2009 JavaOne Conference Wrap-Up: A Solid Show

San Francisco, California -- The JavaOne conference is the kind of event where the declaration "Classpath is dead!"* causes hundreds of people to applaud soundly and hoot their approval. We're talking hardcore, middleware-loving, certified-geeky Javaheads coming together to share their love of -- and frustrations over -- the Java programming language and platform, and the extended technology that it informs.

The 2009 JavaOne conference resoundingly strengthened that tradition by offering four days of solid technical content. As we explored the Moscone Center this week and talked with attendees, a theme emerged: They overwhelmingly got what they came for, a technical transfer of knowledge and discourse with fellow developers with similar issues. CommunityOne West served as the "soft launch," with the CommunityOne Web Event live stream making it easy for anyone to watch the highlights.

As always, development teams aimed to make available new or updated releases at this JavaOne conference. As always, some made it and some did not. And as always, participants were happy to be part of the process and to get firsthand information in the form of previews or beta releases.

Finally, a wonderfully irreverent streak of techy humor sang through the Conference, starting with the huge Edward Hopper-esque "coffee shop" mural that greeted attendees as they rode the escalators down into Moscone North. If you looked closely, you could spot Duke, the Linux penguin, the MySQL dolphin, James Gosling, and several Sun folks lurking in the shadows of the mural. The winning videos from the Dude, Where's My Pass? contest were also a testament to this community's sense of humor.

Chris Mellisinos of Sun Microsystems was this year's JavaOne conference host, and he was highly visible all week. Mellisinos introduced all of the general sessions. You can read detailed reporting on these sessions at the JavaOne Online web site. And you can look at photos or watch the video replay of the sessions.

Jonathan Schwartz

The Change (Y)our World theme of the opening general session took on special meaning when Sun Microsystems president Jonathan Schwartz invited Sun chairman Scott McNealy onstage.

From left to right: James Gosling, Scott McNealy, Chris Mellisinos

After a few words, Schwartz left the stage and McNealy was joined by a surprise guest, Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison. Ellison reiterated his support for Java technology as the two luminaries bantered onstage, and McNealy presented Elllison with a sail emblazoned with the Java logo. Finally, McNealy faced the crowd alone and bowed to the audience in homage to their advocacy of Java technology, and they returned the love with a standing ovation.

From left to right: Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy

Speakers from Sun Microsystems, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, and IBM delivered the next general sessions, including the mobility general session.

The final general session, as always, was James Gosling's toy show. It featured some of the Duke's Choice award winners. The BlueJ/Greenfoot initiative received recognition for its IDE and program that teaches kids to program -- mostly in India and China, to date.

During the enthralling session (covered elsewhere on this site, or watch the video replay), Gosling talked about his love for "hammer" technology, where you just cobble things together to get the desired -- or occasionally unexpected -- output. He also introduced Sun technology evangelists Simon Ritter and Angela Caicedo as "engineers with social skills, which is usually an empty set" in our world. The audience fondly ate it up.

From attendance estimates, the most popular sessions dwelt on core Java technology and the emerging JavaFX and Sun Cloud technologies. "Effective Java," Joshua Bloch's best practices for the Java programming languages and its core libraries, was one of the most attended sessions. "Developing RESTful Web Services With JAX-RS," presented by Sun engineers Marc Hadley and Paul Sandoz, ranked highly as well. Alex Miller's "Java Platform Concurrency Gotchas" joined the top ranks.

Other popular sessions and panels included the following: "Google App Engine: Java Technology in the Cloud," "Spring Framework 3.0," "Unit Testing That Sucks Less," "Return of the Puzzlers," "Garbage Collection Tuning," "Creating Compelling User Experiences," and the "Cloud Computing" panel discussion.

The more interactive Pavilion floor, a large portion of it renamed Java Utopia, was innovative. Rather than the usual static booths with staff waiting for participants to approach them, the Utopia area was an interactive, user-friendly, hands-on jumble of comfortable seating, big monitors and TVs, laptops, and people. To get a subjective rating of this year's Pavilion floor giveaways, check out the June 5 Daily Prompt. And the popular author signings at the Book Store gave attendees the chance to talk to their favorite Java book authors.

You know how you went to those concerts when you were younger, got a little zany, and are now grateful that no one then had a cell phone camera? Well, the World Class Rockers band totally rocked the Marriott ballroom on Thursday night. Yes, we found ourselves doing the Pony at one point. The crowd called the rockers back for an encore, at which point the band invited the more, let's say, enthusiastic audience members to join them onstage. Numerous cell phone photos were taken. We predict money will change hands as these photos gradually disappear from the Internet.

JavaOne Attendees

A smidgen of nostalgia wafted over what may be the final JavaOne conference under the current Sun regime. We're poised for an invigorating new phase of growth. Like any marriage, we bring our core selves with us, make compromises to lie peaceably in the marital bed together, and -- when it works -- the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. Here's to the next coming-together of the JavaOne world.

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^*"Classpath is dead!", Mark Reinhold, Principal Engineer for Java SE & OpenJDK, at the Sun technical general session on Tuesday, referring to the one of the primary goals of Project Jigsaw.

» JavaOne Conference Home Page
» 2009 JavaOne Conference Catalog and Presentation Slides
» Watch Video Replays of JavaOne General Sessions

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