J2SE 1.5, BeanShell 2.0, JMX, AOP, ...
These are all topics for presentations at the St. Louis Java Users Group.
Jeff Brown presented New Features of J2SE 1.5 last month.
Pat Niemeyer talked about his new BeanShell 2.0 this month, fifteen days ago.
Adam Quan will be presenting on JMX next month, on November 13.
Bob Lee will talk about AOP on December 11.
I learned a lot from Jeff's and Pat's presentations. Most impressive of all is BeanShell 2.0's ability to run arbitrary Java source files. The semi-automatic semicolon insertion (press Enter twice) also addressed a usability issue of 1.0 that bothered me quite a bit.
J2SE 1.5's auto-boxing and unboxing, on the other hand, is the least impressive. It won't happen for assignments. Only method parameter passing gets the auto-boxing treatment.
I'm looking forward to both Adam and Bob's talks. I missed Bob's talk when the No Fluff, Just Stuff conference was in town last May. I've heard that it's most interesting.