I attended the RTP No Fluff Just Stuff conference over the week-end. It was mostly focused on Java and web development, which is not my realm these days, but it gave me a chance to learn new things, and there was some general software development content as well.
The speakers were all top-notch, and, surprisingly, every one of the five or six I saw used a PowerBook. They used Keynote for slides, iTerm for commands, and usually FireFox for web. Most used TextMate for coding, except one used IDEA and one used Eclipse.
Highlights: David Geary presented JavaServer Faces as a better Struts, though most speakers in the panel later didn’t seem to think too much of it. Dave Thomas ran a Ruby track, most of which I attended. I finally got some real details on JavaScript from Glenn Vanderburg’s talk. Andy Hunt’s talk on right-brain thinking for programmers was intriguing, but I was only able to attend the first part of it. He recommended Whole New Mind by Dan Pink.
The food and service were very good, but the rooms were uncomfortably cold. I wore more and more clothes each day, but it still wasn’t enough.