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...