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Posted by editor on March 6, 2006 at 9:40 AM EST

Honoring Java Luminaries

In a few of our internal meetings, the term "Java Champions" has come up. Initially, I thought this was an ad hoc term for evangelists within Sun, and didn't think of it again... until we got an e-mail in a response to a blog, Don't Give us your Tired Your Poor, that Daniel Steinberg wrote over on ONJava to point out all the world-class work being done in Java and calling on its developers to propose talks to OSCON.

The e-mail pointed out that many of the people behind important Java projects, along with others in a position to advocate the platform, are being brought together and recognized under the "Java Champions" banner. The program turns one at this year's JavaOne, and may well have 100 champions represented by that point. Members are chosen by criteria that include such traits as being leaders, luminaries, having credibility, working with cool technology, and being able to influence other developers. In an intersting point, fealty to Sun's corporate positions is explicitly not a requirement.

Since we think a lot of others might not be aware of this program, we're featuring it in this week's front-page Spotlight: "The Java Champions project recognizes leaders in the Java developer community, in 'an effort to bolster and encourage this community of leaders'. The champions are an informal but carefully-selected group of professional Java developers, JUG leaders, educators and authors with a common goal of advancing the Java platform. The project includes material related to the nomination and selection of champions, as well as links to online articles by or about individual champions."

Patrick Wright talks about big crazy ideas in today's Forums. In Re: Wacky Wiki and Tons of Ideas, he writes: "I think I did start the Wacky Wiki page, but whatever, we have a similar page for Flying Saucer. I think using this to jot down interesting todos is good, just want to make one comment. The use of the word 'wacky' is meant to imply that any ideas that are potentially realizable are welcome, no matter how far off from the current roadmap they are. So for SwingLabs, this might include--bidirectional drag-and-drop between native spreadsheets and JXTable (using DataSet); or maybe, auto-create application by dragging an internal frame and dropping it on a desktop. At some point, it's nice to have people hacking away on really weird ways of using your software, as it can bring interest, fun, etc. into the picture."

pinus is looking for Tools supporting rich client development?: "I'm looking for tools to support ritch client development. I look for all kind of tools. Starting with enhanced components (tables,lists,...), data validation and graphs and ending with database binding and printig. Are there any tools available to generate SWING GUIs and Web GUIs from the same source? Are there tools available which support parts or all requirements?"

James Gosling catches up with new releases in today's Weblogs. In NetBeans 5.5.... EE5... BlueJ... Oh my!, he writes: "This week is a little quieter, but I'm pretty charged up by the recent progress of the BlueJ project. It's a very specialized IDE for teaching people to program who have never programmed before."

Jackpot's Coming (Finally!), and Tom Ball writes: "An early-access release of the Jackpot module for NetBeans will be arriving very soon."

David Herron wonders Will Java outlive PHP ?? My point is the compile time checking, strict checking, etc, done by Java offers developer productivity gains. Rather than being a hindrance, it's a benefit.

In Also in Java Today, "As the iPod abundantly shows, user experience (along with a strong brand, and clever marketing) is much more important for the success of a device then technical specifications. Web designers have grasped the importance of good user experience a long time ago; now it is time the big technology providers to understand where the industry is headed." In Why Features Don't Matter Anymore: The New Laws of Digital Technology, Andreas Pfeiffer lays down ten rules learned from the success of the iPod and the failure of more feature-packed rivals.

In Scheduling Jobs in a Java Web Application, Chris Hardin shows how to use Quartz to provide scheduling services for Struts-based web applications. By using Struts configuration options to bring up your scheduling code at startup, you can kick off scheduled services that operate independently of the user-driven actions on the web side of your server

In Projects and Communities, a drop-in replacement for various Java SE file I/O classes, TrueZIP touts the mantra "ZIP compatible files are directories!", and so it enables an application to access EAR, JAR, WAR, ZIP or even RAES encrypted ZIP files as if they were just directories in a file's path name. Development of TrueZIP 6, with TAR support, is underway.

Bringing together Java groups from different colleges and universities, the forum mesage Approaching students of universities for Java describes so-called "groups of studies", which currently unite Java groups at several Brazilian colleges.

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Honoring Java Luminaries
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