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.

At the recent Next ‘26 conference, Google introduced Google Cloud Fraud Defense, the successor to reCAPTCHA. The platform goes beyond basic bot detection to address broader online fraud across login, account creation, and payment flows, helping organizations detect suspicious behavior and block abuse, including fake accounts, automated attacks, and transaction fraud.
By Renato Losio
Microsoft has released Aspire 13.3, introducing a new aspire destroy command for tearing down deployments across Azure, Kubernetes, and Compose. The release adds native Kubernetes deployment in preview, first-class JavaScript publishing for Next.js and Vite, browser log capture, and a default-enabled container tunnel, alongside several breaking changes developers should review.
By Almir Vuk
Anthropic has introduced a new feature called Routines for Claude Code, allowing developers to configure automated coding workflows that run on schedules, through API calls, or in response to external events.
By Daniel Dominguez
Cloudflare introduces Workflows V2, a redesigned distributed workflow orchestration system with deterministic replayable execution, improved observability, and major scaling upgrades, including 50,000 concurrent instances and 2M queued workflows. It supports AI agents, data pipelines, and background processing with improved reliability across distributed systems.
By Leela Kumili
Julie Qiu explains how AI serves as a "thinking partner" for engineering leaders. She discusses five distinct roles - Archaeologist, Experimenter, Critic, Author, and Reviewer - to manage the cognitive load of 400+ repositories. She shares how AI provides the "RAM" needed to synthesize legacy context, pressure-test designs, and accelerate high-level architectural decisions.
By Julie Qiu
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