Samsung's developer conference is always interesting because it's put on by a giant company that invests a ton of money, but doesn't always get a following for all its efforts.

The good: Samsung is working to get its many different divisions talking together, which could make life easier for developers and give it some needed scale. There were some impressive small efforts on display in the exhibit space, including a partner using virtual reality to help people recover from strokes. Another one tries to "epicycle" old Galaxy smartphones into everything from a security camera, to a pet feeder, to part of a bitcoin-mining server. (That last one requires a lot of old smartphones.)

The bad: Many of Samsung's efforts likely won't see much daylight because, like it or not, most people develop for Android, rather than for Samsung's devices.

The ugly: The total lack of women during Samsung's hour-plus opening keynote, which had space for roughly a dozen men from the company.