Day 2: It's Not a Question of Whether, but a Question of How

by Robert Eckstein

I'm not a morning person. I'll admit that to you right now. I'll also admit that I nearly overslept and missed the beginning of the Tuesday General Session. Being on Central time (two hours ahead of San Francisco time), I'm still not too sure how that happened, but it did.

So after running through the Yerba Buena Center at 8:30 a.m. and passing that creepy three-handed-salesman statue that always makes me wonder if I should get new eyeglasses, I went to Moscone North, sat down in my chair, and relaxed a little until the session began. John Gage got up onstage, made his opening remarks, and referred to my column in front of all the JavaOne conference attendees. Trust me, folks, there's no jolt like having someone unexpectedly announce your name and email address in front of 20,000 people. I anticipate that the adrenaline will wear off sometime in June.

As I'm sure you know, the opening General Sessions are always the best. That's when executives are just brimming to announce things. And this year didn't disappoint. The key phrase: "It's Not a Question of Whether, but a Question of How." Keep your eyes open as Rich Green continues his work at Sun. Good things are coming, everyone.

I continue to be impressed by the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5. Not only is the programming model much easier to work with, but I'm also a big fan of plain old Java objects (POJOs) and the new Persistence API. In my experience, simpler APIs are always more popular. And of course, the new Asynchronous JavaScript with XML ((Ajax)) annotations were great to see. By the way, if you haven't tried out the GlassFish program, download it and try it out. It's quickly become my favorite Java EE platform server, and I'm not just saying that because Sun pays my salary. This very efficient, streamlined enterprise server is quickly becoming a powerhouse enterprise tool.

Speaking of (Ajax), you probably noticed that the Sun Java Studio Creator IDE has become Sun's tool of choice for creating all sorts of front-end web content. And it's now being open-sourced! Be sure to download this software and give it a try. Being also entirely a back-end NetBeans IDE guy, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I could whip up some AJAX-enabled web pages, and if you saw Tuesday morning's General Session, then you know it as well. The Sun Java Studio Creator IDE is free now, so you can download it at your leisure.

Side note: Did any of you notice the way that Duke was holding the chainsaw in that "Power Tools for Power Geeks" slide in Tuesday's General Session? You know, ever since he did those countless cartwheels for us 10 years ago, we run our poor mascot through the wringer on these product announcements. In this case, however, I was getting a little panicky. You see, Duke was holding the chainsaw at an angle right over his face! I was praying during that talk that Duke wouldn't accidentally sneeze, or we might have to stop the session, turn up the house lights, and find where his nose had rolled off to.

Oh, another note of interest: The dTrace Challenge is open again in the JavaOne Pavilion this year! If you haven't heard of dTrace, be sure to check it out at booth #739. I was very impressed last year to see how many performance improvements dTrace uncovered in developers' application -- in some very unlikely places! Remember, never ever use String concatenation when you should be using StringBuffer, folks! That's especially true for you Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) programmers!

The challenge this year remains the same: if you submit a Java application whose performance dTrace can't improve, you win an iPod. Last year, I quipped that I was going to submit a simple Hello World application to see if I could win on a technicality. Well, they caught me this year: Each submitted application has to be over 2000 lines of code. Seriously, though, dTrace is a Solaris Operating Environment tool that no Java technology programmer should be without. Be sure to take a look. For information and official rules, see http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/javaone_challenge.jsp.

John Gage noted that the JavaOne conference is all about meeting people. It's great to go to conferences to learn about the latest advances in technologies, but I encourage you to get to know the people behind the tools you're using. That's the best way to help them create the tools you need. So don't be afraid to introduce yourself to the speakers, trade business cards, tell them how you use Java technology, and ask them about any feature you'd like to talk about.

On that note, if you see me in the halls, feel free to address me as Bob. For the safety of your fellow attendees, don't shout, "Hey, Daily Prompt Man!" like someone did yesterday, or my 1980s genes will kick in, I may crash through the nearest wall shouting "Oh, yeah!", and start serving Kool-Aid to everyone. Trust me, folks, that's bad news; I can't even mix Tang correctly.

Enjoy your Wednesday, and I'll see you again tomorrow.