Wie geht's weiter mit Java?

This was a talk by Klaus Kreft and Angelika Langer, about what could possibly be in Java version 7.0.

The core of the talk hit language extensions (closures and concise instance declarations), new module functionality and other bits and pieces that could come in. All the items discussed had come out of the Java Community Process, more specifically the Java Specification Request (JSR) system.

Closures and concise instance declarations come from the demands of developers who want scripting language extensions to the core Java language - mainly because the enjoy using them in these languages. Now, I am a big fan of scripting languages, and the power that they give the developer, but the syntax that was recommended didn't look so good to me. The new Concise instance declarations syntax was also crap.

The new module functionality seemed to me to be a straight rip-off from maven. The idea of a super-package declaration that stops certain other packages being access able in a jar file, did seem to have merit. There is another JSR about the OSGi core service platform model, which is a more dynamic version of the modules idea. From what the gurus said, then this one would be the one to vote for. Unfortunately, this part of the talk was given by Frau Langer. She, like all the other female presenters, spoke far too quickly and I started drifting off in the middle. ho hum.

Finally there was a JSR for Swing, which is something I will have to look at, and a JSR about units and quantities that you could use in your application to convert between meters and feet with very little overhead.

Although it was in German, this was a nice technical start to day 4 of our conference.

The Road Less Travelled

This was a talk by Jason Ayers about how we, as developers, should evaluate new technologies without getting caught up in the hype. Mr. Ayers is the Managing Director of Cincom, which is a vendor of a version of Smalltalk, so he was obviously going to use this talk from his viewpoint.

He pushed that idea that we can change our implementation language if we want to because there are now so many out there in various states of maturity. The best reason for a change would be in gaining a competitive edge, with the proviso that the programmer should enjoy using the language.

He demonstrated a technique called a radar diagram that could be used to compare the different features of several languages together an he was obviously keen in pushing smalltalk as a viable alternative.

At the end of the session I asked him why he thought Java took off suddenly at the end of the nineties, and he said that it was because one vendor of smalltalk turned down the chance to make an embedded version of smalltalk for Netscape - i.e. Smalltalk turned down the chance to reach a huge audience.

I have heard that story before, anyone remember how DOS got onto the IBM PC? Because the maker of CP/M turned them down first. Aah, so this is how things happen.