Stuck in the MIDlet with you

Ok the Stealer's Wheel reference was lame, but I'm pleased to see two J2ME articles on our front page. We're launching Vikram Goyal's J2ME Tutorial with Part 1: Creating MIDlets. In this part he provides " a step-by-step guide to creating J2ME applications, also known as MIDlets, using a simple example. This will cover how to test and deploy these MIDlets as well. Finally, I will round out this installment with a look at the lifecycle of a MIDlet."

Now that I'm finally catching up on my backlog of article submissions, feel free to email me with your article proposals

In Also in Java Today , the ACM has published A Conversation with Alan Kay. The interviewer digs deeper than many of the recent articles on Kay. They talk at length about languages, including Java. Kay concludes " It's known that our basic language mechanism for both reading and hearing has a fast and a slow process. The fast process has basically a surface phrasal-size nature, and then there's a slower one. This is why jokes require pauses; the joke is actually a jump from one context to another, and the slower guy, who is dealing with the real meanings, has to catch up to it. [..] Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There's an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the 'Aha.' Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we're in - the one that we think is reality.

Thanks to Michael Nascimento Santos for pointing out in his blog that Rick Ross at the JavaLobby says join the JCP. Rick urges you to "GO JOIN THE JCP RIGHT NOW! Do not wait. Do not waste this privilege you have to participate in shaping and guiding Java's future. It is a unique opportunity, and we should collectively view it as a responsibility. Let's make individual JCP memberships a top priority for anyone who considers himself or herself a member of the Java developer community."

That brings us to today's Weblogs and Michael's post Rick is right: join the JCP! He writes "Rick Ross, Javalobby's founder, has written about the importance of joining the JCP (and what it takes to do so). I have to say he is right about it." In Bwit points to the following statement that keeps him from joining the JCP, "This means for example, that you cannot make contributions on behalf of your company nor can you share with your employer anything that you learned within the JCP."

Bruno Souza suggests that when it comes to Open Source and Java What about focusing on the right discussions? " The main problem on this Java and Open Source discussion is that there seems to be a lot of misinformation on both sides. We all need to get on the same page, or we'll always be discussing the wrong things."

Bernard Traversat blogs on The Power of JXTA Virtual Network Addressing! He writes "JXTA vision is to abstract the Internet into a multitude of user's defined virtual p2p network overlays allowing Java applications to transparently roam from multiple network locations or connectivities while still remaining *virtually* connected."

In Projects and Communities, a reminder for members of the JXTA Community: voting in the JXTA Elections is currently open, and ends February 13 at midnight. The elections are to fill two openings on the JXTA Board of Directors, and the elected representatives will serve from 3/1/05 to 2/28/06.

The article NetBeans 4.1 looks at EA2 of the popular IDE and focuses on its major new features, which include facilities for writing and testing EJB's, a "Call EJB" feature to eliminate JNDI lookups and other hassles, and new tools to develop and test web services. You can learn more about 4.1's development in the NetBeans Community.

Kohsuke writes about naming decisions in Re: Request no.1 - different filenames for JAXB and JAXB 2.0 in today's Forums. "I think one of the reason we chose to call it 'jaxb-impl.jar' and 'jaxb1-impl.jar' is that I wanted it to be very clear that people developing against 2.0 will not need to redistribute jaxb1-impl.jar."

MarkF writes on Make arrays into fully-fledged Collections: T[] is shorthand for Array. "Agreed. People shouldn't be afraid of low-level data manipulation.[..] It's like Linus Torvalds always says: 'mechanism, not policy'. Java should provide good mechanisms, not enforce policies. The enhanced for loop is a godsend, but compelling its use in all cases would be disastrous."

In today's java.net News Headlines :

• EJB3 Early Draft2 Published
• Public Review: JSR 223 - Scripting for the Java Platform
• Groovy 1.0-beta-9
• NetBeans IDE 4.0 Chinese and Japanese Language Release
• ABLE (Agent Building and Learning Environment) 2.2.0
• ReportMill 8 - Report Generator
• SWTJasperViewer 1.0.2

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• February 14-17, 2005 LinuxWorld Boston 2005
• February 28- March 3, 2005 EclipseCon
• March 3-6, 2005 TheServerSide Java Symposium
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