A few weeks ago on a Friday evening, Canoo opened its doors to the public and hosted a new programming user group called Hackergarten. The goal of the group is different from other user groups: instead of learning from listening to a presentation they want to learn by writing code. In their own words:

Our goal is to create something that others can use; whether it be working software, improved documentation, or better educational materials. Our intent is to end each meeting with a patch or similar contribution submitted to an open and public project.

We’re excited to say that their contribution to the Gradle build system was accepted last week! The next release of Gradle 0.9 contains an “Announce” plugin that can notify you and your customers of build events using Twitter, Snarl, or the Ubuntu notification system. You can notify yourself of local build failures or notify your customers of successful formal build releases. It was a long Friday night, but the group of over 10 developers are all happy to see their work accepted. As the group sponsor, Canoo is happy to have kept them caffeinated and well fed.

The next Hackergarten is this Friday, 30 April 2010. The group plans to write some Griffon plugins, a desktop application framework written in Java and Groovy. The Griffon Project Lead (and Canoo employee)Andres Almiray will be present to help guide the group. If you are anywhere near the Basel area this Friday, then please stop by Canoo and come join the fun. Don’t worry if you’ve never seen Groovy or Griffon before, the point is to learn new skills and meet new people.

You can find out more information on the Hackergarten mailing list or follow @Hackergarten to stay up to date.

Come join the fun. Here’s what people are saying about the last event:

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The first Hackergarten was a great event, not only because there was free pizza, but primarily because it was a true team event with everyone actively contributing. Submitting a patch for a new Gradle plugin at the end of the night was our goal which we reached successfully. I look forward to learning more about Griffon at the next Hackergarten.

Etienne Stuber

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I learned how easy and powerful Gradle is. The fact: with a little group and in a little time, we wrote a worth-making contribution to an open source project. Did I have fun? Definitely, it was like meeting with friends but for a beer but enjoying coding at the same time. In the future I am interested in writing Grails or Griffon plugins.

Alberto Mijares

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At Hackergarten I learned about the Pomodoro technique and how to use groovy closures to do exception handling in a smart way. And yes, I had a lot of fun! For future events I am interested in anything with new technologies but especially with testing different approaches on how to program in teams.

Christoph Sperle