JavaOne 2007: Day 0
My trek to JavaOne this year actually started yesterday, with a visit to CommunityOne and NetBeans Day.  For those that didn't know, CommunityOne was a free event by Sun showcasing all the different open source initiatives that they have going on, along with a healthy showcase of their partners who are using Sun open source technology. 

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at CommunityOne was just how many people were actually there.  They used Moscone this year, and it was quite impressive, with some counts reporting nearly 5,000 people.  This seems somewhat accurate given the foot traffic I noticed, but as usual it's pretty hard to tell.  I do know that some of the presenters I talked to claimed almost 500 people in some sessions - as large as a reasonable JavaOne core session, so I'd say that Sun should be pleased with the turn out.  Will Sun do a big CommunityOne next year?  Who knows, but I enjoyed this year's and it sure looked like a lot of other people did too.

Monday evening, I crossed the street and headed over to catch the Groovy/Grails meetup.  I think Jay did a nice job bringing together the Groovy and Grails guys.  My general feeling from talking to people was that they were already using Groovy and/or Grails, but were totally excited about the possibility that Groovy brings.  I felt the turnout was pretty good, and apparently Jay has some more events planned surrounding Groovy, including a Groovy/Grails Experience in 2008.  Be sure to check out the No Fluff website for more information as the time gets closer. 

Start your morning with a keynote
This morning was the first keynote of the week, and as usual it was quite the doozy. Unlike past years, Sun doesn't have a different keynote each morning so this year they crammed everything into one.

Rich Green, EVP of Software, and the head of Java gave the bulk of the keynote with the highlights being OpenJDK and JavaFX.

As of today, the Java language and platform is open sourced. There is a temporary governing body that will help setup guidelines and a constitution, and all the bits are available and buildable.

JavaFX is a new product line built on and compatible with Java SE that comes in multiple parts. The first is JavaFX Script, based on the F3 language that one developer, Chris Oliver, designed and built. Essentially, we're looking at a Flash and Silverlight competitor and I have to say that it was quite impressive.

In addition to JavaFX Script (not a good name), Sun is using the SavaJe technology to build JavaFX Mobile. JavaFX mobile is essentially a complete mobile stack. Designed to run on different levels of hardware, it is completely compatible with Java SE, Java ME, and JavaFX Script. The demos (when they worked) showed off a phone that had some of the whizbang of the iPhone and would certainly be quite a sweet device.

Java Everywhere

A big theme this year (as in years past) is that Java runs one everything. The difference this year is that there's actually real proof combined with the fact that the hardware and bandwidth to support truly connected devices is now a reality.

Along those lines, Sun made an announcement today about Real-time Java 2.0. The difference between this announcement and the RTJ 1.0 is that now there is going to be real tool and platform support and RTJ will run on over 800 hardware platforms. In addition, RTJ 2.0 supports a real-time garbage collector, taking out one of the difficulties in doing real-time work.

The big push behind this comes from Nasdaq, which does 150k transactions per second, all powered by Java. As their CIO announced during the keynote, they're working on building a next generation system based on real-time Java, lending real credibility to the platform.

I think this is great news. There's a lot of talk today about all the different devices that Java runs on, and there's no better time to be a Java developer than now with the chance to write applications for your PS3, your phone, or even create an entirely new device of your choosing.

'Til next time ,
Matthew Schmidt
matt@javalobby.org
Yahoo IM: mattschmidtjl