On the plus side, the selection of world-class speakers, JUG leaders and members and Java champions did not disappoint; there were still some hard choices when it came to deciding to which talks I should attend, the content was fresh and enticing, as a result I got some new ideas for future projects.
Regarding the talks for which I got invited to JavaOne. The first one was the GrailsPodcast BOF in the form of a panel. Glen A. Smith did a great job despite being just one half of the regular cast (Sven had to stay home in Munich). The panel was comprised of Dr. Paul King, Graeme Rocher, Dierk Koenig and yours truly. The main topics discussed were Grails and its recent GORM based support for NoSQL datastores (like Redis); the current state of Groovy in Action 2nd edition (after all 2 out of 2 authors were on the panel
) and Griffon's roadmap. However, Gradle, Spock and Gaelyk made appearances as sleeper topics. Having personally used the first two I can certainly attest for their usefulness, don't hesitate to give those tools a try, you won't be disappointed.Next was Code Generation in the JVM which is not an original talk of mine, it belongs to Canoo colleague, friend and Groovy committer Hamlet D'Arcy; he couldn't make the trip this time so I presented the talk on his behalf. I must say I was really surprised to see a full room despite the early start (8 in the morning!) and a sudden change of rooms (we got a bigger one just in time). The talk went pretty well but Hamlet is certainly a better story teller than me (I managed to sneak some of his jokes though). If you have the opportunity to see Hamlet speak on this topic then do so, it will open your eyes to the amazing world of AST manipulation in Groovy, and to some extent, in Java.
The second talk is one of mine (Polyglot Programming in the JVM) and while this was not the first time I presented it I felt rather nervous, might have been that the JavaOne audience has good knowledge on alternative JVM languages and craves for deeper demonstrations. Judging by the aftermath this talk went also well, even managed to inspire at least one developer to give Scala a try that same very day. Of course Griffon saw a bit of action as the main demo was a trivial application that called both Scala and Clojure code from Groovy without the need of special bridges.
Networking is a key aspect during JavaOne, this year was no exception and reconnected with friends and tweeps alike. Shout outs in no particular order: Josh Long, Mark Fischer, Jeff Brown, Peter Ledbrook and Graeme Rocher (from SpringSource); Hans Dockter and Adam Murdoch (from Gradle Inc.), fellow cannoies Dierk Koenig and Bruno Schaefer, Paul King, Glen A. Smith, John Smart (Wakaleo), Stephen Coulebourne, the full 'posse cast: Dick Wall, Tor Norbye (good luck with your new gig!), Carl Quinn and Joe Nuxoll, Bill Venners, Kevin Nilson and Mike van Riper (either you guys create a JUG in Basel or I'm scheduling more travels to the Bay Area), Aaron Houston, Stephen Chin, Jonathan Giles, Jim Weaver, Dean Iverson, Peter Pilgrim, Alex Ruiz, Yvonne Wang, Matthias Wessendorf, Thomas Kruse (Munster JUG), David Quiao (Jidesoft), Eric Camacho.
I can't close this entry without mentioning the elephant in the room, actually two of them: JDK7 and the demise of JavaFX script. I attended Mark Reinhold's keynote and couldn't fail to notice that almost all features proposed for inclusion in JDK7 are already available in some form in Groovy today (the same could be said of other JVM languages to be fair but given that I'm closer to Groovy I can pinpoint exactly which ones are in and out). Which means that you can try them all if you give Groovy a chance. By the time JDK7 is released Groovy (and the other JVM languages) will have added more features than JDK7 itself, so why wait? give polyglot programming a try, you won't regret this one either.
Next is JavaFX Script. To put it bluntly: it was about time. Many saw the need of a custom language for building rich UIs in the JVM an unnecessary enterprise, but the powers that be decide to push it forward any way, cannibalizing the Swing team and even JDK7. I for one do not mourn the language's demise as Oracle has promised that the JavaFX platform will be reborn as a set of Java based libraries (as it should have been from the start 3 years ago), which will allow Java developers to use said libraries with currently existing tools. This decision will also allow alternative JVM languages to harness the power of the JavaFX platform in any way they choose fit, everybody wins!
All hail Scala. ^H^H^H Keep on Grooving!
PD: funny that I kept bumping into German and Swiss people while at JavaOne. Oracle, what about extending JavaOne to Germany/Switzerland/Somewhere in Europe? China and Brazil have theirs. kthnxby.
