For the May meetup of the Jersey City JUG, Ryan Latta presented Learning Under Pressure: Scala in a Hurry.

About the presentation:

How many times have you learned a new piece of tech while at work? I know for me it seems like every new project comes with some new framework or language. At the same time, most of the companies I’ve worked for expected me and the team to figure it out — no books, no experts.

I want to share a story of how I learned Scala and Finagle while under the pressure to deliver with hard SLAs. I’ll show you how you can use the same techniques to learn languages, frameworks, and tools without your codebase turning into copy-pasta from Stack Overflow and countless tutorials.

Ryan’s talk reminded me of a similar approach I took to learn a programming language while under the pressure to make good use of an afternoon at a conference. His context and his presentation make a stronger case. Watch.