google, developer, group, meetup
Organized By: Chicago GDG
Latest Activity: Aug 4, 2018
In a world where everyone and their mother uses web development, a quiet grassroots movement is bringing back native development. Whether you're brand-new to coding, or you just have framework fatigue, native desktop development can be used to create internal solutions in lieu of needless/repetitive work across any industry. TornadoFX is so easy and fun to pick up anyone could get into coding while simultaneously automating solutions in their everyday work.
TornadoFX is a great way to start learning Kotlin without being bogged down by servers or mobile or web development. You're not required to know JavaFX to start native application development, and there's a plethora of material out there.
Come join us in creating a scheduling application for the neighborhood cat-sitter, who needs to keep track feeding up to 8 cats on any given day. Bring a laptop if you can!
Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.
Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.
Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

Asymm Systems has released Eliya 25.0.3, an OpenJDK 25 LTS distribution aimed at improving production diagnostics in Java environments. It consolidates several HotSpot features into an opt-in Production profile. Eliya is designed for teams needing reliable diagnostic data, especially in regulated settings. Future enhancements are planned for Phase 2.
By A N M Bazlur Rahman
Target built a generative AI system to improve marketing campaign forecasting by retrieving and ranking similar historical campaigns. Using embeddings, vector search, and LLM ranking, it replaces rule-based workflows. Evaluation shows 75% top-1 and 100% top-3 coverage. The system reduces manual effort, improves consistency, and uses feedback loops to refine retrieval using campaign outcomes.
By Leela Kumili
Erik Steiger discusses the operational pain of legacy PDF generation in regulated banking and manufacturing. He explains how transitioning from resource-heavy engines like Puppeteer and LaTeX to a serverless Rust architecture powered by Typst can drop render latencies below 2ms. He shares how applying Git and Docker concepts to template registries ensures ironclad compliance and rapid debugging.
By Erik SteigerIn this episode, Heroku co-founder and Ink & Switch founder Adam Wiggins argues for a 'local-first' architecture that reconciles cloud-based collaboration with the performance and data ownership of local software. He explores the role of CRDTs and version control primitives in non-code domains, and examines how a hybrid AI future might leverage local models for core productivity tasks.
By Adam Wiggins
This virtual panel brings together AI security experts to examine the evolution of AI-driven threats, from prompt injection and data poisoning to agent abuse and AI-powered social engineering. The discussion explores emerging attack patterns, incident response challenges, and the changes security teams must make as AI systems become more autonomous and integrated into critical workflows.
By Claudio Masolo, Elham Arshad, Sabri Allani, Vijay Dilwale, Igor Maljkovic
© 2026 Created by Michael Levin.
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