Christian Frei's Blog: May 2008 Archive

Posted by cwfrei on May 29, 2008 at 05:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 9 days the EURO2008 soccer championship will start in Switzerland. And in 25 days Jazoon'08 will kick-off.

Don't worry about EURO2008: there are still plenty of hotel rooms available in Zurich and you will be able to watch the only game scheduled during Jazoon on our large movie theater screens with commentary in English.

The Duke starring in 2001!

Posted by cwfrei on May 14, 2008 at 07:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Swiss Duke

From Java to Scala?

Posted by cwfrei on May 13, 2008 at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

In many sessions e.g. in the Script Bowl on Day 2 Scala was a topic of interest at JavaOne (don't ask me why Scala was in the 'Script' bowl). Some of the features of this functional language certainly impressed.

In the Java Posse BOF (Java Posse Episode 186) it was discussed what the potential of Scala in the world of programming languages is. For sure dynamic languages have a different standing and Scala is offering complementary advantages. It was pointed out though, that Scala could replace the Java language. The Java language of course, not the Java platform. I am curious to see whether Scala will really pick up momentum.

Martin Odersky, the creator of Scala, will hold a keynote at Jazoon'08.

What language/framework should I choose?

Posted by cwfrei on May 08, 2008 at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The question is of course not new. But is it obsolete? The following comments arose from a Q&A with Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green at JavaOne as well as the 'Scripting Panel' with Charles Nutter, Tor Norby, Ted Leung, Guy Laforge, and Greg Murray moderated by Tim Bray.

The number of languages/frameworks for sure does not become smaller. Some of the actual examples discussed in the panel were Ruby/Rails, Groovy/Grails, Python, JMaki, JavaFX.

What to choose? Wouldn't it be easier if there was only one language? Jonathan Schwartz argued that it is of course a hassle that for example you have to test software on Firefox, Explorer, Safari... But do you really want to have only one browser out there? You see were his was getting at.

The panelist pointed out that every languages has its clear advantages for some tasks. Now that's all fine. But the one thing they also agreed upon was that developers seldom switch from one language to another. A Groovy user will not switch to Python and vice versa. So developers end up to solve their tasks with the technology they already like most and not the one that would be suited best for the job.

To what it really comes down to is that there is now clear answer. And that is an especially tough finding for students and beginners.

So what can you do? The advice I can give is that you have to continue to attend conferences ;-) Seriously, it is important that you regularly take the chance to broaden your general knowledge of software technology in order to make informed decisions.

BTW You can meet Greg Murry at Jazoon'08.

Dynamics in Open Source: Sun and MySQL

Posted by cwfrei on May 07, 2008 at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In his JavaOne keynote Rich Green (Executive VP Software) presented the acquisition of MySQL as a success story so far, demonstrated in the increased number of downloads.

Geeks are usually skeptical when they hear about an acquisition like this one. I also have to admit that I saw some industrial logic in it but also remained reserved owing to potential drawbacks.

The question of course is what caused that increase. Is it just the marketing push or has it something to do with the trust that a large company like Sun brings with it? I can't tell. However, for sure the MySQL guys have to be at Jazoon next year.

RIA, RIA, RIA...

Posted by cwfrei on May 06, 2008 at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In today's keynote, Rich Green (Sun's Executive VP Software) pointed out the increasing importance of RIA showing a compelling demo of a JavaFX application. The application merging sources from Youtube, Flickr and Twitter running in a browser could be simply dragged onto the desktop to run there. The same application was even shown to run on the Android emulator. RIA are an important step on the way to the consumer-centric world as SUN sees it coming. One interesting aspect of the application on the desktop is: it can simply be erased again like any item on the desktop. According to Jonathan Schwartz this is a very compelling way to distribute content without having to force the user through a browser and whatever kind of website.

There are of course competing technologies to build RIA. These technologies will be presented at Jazoon'08. If you have very new stuff to present you can still submit a proposal for the Jazoon Cutting-Edge session until 2008-05-16 (check the conference website for details). Speakers will receive a free conference pass.

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