Another JavaOne is done, and all I have to show for it is a hangover. I did booth monkey work for pretty much all of the show, so only made it to the Netbeans day and a few of the late night BoFs. Here are a few thoughts on what I took away from the show.

Wither the Java Community

The buzz about alternate languages for the JVM – Scala, JRuby, Groovy, et al – has been steadily growing over successive years at JavaOne. Increasing chunks of conference time are devoted to discussing languages other than Java. This is interesting and healthy but I do wonder what it means for the “Java” community.

One explanation I have heard is that “Java” is more than just the programming language. Central to the definition of Java is the virtual machine itself. By extension, the “Java Community” can only prosper from the range of other languages now targeting the VM, because new high level languages bring yet more people into the “Java” fold.

While this is true to a certain extent, it seems to me the Java community is necessarily formed around the language itself, and not so much the runtime environment. The notion that the “Java community” can thrive around the virtual machine alone seems nonsensical to me, because the VM itself strives to be invisible. As a Java developer, I (gladly) spend relatively little time thinking about it. It will be interesting to see the non-java content ratio for JavaOne 2008.

Aspects MIA?

It feels like only yesterday that Aspect Oriented Programming was being touted as the next big step in the evolution of programming methodologies. A scan of the 2007 JavaOne schedule showed not a hint of this evolution-in-progress. Has it run its course already?

The concepts of AOP have been cherry picked and used internally in platforms like Spring and JBoss, but traction among developers breathing less rarefied air seems non-existent, based on the level of interest in the conference agenda. Or maybe it has just matured to the point where nobody feels compelled to discuss it any more?

Stop Giving Out Evaluation CDs

At the NetBeans community day on Monday, one speaker asked the audience how many of them had received a NetBeans CD. Only a tiny smattering of hands went up. Undeterred, the speaker went on to trumpet that 400,000 100,000 CDs containing NetBeans builds had been shipped. James Gosling, on stage at the time, quite rightly lambasted the guy: “man, these guys have broadband internet – what interest do they have in a CD?”.

This form of software distribution is outdated. A CD in plastic case with a paper title sheet weighs 60 grams, so 400,000 100,000 weigh in at around 25 6 metric tonnes. Don’t get me started on the associated environmental footprint. When was the last time you actually used a vendor evaluation CD (other than as a coffee coaster)?

Vendors, stick to electronic distribution. It’s cheaper and more environmentally friendly. The content of CDs is out of date before they’ve found their way to customers. If you feel compelled to provide software on physical media, why not choose a rewritable CD, or even a flash drive? At least then it doesn’t end up in landfill quite so quickly.

Finally, My Moment of the Show

Thursday night, at the last-minute Cenqua party: a more than slightly intoxicated Hani, head in hands, muttering “I’m so confused!!”. He wasn’t the only one ;-)