JavaOne Keynote General SessionWell this was my first live JavaOne keynote session I watch webcast of last years but that seriously doesn't do it justice. I must admit it felt more like being at a rock concert and being in a room filled with thousands of Java developers was very cool. Sun made heaps of announcements which I won't go into here you can see them for yourself at the
JavaOne site. Check both the General Session and the Technical Session
Here's a list of the session I attended on day one:
- TS-1742 - Cool Things You Can Do with the Groovy Dynamic Language
- TS-8612 - jPDL: Simplified Workflow for Java Technology
- TS-2294 - Closures for the Java Programming Language
- BOF-4400 - Improve and Expand JavaServer Faces Technology with JBoss Seam
- BOF-1968 - Meet the Java Posse
TS-1742 - Cool Things You Can Do with the Groovy Dynamic LanguageGuillaume Laforge; Guillaume Alléon; Dierk KönigHaving only toyed with groovy in the past this session was a good refresher on the groovy language cover the language basics. Also they cover some of the create features such as closures and builders (very cool stuff). They covered some on the new features in Groovy 1.1 which is in beta such as annotation support. This very am awesome feature and they showed an example of create a JBoss Seam component and entity bean in groovy. (See Emmanuel Bernard's blog entry
groovyseamed) I think having groovy skills in you bag of tricks is going to really useful for all Java developers.
TS-8612 - jPDL: Simplified Workflow for Java TechnologyTom Baeyens Jboss/Red Hat IncNothing really new here Tom covered the jDPL basics but I think I would have been in the minority as I think a lot of people at this session haven't looked at JBPM. He did cover his new work on the process virtual machine which was very interesting. (see
http://www.jbpm.org/pvm)
TS-2294 - Closures for the Java Programming LanguageNeal GafterThis session covered Neal's work specifying closures for the Java language which may be included in Java 7. After playing with closures in groovy this is a powerful feature and I think should really part of the core language and it does over come a lot of the serious short comings on anonymous inner classes. Check out
Neal's blog for more details.
BOF-4400 - Improve and Expand JavaServer Faces Technology with JBoss SeamMichael Yuan, Red Hat Inc.; Kito Mann, Virtua, Inc.I missed the beginning of this session (Thanks Max) I session covered a lot of the Seam basics but also some of the new stuff in Seam 1.2.1 and some of the Rich Faces component integrations. I also brought Michael's JBoss Seam book earlier that day (
JBoss Seam, Simplicty and Power Beyond Java EE). The hot deployment features in Seam 1.2.1 is very cool. The ability to simply edit a JSF page or even a Seam java component save it in the IDE and it the refresh button on the browser page. The only exception to this at the moment is if you change an entity bean as you need to restart the JPA entity manager. I know the Seam and the Hibernate guys are working on this one. Also check out
Michael's blogBOF 1968 - Meet the Java PosseTor Norbye (Sun Microsystems), Carl Quinn (Google), Dick Wall (Google), Joe Nuxoll (Apple)For those who don't know the JavaPosse are 4 guys that produce a Java related PodCast in which they endeavor to present and discuss the latest Java news. This session was recorded and released as
episode 120 on the
JavaPosse site. After the session we all went to Kate O'Brians at pub not far from the Moscone center. I've pretty much listened to all the JavaPosse episodes so it was a lot of fun to hangout and chat with them having a few beers.
Summary
Well at the end of the first day of my first JavaOne I was pretty tired but I had a great day. I amazing to see so many people embracing a technology the same way as I do. Roll-on day two. Also getting to meet and interact with some of most influential people in the Java World is really great. This is one thing we are missing in Australia the whole silicon valley vibe.