Java and Rock'n'roll!

After the first and half day of Java one I finally got around having enough time on my hands to actually write something down here. In between two sessions with a longer break so I, so here I am again ...

Niel Young appeared on the key note yesterday! A real rocker appears on stage and promotes Java and Blue Ray. They still manage to produce surprises! I thought Java was becoming mainstream and thus a bit boring - i.e. JavaOne would become more like a regular serious conference, but it is still as fun as the earlier years. There is also still innovation going on; the whole story with dynamic languages (just came from Ola Bini's talk on Ruby/JRuby on Rails - very interesting!), the contents of Java SE 7 (much debate yet), Java FX (getting into shape nicely), and much more.

New this year, conveyed during the key note, is more emphasis on Open Source and the community. Sun is becoming more Open about Open Source. There is an ongoing revolution: the enterprise lock-in is dissolving, we will see more modularity, not only in architectures but also in business models. We will see more ways of connecting to our data, the notion of the many "screens of one's life".

Back to the Java SE 7 contents and the 'module' discussion in particular; seemingly there is still some controversy about it. I.e. the OSGi vs. JSR-277 thing. I tend to lean more towards the OSGi approach, as it does not imply any actual additions to the language. It is also a proven and working model. More, yesterday I listened to Alex Buckley's talk on how and what to add to a language and why. According to Buckley a language should be kept as clean as possible, whereas an application should be as rich as possible to satisfy users of it. In my opinion a strong argument for OSGi as the module system for Java.

Tomorrow I plan to listen to Peter Kriens. Hope get a chance to ask him about his view on this.

When will Java SE 7 appear? Some say next summer... JavaOne 2009 is scheduled for June 2 - 5. Coincidence?