Monday, May 26, 2008

JavaOne report

My apologies for the late posting in this area. Things have been heating up at work, but finally here it is!

Many sessions were interesting and I will in this post try to give a brief overview of the most interesting news (to me). However, I expect more posts regarding JavaOne issues will be posted on the blog later on as I catch up on my reading.

The conference didn't have that much extraordinary news except the extremely cool devices shown in the booths. I guess we'll have to wait for next year's conference and the release of Java SE 7?

Many things have been said about closures for Java and I guess I cannot avoid mentioning this topic when briefing the JavaOne conference. The key presentation regarding this issue was given by Neal Gafter (Google) who is one of the authors of the proposal that has the highest support at the moment. The proposal is named BGGA closures after the authors of the proposal (Bracha, Gafter, Gosling and Ahé). More info on this can be found at http://javac.info/.

Another interesting matter related to SE 7 was the presentation on annotations on Java types (JSR 308). This JSR will extend the support for annotations on types so that it will be possible to annotate a type whereever it is being used. Examples of places where it is not possible to add annotations today include for example types within generics brackets and type casting. With JSR 308 this support will be added to the language. This also increases the usability of for example JSR 305 and 303 which both propose techniques for using annotations to verify the correctness of source code.

The most interesting discussions during the conference was in my opinion related to the JMS (Java Module System). Being an OSGi-fan, this proposal is a bit disturbing. Didn't OSGi solve this problem back in 1997? It also seems that Peter Kriens had some trouble understanding this JSR in its original form. I will not give more info on this matter here but I think we have not seen the last of this discussion yet. I suggest you read Peter Kriens' blog and and also checkout the JMS JSR.

I believe the the many Java-enabled gadgets were the main attraction for many people at JavaOne. Sentilla Corporation presented their sensor kit for Java ME and the Livescribe PULSE pen is just amazing. I could not resist purchasing one example of both these gadgets. I will let you what they can do in future posts...

Javaforum presentation

I will tonight hold a short (really short) presentation together with some fellow Java-geeks at the Swedish Java-community conference Javaforum. We will present some of the most interesting topics from this year's JavaOne conference.

I will talk mainly about some of the upcoming changes in the Java SE 7 platform and some stuff related to OSGi.

Within a week or so I will give a more thorough presentation from JavaOne here. Stay tuned...

Friday, May 9, 2008

Conference over

This year's JavaOne conference is now over and it has really been a cool and rewarding experience for me. I'm working on a summary of the most interesting presentations and my reflections on these.

I could not resist buying two products from this year's Show Device and "Duke's award winners" Sentilla sensor kit and a Livescribe smartpen. Totally wicked cool stuff!

Keep tuned for my work on these widgets, I have a crazy idea for the Sentilla kit. The goal is to beat this.

Yesterday we went out for a better dinner than the crappy stuff that they served on the conference. We also did some clubbing with the locals at the Matrix club in North Beach.

Not that excited over the long journey ahead but atleast I'll have some time to sum up the week...

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Late first post

It is a bit late to start the blogging during the next-last day of the conference but my slow mind could not come up with the idea for the blog until this very moment.

The theme for this year's (my first btw) JavaOne conference is JAVA+YOU. I believe the theme is a good way to bring Java from the tech-savvy geeks that we programmers are, to the normal people in the world.

This is also from where I stole the title for the blog. It will not only be about Java but about me as well. Hopefully someone will find it interesting but if not, I will at least have a place to write down my thoughts on Java-development, shorter stories from my life, and if you're lucky: my secret recipes on chocolate cake.

I will soon post a small report from a few of the technical sessions and BOF's I attended during the week. Stay tuned.