Java, Sun, Oracle, ...
[Was: Friday Go Quiz: What Does It Print?]
This has been an eventful week in the tech world. Two events stood out: one is an upbeat look into the future—of PC-less computing/entertaining with Apple's new iPad; one is a painful look back at some once also world-alteringly-new technologies from Sun—having found a new home at Oracle.
The Sun/Oracle news hits closer to home.
If you haven't been paying attention to all the accounts in the press and in blogs, all you have to do is to visit http://www.sun.com/ to realize that the world has changed.
I'm grateful to Oracle for its announced strategies for Java, JavaFX, OpenOffice, etc.
For Java, it would seem that it will be business as usual. In answering a question at the event, Larry Ellison essentially said that "Oracle is making money with Java" with it's middleware products and applications, so the pressure to make money off of Sun's Java products is an non-issue.
Oracle will also invest heavily in JavaFX. Jim Weaver has a more detailed account on that front:
Jim Weaver: In the live Oracle/Sun Strategy webcast, I heard encouraging statements like:
- We will invest heavily in JavaFX
- Significant investment will be made in JavaFX; focus on designers; fusion of DHTML, JavaScript, Java, JavaFX
The JavaPosse spells out the JavaScript link to JavaFX more succinctly in Episode #295:
Tor (17:07): JavaFX appears to have a rosy future. They said they would invest in it aggressively. It's going to be developed across all platforms, including embedded. And they also announced that there are plans to make SceneGraph access available from JavaScript.
Carl: Very cool.
Tor: That's been one of the criticisms for people who haven't learned JavaFX the language. You don't want to learn the new language. You don't see the point, right. So the idea here is that you can still take advantage of the APIs in the SceneGraph, even from JavaScript.
Carl: That's wild. That really gives it an advantage over all of the competition.
If you come here for the Friday quiz instead of all of the above, here's one:
Q: In which language is the following program written? Who invented the language? Will it compile? Run without errors? What does it print?
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Printf("Hello, 世界\n")
}
Friday Java Quiz: Trivia Questions
The St. Louis Java Users Group put on a Trivia Night 8 days ago. All the St. Louis JUG steering committee members pitched in providing questions and Brian Gilstrap put in a lot of thought and work to make the whole thing work. Since I haven't posted a Friday quiz question for a while, I'll borrow one from there:
Trivia Night rules apply: No books, no computers, no internet, just your brain! You have five minutes to write down your answer on the answer sheet.
If you enjoyed this question, you might like the rest of the questions. See how many you can get right in about an hour.
Java News Brief (JNB): Reducing Boilerplate Code with Project Lombok
I can't believe it's 2010 already. Happy New Year (and New Decade)! May the new year and the new decade bring brand new experiences to life and work.
Talking of new experiences, Lance Finney and the OCI Java News Brief crew marks the new year with a new issue: Reducing Boilerplate Code with Project Lombok by Michael Kimberlin.
Michael Kimberlin: Project Lombok is a powerful tool for the pragmatic developer. It provides a set of useful annotations for eliminating a tremendous amount of boilerplate code from your Java classes. In the best cases, a mere five characters can replace hundreds of lines of code. The result is Java classes that are clean, concise and easy to maintain. These benefits do come with a cost however. Using Project Lombok in an IntelliJ IDEA shop is simply not yet a viable option. There is a risk of breakage with IDE and JDK upgrades as well as controversy surrounding the goals and implementation of the project. What all this translates to is no different than what must be considered for any technology choice. There are always gains to be made and losses to be had. The question is simply whether or not Project Lombok can provide more value than cost for the project at hand. If nothing else, Project Lombok is sure to inject some new life into the discussion of language features that have withered on the vine thus far and that is a win from any perspective.
I first heard of Project Lombok on the Java Posse podcast, but did not follow up and play with it. It's time to experiment.