John D. Mitchell's Blog

JavaOne Archives

FindBugs in Anger

If you aren't already using Findbugs then hopefully you've at least heard about it by now and have some idea of how useful it can be.

If not, then let me say that FindBugs is a must have tool in the arsenal of any Java developer and any development team that's not using it as part of their regular development practices is incompetent.

Bill Pugh has done a fantastic job making FindBugs a great F/OSS tool which helps detect a large variety of all too common programming mistakes in Java.

You can find an online demo, slides from last year's FindBugs introduction , and can even run FindBugs over the web.

If you aren't yet convinced that FindBugs is really useful, let me point out that I've used FindBugs as an expert witness in cases where outsourcing projects had gone wrong and people were arguing about the quality of the delivered code (among other things). You have been warned. :-)

Go wild!

JavaOne 2008: Day 1, The Good, The Bad, and The Lame

Another year, another JavaOne.

It's always great to see so many old friends again.

This year seems to be continuing the attendance growth trend of the last couple of year so that's a good sign. Also, I've been able to find enough actually interesting and useful talks to keep from going back to sleep and that's an even better sign. In particular, this is starting to show how the "Java community" is growing up and outwards to encompass more than just the same old things.

Here's my list of the key things from Day 1:

JavaFX... NOT!

What a joke. JavaFX was announced with great fanfare at last year's JavaOne and yet what has actually been released in a year? Nothing of value. Just more hoopla and blah blah blah. Way too little, way too late. Especially now that Adobe has started opening up Flash and friends.

Indeed, with all of the improvements to the world of JavaScript/Ajax libraries, frameworks, and tools and most especially with the growing capabilities around the support of canvas in browsers, there's very little real reason to use those wretched "Rich Internet Application" packages like Flash and JavaFX.

JavaScript

Yep, there are now a number of sessions at JavaOne covering various aspects of JavaScript. Large rooms filled with Java developers who are using JavaScript is an interesting site to see.

As Roberto Chinici said in his talk, JavaScript Programming Language: The Language That Everybody Loves to Hate, JavaScript is basically yet another Lisp-1 language. Alas, as was so clearly shown in his talk, JavaScript is a really horrible implementation of Lisp-1 -- so many nasty corners, gotchas, and just plain bizarre things. That said, given JavaScript's ubiquity in web clients and its growing use on the server, it is pretty much required for all web developers to learn JavaScript.

JAX-RS: RESTful services in Java

Yes, REST is here to stay. JAX-RS is the attempt to standardize how to build RESTful services in Java. Basically, the approach is to use a number of new bits of library (such as the URI builder that makes working with URIs actually not a completely bug-inducing nightmare) and a bunch of new annotations.

There are already at least a few implementations out in the wild including the "Jersey" reference implementation and one for the Restlet framework.

The JAX-RS (aka JSR-311) draft specification has just been released for public review -- check it out and send in your comments.

As with JavaScript, everybody doing any web services in Java needs to at least check out JAX-RS (and Restlet).

Concurrency

Is there anybody left out there in Java-land that hasn't yet gotten the memo that concurrency is a big issue today and is becoming a huge issue moving forward?

Brian Goetz's talk, Let's Resync: What's New for Concurrency on the Java Platform, Standard Edition, was primarly about one key way to solve a number of problems was very well attended and people should check it out online.

Basically, coming in Java v7 is an addition to the java.util.concurrent library which adds a lot of support for building Fork-Join style concurrency solutions. For those who can't wait, check out Doug Lea's existing implementation that is part of his util.concurrent library.

Java v7 looks to have some nice features that both allow for very general Fork-Join solutions as well as things like the ParallelArray class which makes it ridiculously easy to concurrently process arrays of information. Joe Bob says: Check it out.

JaveOne 2007, Enterprise Search-Driven Developement

One of the most exciting things at the show this year is that my company, Krugle, announced the beta of an enterprise search appliance for development teams.

After all the months of labor, I can finally share our little bundle of joy with the world. :-)

In my experience, one of the biggest problems that enterprise developers face every day is finding useful information across the bazillion different silos of information that we have to deal with just to be able to work on our projects. Specifications, design docs, source code, issue trackers, mailing lists, notes, blogs, wikis, souce code control systems.... Mixing in time-to-market pressures, cost reduction, reuse goals, agile methodologies, and the like pushes us to a just in time way of life.

Finding relevant information amid that chaos is all too often painful and labor intensive. So, the core feature of the Krugle Enterprise appliance is to pull all of those silos together and make information available via search. This search-driven development approach is how development teams really work these days -- developers looking for example code, QA looking for bug fixes, maintainers trying to figure out the impact of making a change, managers looking at risk indicators, etc. -- we're bringing it all together.

Of course, I'm totally biased so ignore my blathering and check it out for yourself and your team.

JaveOne 2007, Keaton

Keaton is a new java.net project for integrating Apple's QTKit with Java. I.e., make it possible for Java developers to leverage the latest Quicktime support (since Apple seems to have abandoned Quicktime for Java) to be able to do cool media applications.

The project is looking for developers to join up and help out.

The presentation was given by java.net's own Chief Chief, Chris Adamson. I know I can't do any justice to Chris's presentation but it was informative and incredibly funny and everybody who wasn't there missed out on a real treat. Examples like this are the best reason that coming to shows in-person makes all the difference in the world.

JaveOne 2007, Java Puzzlers Points Out Problems with Kitchen Sink

Josh Bloch and Neal Gafter have been doing their wonderful Java Puzzlers shtick at JavaOne for the last 4 years. This year, Bill Pugh has stepped in for Neal to keep the puzzlers puzzling.

The puzzles point out all sorts of interesting and exasperating gotchas in the Java language and libraries that linger for ages waiting to humble us all.

This year's set of puzzles include a slew of problems that come as a direct result of the addition of auto-boxing/-unboxing of primitives to/from their object wrapper types (int and Integer, for example). Maybe it's just me but I seem to recall a lot of us who said how bad the consequences would be of adding auto-boxing to Java and yet here they are causing exactly the worst kinds of insidiously non-obvious problems.

The moral of these puzzles isn't merely "be careful of using wrapper types with the ternary operator", but that auto-boxing is evil and should have never been added to the language in the first place.

Of course, it goes without saying that this is just one example of how new "features" added to a mature language are very dangerous. One of the big, currently brewing brouhahas is over the proposed addition of closures to Java. Perhaps folks might want to pause their rampant fervor for a bit and actually look at the history of these attempts and realize just how costly these changes really are. Especially when there are plenty of alternatives like using other languages which have their pet features which target the underlying JVM.

As Josh so eloquently put, "APIs, like diamonds, are forever."

JaveOne 2007, Where's Apple?

As noted by various people, including Malcolm Davis, there's a lot of Apple laptops in evidence at the show this year. In particular, a whole slew of them on-stage for the keynote sessions.

But where's Apple? Really?

For all of Apple's pledges that Java is a first class citizen, Java support on OS X has been tardy, at best. Each new, major release of Java takes many months (as in over a year) to show up on Apple machines. That's just plain retarded.

Of course, it always takes two to tango so I have to also ask "what is Sun doing to help or hinder Java on OS X?"

JaveOne 2007, Community One

Sun is, as everybody knows, struggling to get mindshare around their products. This is especially true as they try to get uptake as they open source more of their stuff -- such as Solaris.

Hiring Ian Murdock of Debian fame is a pretty good idea to me. One of the biggest hurdles to (Open) Solaris uptake is the fact that so many things in dealing with Solaris are so annoyingly odd to all the folks who are used to the relatively consistent GNU userland experience and the usable package managers on Linux and *BSD distributions.

Another item that came through over and over again throughout the day was that one of, if not the key reason to use Solaris is DTrace. DTrace is an efficient execution tracing framework and if you haven't used it, you're missing out. Story after story from a wide variety of developers, sys admins, QA folks, etc. touted how using DTrace allowed them to get insight into the actual running of their systems and how big a difference that can make. While it's an open question of whether/when this will make it to Linux, DTrace is already in the next version of OS X and will be in the *BSDs sooner rather than later.

I must say that I was surpised how little I saw emphasizing the coolness of ZFS. It's a modern filesystem designed for the current disk storage and usage reality rather than how things were 20 years ago. Coupling ZFS with Sun's Thumper box is, IMHO, a compelling reason to actually buy Sun hardware. There's no really good filesystems in the open source world if you actually care about your data and want good performance and manageability. ReiserFS is pretty much orphaned and while the ext family are okay for desktop and non-critical servers, they just don't cut it when the data really matters.

Of course, for Java developers, the question is pretty much moot as to whether it's any advantage to go with Linux or Open Solaris. Java runs well on both. It was quite funny to hear some pushback to Greg Luck's (of ehcache) comment that OS doesn't really matter -- just a good JRE implementation. That's just playing out the old Java mantra of "write once, run anywhere" in the real world. Of course, operating system choice does matter to a point -- Greg's own company is an example of moving from ASP.net to Java because of scalability / performance reasons and days vs. months and years of uptime.

For me, I've used all of them for so long that it's mostly just a question of using what works for any given need. I'm hoping that the continued opening up of Solaris will help spur improvements in the Linux world and that many of the things that we love about the OSS operating systems will help improve Solaris so that moving around from one to the other is even easier.

JaveOne 2007, Community One

Sun is, as everybody knows, struggling to get mindshare around their products. This is especially true as they try to get uptake as they open source more of their stuff -- such as Solaris.

Hiring Ian Murdock of Debian fame is a pretty good idea to me. One of the biggest hurdles to (Open) Solaris uptake is the fact that so many things in dealing with Solaris are so annoyingly odd to all the folks who are used to the relatively consistent GNU userland experience and the usable package managers on Linux and *BSD distributions.

Another item that came through over and over again throughout the day was that one of, if not the key reason to use Solaris is DTrace. DTrace is an efficient execution tracing framework and if you haven't used it, you're missing out. Story after story from a wide variety of developers, sys admins, QA folks, etc. touted how using DTrace allowed them to get insight into the actual running of their systems and how big a difference that can make. While it's an open question of whether/when this will make it to Linux, DTrace is already in the next version of OS X and will be in the *BSDs sooner rather than later.

I must say that I was surpised how little I saw emphasizing the coolness of ZFS. It's a modern filesystem designed for the current disk storage and usage reality rather than how things were 20 years ago. Coupling ZFS with Sun's Thumper box is, IMHO, a compelling reason to actually buy Sun hardware. There's no really good filesystems in the open source world if you actually care about your data and want good performance and manageability. ReiserFS is pretty much orphaned and while the ext family are okay for desktop and non-critical servers, they just don't cut it when the data really matters.

Of course, for Java developers, the question is pretty much moot as to whether it's any advantage to go with Linux or Open Solaris. Java runs well on both. It was quite funny to hear some pushback to Greg Luck's (of ehcache) comment that OS doesn't really matter -- just a good JRE implementation. That's just playing out the old Java mantra of "write once, run anywhere" in the real world. Of course, operating system choice does matter to a point -- Greg's own company is an example of moving from ASP.net to Java because of scalability / performance reasons and days vs. months and years of uptime.

For me, I've used all of them for so long that it's mostly just a question of using what works for any given need. I'm hoping that the continued opening up of Solaris will help spur improvements in the Linux world and that many of the things that we love about the OSS operating systems will help improve Solaris so that moving around from one to the other is even easier.

JavaOne 2007, Startup Camp 2

Is this really JavaOne? Walking around downtown San Francisco in May wearing a t-shirt and shorts and not freezing to death? Record setting heat must be boiling my brain!

I spent most of Monday at the Startup Camp 2 festivities over at the old Argent Hotel. Startup Camp is an open space unconference hosted by Sun and run by the nice folks over at Mass Events Labs. If you've never participated in an open-space style conference, you definitely should -- but don't expect to just sit there -- it's really exactly what you make of it. Note that the notes from each section should eventually make it up to the wiki so check that out for more information.

I went to a session lead by Josh Berkus that was about MySql vs. PostgreSQL. It was much less contentious than I expected. :-) It's great to see PostgreSQL getting more exposure -- especially given how much (undue) credit MySQL gets around being "open source" when it's not completely true. I.e., when it comes down to it, the single biggest reason to chose one or the other is licensing. PostgreSQL's BSD license is a Very Good Thing(tm). In terms of performance, there's definitely a lot afoot with both projects... MySQL is getting better at vertical scaling and PostgreSQL is getting more horizontal support (for things like "clustering").

Another session that I went to was lead by Jason Hoffman of Joyent about the tradoffs of hosted vs. building and managing your own data centers especially as your service starts to grow and you need to start worrying about scale. What made this session cool is what open space conferences are all about -- audience participation. Lots of experienced folks in the audience sharing their war stories.

The money quote of the day came from Josh Berkus (gee, am I a stalker?): "Databases scale poorly." This basic sentiment came up over and over when talking about how to effectively and efficiently get better performance for those hard-earned (or hard-begged :-) startup dollars. Databases don't scale linearly in terms of cost. Moving business logic out of the database leads to up to a 5X improvement in terms of cost (according to a study by Sun). That's a big deal but I'll leave further exploration of that to a future blog.

The wackiest thing at Startup Camp 2 was the "Speed Geeking" general session. Think: speed dating for startups. Each startup that wanted to present itself was given a big round dinner table and had a few minutes to make their pitch/demo/whatever to each small group of interested people. I'm sorry but the Rate My Poop idea is not something that I even want think about -- I'm going to have nightmares.

I also attended a session on pricing of SaaS/"on demand" services. Alas, I hosed my notes of who was running that session -- my apologies. Lots of good discussion but two key takeways were to remember that it's not just "software" but also a "service" and that trust is a key component to any relationship.

Survey: What do you want in the JavaOne2004 conference?

Sun is surveying Java folks about developer demographics and what they want in the 2004 JavaOne conference. If you think it might actually help get Sun to make a better JavaOne show then definitely fill out the survey!

JavaOne 2003: Java's Debutante Ball

Check out my article looking back on the weird and wondrous happenings at this year's JavaOne show.

Sitting With The Audience

Danese Cooper wrote about the pros and cons of sitting in the front row as a Sun employee. Let me be so bold as to recommend to Sun, Key3Media, and all of the other folks who put on developer conferences to try two experiments...

First, just get up and wander around a bit and then sit down somewhere much farther back in the audience. Be Brazilian (as John Gage would say) and actively chat with (i.e., listen first and then respond to) the folks around you. If you're really daring, take along a big stack of your business cards and give them to the folks you actually chat with so that they can continue to chat with you in the future.

Next, try the same thing but without wearing your corporate logo-wear and big-wig badge.

Sure, it would be difficult for Scooter and his huge posse' of handlers, assistants, and bodyguards, but I think that a lot more of the rest of the Sun crew would have interesting and useful experiences than their trepidation would indicate.

Finally, let me note how important it is to do these by yourself! I am continually amazed at how clique-ish folks are and how insidiously that excludes most of the people that have something important to say.

Duke has left the building!

Go home, have fun, and we'll do this again next year!

Why can't I WiFi?!?

Hmm... Java Everywhere and Mobility have been pushed at us all week long. Great. So then, why isn't there ubiquitous, open access wifi throughout the conference? There's a handful of private networks that are available in various areas but nothing at all in most of the conference rooms.

Not a very coherent message that the Java community is leading the technology world. :-(

Java 12,000?

I've been hunting around all week for some clear idea of exactly how many people have attended this year's JavaOne show. In contrast to last year, there wasn't even very much gossip floating around about the attendence numbers.

Well, Sun hasn't stated any official numbers that I've been able to find. However, in snooping around, I've found out that the attendence number is around 12,000. That's basically the same as last year.

Open, Independent JCP?

I mentioned An Independent Look At the Java Community ProcessSM Program in my first java.net blog entry. The original title was "JCP Better than Open Source?" so you might imagine my expectation for fireworks at the session.

Well, first off, the turnout was pathetic. Seems to me like the piss poor voter turnout thing. Of course, those folks still like to bitch. Sigh.

Frank Sommers was allowed access to the JCP database to do a study on the characteristics of the JCP so far in a piece called Effort on the Edge.

Is the java.net community going to kill the JCP?

Doug Lea pointed out that many things don't make sense as full blown (de jure) standard. I think that, like any other premature optimization, bringing things into a standardization process before they've been fully baked in the heat of real-world abuse and competition is a recipe for adding yet another backward compatiblity anchor around our necks. Remember that in the JCP, backward compatibility is a huge constraint. Given that constraint, the JCP should be much more conservative in what they allow through since we're all going to have to live with it for a long time.

Rob Gingell made some very nice statements that the JCP is really about controlling the definitions of the java.* and javax.* namespaces. Basically, things that don't belong in those namespaces have no particular reason to go through the JCP. He was also very clear in saying that Sun is open to many ways to improve the entire world of Java -- the core platform should only represent a small part. That is, communities such as java.net are resources which people can use to help others while helping themselves without the constraints or goals of the JCP.

Is the JCP open or just a white glove around Sun's fist?

Jason Hunter ranted about the fact that Sun still has ultimate control over Java since they have veto power and control most of the JSRs (and certainly all of the core JSRs). The Spec. Leads in each JSR is basically a dictator and pretty much do what they please (within the constraints of the JCP). But, if people don't like that Spec. Lead, the JCP conventions won't allow for a competing JSR to be approved. So, there's very little incentive for the Spec. Lead to actually have to care about things like building consensus.

Mark Hapner made a good point that one of the really great things about the JCP is that it is also evolving. [In a lovely example of recursion, the JCP is evolving through the JCP.]

Jason also noted that the Spec. Lead can foist onerous business terms in addition to onerous technology.

Jason went on to rant about the fact that the JCP licensing terms often force an all or nothing approach to approving/rejecting the JSRs. There's no way to reject specific chunks and yet still remain in compliance. The easy example here is the whole fiasco around the J2EE certification.

The Bottom Line

The simple fact is that Sun controls the definition of Java through both its founder veto and through leading all of the core JSRs. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the Spec. Lead organization cannot ever be forcibly ousted. So, Sun has the power and has it forever (or until they give it up).

Gender bias in the tech recession?

As I've been walking around, sitting in sessions, and generally being a nuisance, I've been struck by the fact that there seems to be a noticeably larger percentage of female developers at the show than in previous years.

Yes, this could be explained by the fact that there are fewer total people here this year so perhaps it's just more striking to my less saturated brain but.... What about in the overall technology world? Given the relatively small percentage of female developers floating around, are they getting laid off less than male developers?

I also think there's some sort of inverse correlation with total number of "booth bunnies". I only saw two booth bunnies (at the SpiritSoft booth) and they seemed to have been dismissed after the first half of Tuesday.

A Seat! A Seat! My Kingdom for a Seat!

Well, as I mentioned before, there's some weird scheduling going on. I got up this morning expecting to go to a couple of performance talks but both of them overflowed in a big way. What a waste!

Once again I'll suggest that Sun should make these sessions available online for free.

Markets are a Good Thing(tm)!

What's up with all of the paranoia from open source advocates w.r.t. java.net? Hello?!? A key part of the whole point of open source is that competition is a good thing. Support the stuff that you like and don't support that you don't like. If there's no acceptable alternative to something that you don't like, make one!

Innovation Everywhere!

Dan mentioned the first use at this conference of Bill Joy's, "Innovation happens elsewhere" second-hand quote. Now, that's the fine and dandy sound bite but...

Innovation happens everywhere. That's the nature of life. Alas, it just so happens that it often gets ignored or otherwise overrun by various kinds of steamrollers.

The Blogs Are Here!

The authentication of the site is finally letting me log in on a regular basis so I can begin to catch up with all of my blogging! Yea!

If you recall, last night I bitched about the fact that the java.net weblogs weren't plugged during the Tuesday keynote. Well, John Gage and the rest of the guys strongly and repeatedly plugged both the weblogs and the Javapedia during today's keynote. Yea!

The java.sun.com oversight was corrected today as well. The java.sun.com site now has a prominent link to the java.net page. Yea!

Quotes: The Good, the Bad, and the Over-hyped

Best Evangelical: Java is Freedom by Amy Fowler -- quoted by husband John Fowler during Tuesday's keynote.

Best Drug Reference:This is your brain on Java by me during the GE Medical demo. They used Java 2D & Java 3D to do display (and nauseating zooming :-) of various brain scans.

Best Safe Sex Pitch:Do it more! Do it safely! by Jonathan Schwartz. I'll just leave the rest of the context to your imagination.

Most Overused Second-hand Quote: Innovation happens elsewhere by Bill Joy. (A) Bill's not even at the show so the uses are all second hand. (B) So far, it's been used at least 5 times by different people.

Best Quote Under the Gun: No pressure! by Tor when his demo failed during the keynote and he had to rebuild it on the fly because he hadn't saved his work. Doh!

Scariest Quote: Java's here! Java's here! Java's everywhere! by Duke during a truly frightening, drug induced frenzy in a Java Everywhere video pitch. I think I'm going to be haunted by the creepy sound of that for a long time. Blech!

Best Cultural Attitude: Everyone is a Brazilian by John Gage.

Best Zen Mantra: I seek calmness by Rob Gingell -- talking about the JCP at the alumni fireside chat.

Scheduling Snafu

Yes indeed, you know the cluetrain has left the station when perennial favorite, Doug Lea, has his Concurrency talk scheduled in one of the tiny session rooms. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense at a developer conference.

The best suggestion that I heard to help make up for it would be to make Doug's talk available online for free -- instead of having to fork out $40 (on top of the conference fee!) to be able to get access to all of the conferences sessions online.

Where's the blogs?!?

<blog rant>
Alas, in the rush to talk about other things, our weblogs.java.net community wasn't even mentioned during the java.net announcement at this morning's keynote. Sigh.
</blog rant>

Xtina Schwartz?

NOT!

Jonathan Schwartz "channeled" Xtina at this morning's keynote. For a few seconds there, he really had the audience believing that Christina Aguilera was a surprise guest.

Schwartz played off the let down with: "We're just a bunch of geeks."

Aguilera has gotten onto the Java bandwagon with the launch of the new consumer Java technology portal where she's helping to promote the notion of Java Mobility being cool.

Luckily for us, Schwartz didn't get down and Dirrty.

Java Raves

This article talks about the upcoming demonstration of Project Rave from Sun. Basically, Rave is a new, integrated development tool for Java built on top of NetBeans. Though, at this point, I've gotta say that it's going to have to be truly stellar to deserve more than a yawn from hard-core developers.

Will Java.net supplant the JCP?

Interesting article about java.net's potential vs. the continued crumbling of the JCP (Java Community Process).

The main take away for me is that Sun is putting out some effort to work better with the larger community.

JavaOne 2003: Transition of Java is Key

Well, it's that time again. A foggy summer in San Francisco and the annual pilgrimage of the Java faithful to the Moscone Convention Center. I've attended every JavaOne [can you believe this is "JavaEight"?] and the show, for a hoover like me, is always an exhausting slog to cram in as much as possible and still be standing at the end.

To get some feel for my take on the show, check out my recaps of the last two conferences:

• JavaOne 2001: Boom or bust?
• JavaOne 2002: Electric Boogaloo

I'm fascinated to see how well the world of Java can transition through its current adolescence into maturity. There are lots of new goodies coming into the core Java fold over the next release or two, many of which are going to be presented during this show. I am concerned that Java is heading down the same slippery slope that C went in through with C++ but I think we all can help to keep that nightmare from becoming reality.

My humble prognostication is that the single most important session of this show will be An Independent Look At the Java Community ProcessSM Program. The session was originally called "JCP Better than Open Source?" but that title offended a lot of people so the name was changed. I suspect this will be a standing room only occasion so get there early if you want a seat.

In terms of the larger Java community, I'm going to go out on a limb and posit that the most important announcement at this year's JavaOne is the creation of this java.net community. We've got the Java Today portal, a slew of blogs, and are creating a JavaPedia. Come join in the fun!

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