Welcome back to the fourth and final day of the 2008 JavaOne conference. I hope you've been just as busy as me over the past week learning about some of the cool new stuff that we at Sun have to offer. There's plenty out there for even the most seasoned Java developer to learn about.
For example, on Wednesday I got a chance to attend the Swing application framework talk that was given by Hans Muller. Now I should probably preface this by admitting that I wrote a book on Java Swing many years ago, so I'm very happy to see this framework mature. And while I've followed much of the development as it was built up over the past couple of years, I was amazed at how well it is now integrated into NetBeans IDE 6.1. Just a few dialog boxes can create some serious cool actions! I've been using 6.0 for a little while now, but I haven't had a chance to really look at 6.1. This talk definitely convinced me to upgrade.
I also got a change to look at Project Hydrazine (isn't that a rocket fuel?) yesterday at the Sun booths, especially after the teaser that was given earlier this week. If you missed it in the Tuesday general sessions, Hydrazine includes cloud services for discovery, personalization, deployment, location, and development. Of course, cloud computing is really in its infancy right now, so there are a number of heavily-networked designs that will all be tested over the next few years, and we'll see what developers like and dislike. In any case, I look forward to running some embarrassingly parallel "Hello World" programs on Project Hydrazine once it becomes available -- billing my poor manager, of course.
Also, a trip through the Pavilion wouldn't be complete without playing some Wii at the Oracle booths. Here not only did I get to spend two minutes learning about the latest advancements in JDeveloper and Oracle tools, but I got to spend 30 minutes showing one of my colleagues how to do that vapor trail serve in Wii Tennis. Well... I didn't really show her how to do it. She was just on the other end of it 12 times. Note to Jennifer: hit the ball at the top of the arc.
I also spent a little bit of time at the SDN booth, which was just around from the spinning Duke. Frankly, it's the perfect position because the people curving around in line for the Spinning Duke are a captive audience, and we can tell them all about our new, personalizable MySDN portal. Oh, and my favorite toy giveaway of the Conference? It actually comes from the SDN area, and it sort of looks like a rubber jellyfish on a long leash. The cool part is that it's both soft and really elastic, so you can throw it down and it comes right back up, and even do some other throwing tricks without risking those embarrassing yo-yo moments that might get you on a funniest-home-video show. By the way, was it just me, or did the carpet pad get much thicker on the left side of the Pavilion? Not that my ankles minded at 4:30 p.m.
So with that, I bid you farewell on the final day of the 2008 JavaOne conference, and I hope to see you again in early June for the 2009 JavaOne conference.
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