Max Goff's Blog

JavaOne - X - Catharsis and Denouement

Visiting the Jeckyll and Hyde city (as Timothy so aptly describes San Francisco) has always provided a measure of insight for me ... I am a graduate of USF, a great school. I have attended most of the JavaOne celebrations since 1996, an annual pilgrimage, as witness and promoter of the Age of Java and the culture around it. I have been in and out of the city on business more times than I can remember since I first began to make a living in software in the early 1980s ... and I even hitch-hiked through San Francisco in the summer of 1970, while still a rebellious teenager in search of America.

This trip, this year, this 10th anniversary of the JavaOne celebration, has been a particularly insightful sojourn to the city for me, after 35 years of visiting, appreciating and learning from San Francisco.

Please bear in mind that I have fed a personal pro-Sun bias. As I may have stated in previous bloviations, I have admired what Sun Microsystems has stood for and the people who invented it before, during, and after my personal tenure with that firm. In truth, I have probably projected my own desire for “goodness” onto what I once percieved to be Sun's organization, culture and technologies. But perhaps Sun hasn't changed as much as I have ...

This time it wasn't about the gadgets, as no really new, really cool gadgets were to be found at the Moscone this year. And it wasn't about the latest in innovative infrastructure or tools, because there simply wasn't anything all that novel. This year, after railing against the incipid promotion that passes for marketing at Sun, I have come to the conclusion that it isn't about the technology anymore either.

If there is anything of value in JavaOne, it's the people. It's the kindred souls that gather to schmooze, and learn, and feel a little less alone in what is generally a very alienating world. There is a shared experience thing at JavaOne ... a club of sorts, that one joins by simply showing up with the proper credentials – it's the claim to proper geekhood that no degree or certification or all-night hacking experience ever seems to provide.

JavaOne projects a certain “I don't want to grow up” mystic onto the developer community, providing bean bag chairs ala that first collegiate apartment experience, with copious video games and ever-present presumably geek-cool entertainment. Oh, and then there are the technology sessions proper, where programming memes get passed around, and of course the BOFs, which are better. The general sessions, with micro-celebrities galore, help to cement that sense of identity and community and belonging to something greater than yourself. A technologist's Brigadoon ... almost.

In the end, it's a hollow substitute for real community. It's somebody else's idea as to how you should behave, think, feel, play, recreate, consume and ultimately, work. Despite the missed opportunities, I still want to believe in what I once projected onto Sun --- but I think I know now, that was me. That was never Sun.

Sun is not church. It's not faith. It's not country. Sun Microsystems is a 'C' corporation, organized under the laws of the State of Delaware that trades on the NASDQ under the symbol SUNW. The theory of the firm suggests that the company's primary responsibility is to return value to the owners (the stockholders). That's it. End of story.

Java doesn't “LOVE” anybody. That's nonesense. It's very poor promotion that stoops to such slogans. It sure doesn't sell anything to anybody, and is therefore a vapid waste of resources. I suppose the people providing the promotional stunts for the show made a living for a few days ... to that extent, some “social good” was accomplished. But ... it was as ill considered as were the Java condoms, the Age of Participation theme and the hypocritical handwaving about fixing any number of social injustices via technological innovation.

Still ... it's the people; the relationships that are fostered and grown based on a technology-based identity that are as meaningful and rewarding as any moveable feast based on computing. Not family ... not congregation ... not even community ... more like friends. With wings.

JavaOne: one part Rorschach Test, two parts Kant's “ding an sich,” shaken, not stirred ... topped with a splash of catharsis. Happy Birthday Java.

Note for future events: If you are going to go to the bother of raising the curtain on a new age, at least make it an age with something meaningful to offer ... I want to be inspired, not just included. I want motivation, not a membership card. How about leading in an Age of Virtue? Or serving in an Age of Abundance? Or commiting to an Age of Responsibility? Next time, have the courage to usher in an Age of Meaning ... and perhaps a lot more people will line up.

Comments

• Wow. A blog that actually says something meaningful.

  I think that it's not the job of corporations to create real human community, and they don't have the right tools for doing so, anyway. I don't like it when corporations appropriate the word, because as you point out, it has real meaning for real people in real human relationships. But, it was bound to happen--it's a practical means to get us to belong to the community of the corporation's customers. It's up to us to tell the difference.

  I'd also say that communities come in many forms. There are people I've worked with that I count as colleagues and I had a good time working with them. There is a spectrum of relationships between people and in groups that extends from business and work-oriented relationships, but extends to communities around survival, family, spirituality, athletics, etc. So many of us in the US spend so much time in or involved with work that it's natural we will seek to have our needs for social contact and bonding in that environment. In that sense, maybe one has to take the larger view of the thing when a convention pushes a "community" message.

  What is sad is how technology unites and divides. The new-language programmers laugh at the COBOL programmers, the free-software programmers dislike the Java programmers, the anti-Microsoft programmers won't talk to the .Net programmers, and on and on. At the end of the day, I think most people in computer technology are bringing valuable things into the world, whether prosaic or profound, and that's something that should unite us all, regardless of where or with what tools we work.

  Cheers
  Patrick

  Posted by: pdoubleya on July 01, 2005 at 04:43 AM

• Thanks for sharing your feelings Max,
  One of the oddly nice things about the programming profession is that most of us are drawn to it by a passion to create. There was a short span during the dot-com disaster who came for the money, but over the long run the majority would program for free.

  It is not surprising that the marketing folks and the executives in many of our corporations (big 'C' or little 'C') don't understand how to motivate us. We just don't place the same value on things.... and sometimes this results in offending each other.

  It all boils down to money. They need us to make money, and we need them to pay us. As long as we remember that, we'll all be a lot happier.

  --John
  

  Posted by: johnreynolds on July 01, 2005 at 06:19 AM

• Nice Max,

  Perhaps the only fitting denouement to a week of such disparate, yet interwoven themes.

  We are a community; full of people with wildly different goals, and motivations. Yet we all have a common passion, which binds us together. We don't all participate at the same level, but at the end of the day; we are all better off by our membership.

  Thank-you for your participation.

  the other John

  Posted by: cajo on July 01, 2005 at 07:50 AM

• In reply to John Reynold's post ("the famous guy"), I am still interested in software/web development because of the creative aspect... I've been working for the last four months in a company (not my employer, I'm "on a mission") where you'd have to conclude that that sadly isn't the case, it's despairing to see the crap churned out by some people. I'm far from pretending I know it all, but I try hard to produce code that's clean, efficient, and creative, and it's depressing to come face-to-face with code-monkeys that churn out drivel for cash (and even worse, to see that the client accepts crap code just as readily as lovingly-crafted code because they don't know any better...).

  Posted by: chris_e_brown on July 01, 2005 at 10:25 AM

• "Wow. A blog that actually says something meaningful.".

  I agree. - Paul

  Posted by: paul1 on July 01, 2005 at 11:44 AM

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