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.

Target has deployed GRAM, a GenAI-powered accessory recommendation system for the Home category, using large language models to prioritize product attributes and capture aesthetic cohesion. The system helps shoppers find compatible accessories, integrates human-in-the-loop curation, and achieved measurable improvements in engagement and conversion.
By Leela Kumili
Lesley Cordero discusses platform engineering as a sociotechnical solution for scaling organizations. She explains the CALMS framework, the "pendulum of tension" between reliability and velocity, and how to transition from reactive to proactive leadership. By focusing on communal learning and distributed power, she shares how to build resilient systems without sacrificing human well-being.
By Lesley Cordero
During his sabbatical, Will McGugan, maker of Rich and Textual( frameworks for making Textual User Interfaces (TUI)), put his UI skills to work to build Toad. The newly publicly released tool aims to provide a unified, “beautiful” GUI for multiple coding agents in your terminal, accessible via the same tool via the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP).
By Olimpiu PopIn this episode, Simon Ritter, Deputy CTO at Azul, sat down with podcast host Michael Redlich, Lead Editor of the Java topic at InfoQ, and discussed the latest features in OpenJDK and Simon’s experiences serving on the JCP Expert Group since JDK 9. OpenJDK topics included: the six-month release cycle, Generational Shenandoah, JDK Flight Recorder, Project Leyden and Compact Object Headers.
By Simon Ritter
Now available in beta, Neptune is a conversational AI agent designed to act like an AI platform engineer, handling the provisioning, wiring, and configuration of the cloud services needed to run a containerized app. Neptune is both language and cloud-agnostic, with support for AWS, GCP, and Azure.
By Sergio De Simone
© 2025 Created by Michael Levin.
Powered by
RSVP for Introduction to TornadoFX Workshop to add comments!
Join Codetown