Daniel Brookshier's Blog

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New: 3D Math, Viet Nam eLearning, Vocabulary & Open Grade Book in Global Education & Learning Community

This week we have three great projects from three different parts of the world. Here is this week's crop of great ideas from three countries.

o nb-elearning - eLearning Portal Services for Viet Nam
o Open Gradebook - Open source gradebook for teachers
o VICS3D - Interactive Visualizer of Curves and Discrete 3D Surfaces (Portuguese Interface)
o Dictionary - Learning a vocabulary of an specified idiom

These are some great projects from language to math to helping students and teachers. Since these are new projects in our community, if you find these interesting, email the owners and volunteer to help. We are a community and lending a helping hand makes us a stronger community. Here are a few more details on each of these projects and the email addresses of the owners:

nb-elearning - eLearning Services in Viet Nam
Owner: matrixvn171284@dev.java.net

This project is used to developing Elearning services in Viet Nam. This project is just starting, but if you are Vietnamese or can help out, please join this project.

Open Grade Book - Web-Based Grade Book for Teachers
Owner:matthewdfleming@dev.java.net

The goal of this project is to create an non-intrusive open source gradebook built for teachers, but accessible by parents and students. The application uses Tapestry as its front-end, Spring and Hibernate for the back-end. Any database that Hibernate supports should work but MySQL is used for development

Dictionary - Learning a vocabulary of an specified idiom
Owner: orneliojr@dev.java.net

There is a prototype application based on Java ServerFaces technology. The application is used for learning a vocabulary of an specified idiom, like english or spanish. Although the application is a multi dictionary in many languages, the original intention is to be a usefull tool to learn vocabulary.

VICS3D - Interactive Visualizer of Curves and Discrete 3D Surfaces (Portuguese Interface)
Owner: orneliojr@dev.java.net

Another application from our members in Brazil. Drawing surfaces and curves in three dimensions is not easy but it is a key tool for students are learning Calculus, Geometry and Algebra. The objective of this project is to create a modeller of curves and surfaces with a simple interface that allows the students to draw, manipulate, and to modify curves and surfaces in the two or three-dimensional space.

The surfaces and curves would are drawn in the systems of cartesian, cylindrical and spherical coordinates. The orientation of the systems of coordinate and viewpoint can be modified in real time through controls in the visualizer. The current version already has quite a few options.

The interface is in Portuguese. but we can only hope they get a multi-language interface soon. Here is a picture of what they have so far:

Project Spotlight SchoolClipse

Project Name: schoolclipse

Summary: School management (Eclipse rich client application)

Owner Name: Stavros S. Kounis

City: Thessaloniki

Country: Greece

Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm close to finishing Civil Engineering Dept. of Xanhti's University (Greece). I'm working as Programmer for a Civil Engineering related software company (Civiltech) and I'm a cofounder of my small company that provides internet solutions (hosting, web-design, web applications, web-apps). Schoolclipse is our first attempt to go in desktop applications market and a "playground" to investigate Eclipse for Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications.

In my free time I like to hear music, read books and search over the internet for new technologies in programming area.

Tell us a little about the project and why you started it.

This project is started as a request to give a managements solution to a friend who is the owner of a private school. During the same period I just started work with Eclipse RCP and shared my enthusiasm with one of my colleagues. So we have decide to start this project to work on eclipse RCP (giving my friend a school management solution at the same time) and determine if this platform can give us the things we need to go to the desktop application market.

What is the project's current status and plans for the future?

A working instance is currently installed in my friends private school but we will be able to release a beta version in couple of months.

Generally the project is experimental and the area we need to develop and test is Eclipse RCP.

If you want to be informed about project's progress "stay in contact" with my blog at tools.osmosis.gr/blog

What kind of help are you looking for on this project?

It will be great if we get some help in CVS management and organizing. Another issue is more architectural. We would like to discuss the ideas more experienced people, especially the architectural design of database management application.

New projects in Global Education and Learning for January, 31 2005

The Global Education and Learning Community welcomes more great projects. This time we have
Take a look at these great new projects and join them if you can help them out.

JeLSIM

Owner: cdmilligan@dev.java.net
http://jelsim.dev.java.net/
A toolkit for producing educational simulations.

The JeLSIM toolkit facilitates the creation of educational simulations. The process of creating a simulation is split into model writing and interface design through a visual interface provided by the tools. This interface provides visualisation objects (sliders, graphs etc.) which can be linked to model variables. The advantage of this approach is that whereas a programmer is needed to create the original model, the visual development environment means that the construction of individual simulation interfaces can be carried out by a teacher or other educational expert. One model can give rise to an unlimited number of simulation interfaces each customised to a particular educational need. Models can be reused at different educational levels and even across different disciplines where the same underlying algorithm is present. Once finalised, simulation interaces are deployed in one click as java applets, or as SCORM or IMS Content Packages.

The tools are mature and have benefitted in the past from both public and commercial funding. Recent funding has been used to explore the potential for using these tools in an assessment environment. Prototype synchronous collaborative functionality is already present within the tools and asynchronous collaboration is easily achieved through saving state via to a server (using the SCORM API). We have also developed model builder functionality to allow the programmer to be removed from the loop for a class of models. Almost 50 models have already been developed (in chemistry, electronics, mechanics, mathematics and many other subjects) and these are also freely available. One of our aims is to create a community within a community creating a collection of freely available/sharable models and interfaces as a goal of the project. For more details visit: http://www.jelsim.org/ .

Liber

jackganzha@dev.java.net
http://liber.dev.java.net/
Liber Laboratory Projects

Liber is a research laboratory at Pernambuco's Federal University. There are multiple projects here covering EDMS (Electronic Document Management System), Human-Machine Interface, Information Retrieve and Data Integration. Liber has four major projects: Macunayna: a multimidia EDMS, The Pernambuco's Annals: a textual database created using PostgreSQL and Jakarta Lucene; Theses compilations from theses and dissertations (like NDLTD) made at Pernambuco's Federal University. Sonora which deals with sound files.

Recuitment

http://recuitment.dev.java.net/
mraghurama@dev.java.net
Tools for recruiting

The Recuitment project was started to develop tools to select the eligible candidates for developer recruitment. In this project some reservation candidates will also be classified according to some norms. The system will also calculate statistics about the candidates. The system's primary function will be to put candidates through written tests and other eligibility tests.

Javahttpserver

nesk01@dev.java.net
http://javahttpserver.dev.java.net/
A HTTP 1.0 Server in Java for a school project

This is a student using java.net for his school project. I am happy to welcome students and teachers to host on java.net because we here to help.

New Projects at GELC for January, 10 2005

The Global Education and Learning Community welcomes its first projects of 2005. This month we have an automata tester (from a Chinese developer), an eLearning platform based on SCORM, a MIDP RSS client, a virtual console for teaching Java to teenage students (from Mexico), a federated exchange of digital content and rights management, and a set of tools for teaching Algebra in High Schools with a graphical symbolic tool.

It is quite interesting that several of these tools already have code and working versions (or soon will have) because they were created elsewhere and have hosted their code at java.net.

Take a look at these great new projects and join them if you can help them out.

http://automata-platform.dev.java.net/
Summary: AutoMata Platform is a auto machine tool for test your automata

AutoMata is a very important course in computer scince subject. AutoMata Platform is a auto machine tool for test your automata arithmetic implementations.It provides state map view ,state trees,and a powerful extendable achitecture. The users (mainly students and teachers)can use this toolfor demostration and argumentation the auto machines. they can also implement their own automachine or layout arithmetics to enhance this platform to fill thier requests. Chinese Version: 《形式语言与自动机》是一门很重要的计算机专业课程。本项目——自动机平台，起源于北京航空航天大学计算机学院《形式语言与自动机》课程。 现阶段，平台提供了自动机中的正则表达式识别、正则表达式转NFA、NFA转换到DFA以及DFA化简，并使用图形化的状态图来帮助使用者进行跟踪学习。同时平台提供了强大的可扩展性，使用者可以使用java语言实现自己的自动机，并利用本平台提供的图形化状态图来进行测试和研究；也可以实现自己的布局算法，来扩展有关自动机状态图的布局等。

http://elearning.dev.java.net/
Summary: elearning java platform

eLearning Java Platform based on ADL's (Advanced Distributed Language) SCORM standard. Develop and Build a Portal with Java2 + XML language under rules specified by SCORM XML Controlling Document Specification, IMS Learning Resource Meta-data Specification and Sharable Content Object Reference Model Specification.

http://ienjinia.dev.java.net/
Summary: IENJINIA Virtual Console for teaching Java to teenage students. You can see the official IENJINIA homepage at http://www.ienijina.com

It was relatively easy for a teenager to fully understand all the hardware and software in computers such as the Apple II and Commodore 64. Now it has become quite hard to understand how everything works, even in a "simple" PC. The IENJINIA Virtual Console and Devkit emulate hardware similar to an early 80's video games console to provide a better environment for learning how to write software. Note that this project is a product of developers in Mexico.

http://jatse.dev.java.net/
Summary: Graphical Symbolic Algebra tools for High School

JATSE is a set of tools for teaching, learning and playing with algebra. They will provide a broad range of symbolic algebra functionality including a GUI to manipulate algebraic functions, components to render functions in a mathematical format, and classes that can "intepret" and describe arbitrary functions.

This project is targeted at the mathematics used in high school, although these classes can be extended to cover either more or less advanced math.

This project currently consists of prototypes(Please see the Algebra prototype in the "Documents & files" Section) including:
• A set of classes that to represent algebra expressions in an expression tree.
• A set of GUI classes to manipulate algebraic functions. The GUI is designed to support ideas held
by reform educators.
• An engine to manipulate and render rational linear equations with two variables ("x" and "y").
• A rudimentary parser that turns an ASCII string into expression tree.

Much of this work is part of my employment with The Concord Consortium. They have graciously agreed to let me release this work as Open Source. I am spending a good deal of extra time extending this work.

http://mitmuml.dev.java.net/
Summary: mitmuml is an MIDP RSS client

mitmuml is an MIDP RSS client.It is nearly 90 % about document for user.

mitmuml is an MIDP RSS client.The User can read headlines from a number of news sites and have the link emailed to him via mobile client.Major,it will read information about medical history of patient in format RSS. RSS is a widely used XML format for news to feed their headline contents to aggregators.It is readable by users and can be parsed by XML parser.

http://voyager.dev.java.net/
Summary: Federated Brokerage Model for Digital Content

A Java-based brokerage system for the federated exchange of digital content and rights management.

Graduation in the Global Education & Learning Community October, 28th 2004

Graduation in the Global Education & Learning Community is upon us again. This time the fare is aimed at helping teachers teach with visualization tools. In addition, we have the New2Java project for newbie Java developers. The graduated project's descriptions and links are listed below.

Rin'G - A non-intrusive tool for the study of graph algorithms

Rin'G is an environment for the study and implementation of Graph Theory algorithms that allows users to view interactive, step-by-step animations of their executions.

Users can draw graphs on a graphical user interface, load and save graphs and animations and add their own algorithms to be executed. An english version of the user manual will soon be published on this site.

The environment is being developed in Java, for desktop platforms, and uses state-of-the-art technology, such as advanced Swing programming, Design Patterns, and the java.lang.reflect API. There is a stable release available in the Documents & files section, and source-code will also be available in the near future.

If you need help on how to implement algorithms compatible with Rin'G, please refer to the Diamante documentation at the Documents & files section, or browser it online here.

This tool is being developed as an undergraduate project at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and it will be open for collaboration as soon as this process is over.

downloadable version 1.1.1_03

JotAzul - Learning POO in an Object Oriented Java IDE

The JotAzul is a free Object Oriented Java IDE created to help teachers and newbies in the POO World. It was inspired on the BlueJ IDE (not open source) and Blue System (dead project) language. You can find information about "The Objects First" learning approach at these sites.
You can point and click to create classes, attributes and methods. After building the project, a simple class diagram is generated automatically. Here you can create new instances of your classes and access static methods and static attributes (you don't need the annoying static void main(String[] args) method !!).You can see your objects. You can interact with them accessing methods and attributes just pointing and clicking or evaluating expressions at runtime. You can record these action as Java code ! JotAzul was created using the SWT (Simple Widget Toolkit) It supports multi-language (but only English and Brazilian Portuguese in the latest version). Some screenshots here are in portuguese. Sorry about that
*The name jotazul is a combination of the words jota (the name for J letter in portuguese) and azul (blue in portuguese) :)

MTJ - Matrix Toolkits for Java

The matrix toolkits and associated software libraries found here offer a very wide range of high-performance dtastructures and algorithms for scientific computing. Some of the problems which can be solved with this software includes

* Solving systems of equations, either square systems or over/under-determined systems
* Direct solvers such as LU and Cholesky factorization can be used for small scale problems
* Iterative solvers and preconditioners are available for large, sparse matrices
* Performing spectral analysis of matrices by eigenvalue solvers and singular value decompositions. Both symmetric and unsymmetric eigenvalue problems are supported
* Supports a comprehensive set of matrices. These include
* General dense and structured sparse (banded, triangular, tridiagonal, symmetric)
* Unstructured sparse matrices. These perform internal memory allocation, and are easy to use
* Distributed memory matrices, for high-end parallel computing
* Parallel computing is supported on several levels:
* It is possible to use native BLAS which may support CPU vectorization and SMP machines
* Threads are used for parallel sparse matrix/vector products
* The distributed memory matrices offer the highest-performing parallelization by utilizing a custom message passing interface
* And much, much more!

Packages in MTJ

new2java - Information about Java technology for developers.

The New to Java project directs new and experienced developers to information for learning the Java platform. This area helps developers get to the information they need to quickly learn about various Java technologies. In addition, you can communicate with fellow developers, talk code, discuss problems, and share information.

Read articles, tutorials, take online quizzes, use code samples, and more from the Documents & files section. Discuss programming problems and solutions, share coding technqiues, and chat with fellow developers on the online Discussion forums. Sign up for announcements through the Mailing lists.

JavaOne - Day Two - The Rise of Buzz

Today we got to see the sunny side of Scott McNealy at the keynote today. I have to admit that I like to hear that man talk. The key thing that he said that got my attention was that there were 14,000 developers at JavaOne. That is almost like before the crash! Almost everything but the requisite T-Shirt lofting at the end of the talk was just icing on the cake of the Java economy(the T-Shirt lofter self-destructed after 3 shots - but it did look real cool). Even making nice with Microsoft is less a happening than knowing that the developer community is thriving. If you can afford to go to JavaOne, there must be some money in the economy.

Tonight we also had our meeting of the minds for java.net. There were a lot of people there and the conversations were loud and hard to stop - even when we announced a few cool prizes. I heard lots of talk about opportunity knocking. There are a lot of new projects out there and a lot entrepreneurial work too. With a down economy the smart people are replacing the defunct companies. I heard of a lot of people making their way in small businesses with cool ideas. I was able to show off a few of mine too like 312 Inc's LeanOnMe P2P backup software, Quantum Chess (a P2P chess variant), and Venezia-Gondola (P2P ebay killer) all written in JXTA.

I also heard a lot of talk that Java technology is getting bigger and better. As an example, JXTA is now faster and easier. Tools and techniques are also improving. I also saw that Java is still bigger than you can absorb. There are a lot of API out there for all sorts of applications. Thank goodness we have Google or we would never find these great tools and products.

Today was also another day of meeting people. I must have met 30 people that know me, but only online. It is always a surprise to find that nobody looks like their smiley faces :o) I am amazed at how conversations always turned to business or succeeding with Java.

Education and Java started to become apparent today. I met several people form different universities. There were students and professors, all seeming to be working on very cool projects.

More to come. Tomorrow there is a JXTA session and a BOF. I'll be at the session and might make the BOF. I need to share my time with the NoMagic folks( makers of MagicDraw UML, a 100% Java UML modeler). If you are interested, I'll be teaching a short course in UML Wednesday night and will be signing copies of my JXTA book. Come by the NoMagic Booth and sign up, we have only limited seating.

Stay tuned! Two more days to go!

Education And Research Becomes JELC

Education and Research Becomes JELC

Every once in a while you have something that someone else is looking for. You learn a skill and someone wants to hire you for that skill. You have a spare room, and a good roommate shows up. Well the Education and Research Community at java.net has the skills and the spare room and guess who shows up? How about the rest of the world? Europe to China and the African continent to the Americas, the leaders and managers of education are seeing java.net as a resource they have been dreaming about.

When the rest of the world is just outside on your door step, it’s time to clean house and get ready for the new tenants. That’s what we are doing this week because we are re-launching the community to reflect a new worldwide focus.

The Birth of the Java Education and Learning Community (JELC)

Our original Education and Research community is being reborn as the Java Education and Learning Community (JELC), a new java.net community. Extra support from Sun Microsystems along with the original community leaders will give researchers, teachers, programmers, authors, corporate trainers, administrators, public officials, students and others a place to find, develop and share Java-based open source educational tools, open learning standards implementations, and open course learning materials.

The idea for the JELC was formed March 1, 2004 at the first Lifelong Learning Forum in Madrid, Spain, a meeting where Sun's CEO Scott McNealy and 40 representatives from 25 Ministries of Education around the world discussed common challenges in implementing a policy of lifelong learning to develop individual skills to increase national competitiveness.

By merging with JELC, the Education and Research community brings over 80 Java-based open source projects in education, along with an active membership and established processes for working together as a community. Java has become universally accepted in higher education.

Over the last few years, governments around the world have been embracing open source as a means of controlling costs and reducing time to implementation. There have been few cross-border efforts at open source collaboration and sharing of best practices at an international level. The JELC seeks to break down some of those barriers to promote widespread adoption of Java-based open source tools and infrastructure.

All existing java.net Education and Research projects remain unchanged, except that they are in a different community now. The project areas of the JELC are modeled on those of the Education and Research, but there are some new areas (like Public Policy) and some things were combined (like Student Projects instead of Class Projects and Student Thesis). There will be more changes, but these will help us organize for the flood of countries joining our community.

Project submission and selection, community leadership, and community governance will remain the same as they always have been. The benefit to existing java.net members is that the JELC will provide a wider, more high-level exposure to Java-based open source projects that can really make a difference in education and learning on a global scale.

The Lifelong Learning Focus

Another focus is Lifelong Learning. Simply you should be learning your whole life. But what does this have to do with JELC? Simply that we are creating educational content and tools to help anyone learn whether in a traditional school, adult education, trade group, or even a community dedicated to a subject area. Using open source education tools gives everyone the ability to create and enhance centers of learning quickly and at a low cost.

Lifelong learning is also a focus from corporations to whole countries. Simply it is the only way to compete in the marketplace. Skills are no longer static and new technology is always evolving. Even a blue-collar worker needs computer and other skills. White-collar workers have their own ever-changing mix of technologies. Enabling learning through innovative open source technologies, in our case via Java, is the most cost effective way to deliver education to the masses throughout their working lives.

You are the Community

I want to make it perfectly clear, we are still a community and still under java.net. We have a few more monetary resources and new staff from Sun to help build and manage the community. But we are still a group of volunteers and passionate people. We are about to get a lot more projects and people. We are still a Java community. You may see some mention of other technology like Linux, but in relationship to Java. Part of the JELC effort is of course because of Sun so there are new Sun people running around like developers, sales people, and marketing. Most are new to open source communities so please help educate them on the do’s and don’ts.

Learning From Educators as Customers

We are going to also have forums for discussing education in terms of teaching, learning, and administration. As developers we need to know requirements of our customers. You might say that you were (or still are) a student and know all about education, what do we need to know about building academic software. Believe me, I thought that too until I started asking educators and administrators about their jobs. We need more than our collective experience; we need information from the trenches. And if you are an educator or administrator, feel free to tell us what you need to teach or manage your school.

A Community of World-Wide Volunteers

One of the interesting things going on is that the world is coming. We have a few projects in other languages, but we are going to have many more. One of the bigger issues we will have is just language. English is pervasive but there are a lot of people that only speak their mother tongue. If you know a language other than English and would like to help us, let us know.

Be a leader or Be a Volunteer

We need new projects, we need people to help with existing projects and we need everything from web content developers to volunteers to help our projects grow. But why volunteer or lead a project? The simplest reason is that you are interested. You might also need what a project is building and need to get your input to make sure it turns out right. But there are other benefits like meeting your fellow developers, exchanging ideas, and of course doing something important for your community and the world. Participation also adds to your experience and to your resume. Working on open source projects is now just as important as the jobs where you collect a paycheck.

JELC Founding Advisory Committee Members

Because we are about to become a much bigger community, we also need some big time advice. To help us, we have recruited some high caliber leaders to advise our community. Here are the advisors, their positions, and links to their biographies.

Mr. Ira Fuchs
Vice President for Research in Information Technology, Andrew Mellon Foundation
bio

Mr. John Gage
Chief Researcher, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
bio

Ms. Kim Jones, Vice President Global Education and Research, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
bio

Mr. Mike Keller
University Librarian and Director of Academic Information Resources, Stanford University
bio

Dr. M. S. Vijay Kumar
Assistant Provost and Director of Academic Computing, IS&T MIT
bio

Mr. Scott McNealy
Chairman and CEO, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
bio

Mr. Alessandro Musumeci
Information Technology General Manager,
Ministry of Education, Italy
bio

Where is the new JELC?

Here are our new links. The first is our portal, which is just like the java.net portal with news, links, a wiki, and other collaboration tools. In the near future I will be looking for your help to write articles and add to forums and wiki content.

community.java.net/edu-jelc/

Next is our new development portal. We have created new categories and consolidated a few project areas. All of the existing projects are still here. We will work on this area over the next week to put projects in their proper place and to document the procedures for each project area.

edu-jelc.dev.java.net

What's next for JELC?

The future is bright for JELC. We are already starting to add new projects. The new portal is also up and running so that we can get news and exchange ideas in our community. Remember also that what comes next is also partly up to you. Education is the future and you are part of creating that future. Good luck everyone and let's get to work on the future of education!

If you have any additional questions or comments please post to our Discussion Forum.

When planning for a year, plant corn.
When planning for a decade, plant trees.
When planning for life, train and educate people."

- Chinese proverb: Guanzi (c. 645 BC)

Education And Research Community at Java.Net

Introducing the Education and Research Community

Java.Net is a very big place on the net nowadays. There are a lot of communities and hundreds of projects. But what is in each community? Why would you host your project in one or the other? Today I am going to tell you about one of the Java.Net communities I manage, Education and Research (E&R).

But first, Education and Research? Why? In part, education needs software too. There are actually many open source projects developing software related to education. Some of the older projects are beginning to migrate to Java.Net to take advantage of the community and services provided here. But there is more than software for the sake of education. There are also projects related to student thesis and school projects. There are also many researchers that need a space to work with their peers in an open way.

Face it, we have good tools, a great overall community and its all free. Why not support education and our researchers that need all the help they can get?

This community is used by students, teachers, and individuals to create software for all aspects of education and learning from classroom management systems to teaching tools, to hosting projects of students for projects and thesis work. We also host tutorials for learning various subjects, authors post their code and sample chapters for books, and we also host academic research and thesis work.

This community is also important for collaboration between educators, students, and developers of educational software. We host discussions and areas for exploration important for learning or exploring new ideas and new technologies.

Why Host a Project in E&R?

E&R is definitely a loose community as far as projects go. We focus on education, so project here relate to schools, students, educators, or even the ongoing education of developers and managers. So tutorials, code examples, books, educational software, school management, testing, etc. can all be hosted or found here. We cross a wide range of the other communities from J2EE to Swing to Linux. As long as it is related to education and research, you can see there are advantages hosting in a community of teachers and students.

But why not another community? Why host a JXTA tutorial here when there is already a JXTA community? Simply this area is the place to go to learn just like a school is a place to learn. If you are hosting a new project you will have the tools to create and manage learning systems for new projects. We will be cross-linking the communities so that the core community has a link to the educational community hosting its tutorials. This way we can concentrate on the education aspects of a project as a whole plus get help from the experts in the subject community.

Another reason to host your project here is if it is highly experimental. Trying to refine an algorithm, experiment with different designs, implementing a new type of user interface? E&R is open to the educational, the new, the cool, and the strange. Math, science, the arts, and other subjects that we associate with academic and scientific endeavors too.

Project Areas

There are a lot of subjects in education and even more in research. To create a sense of order, we have divided the E&R community into several project areas. See if you can find an area or a project in that area that fits your needs and interests. If you have a project proposal and need a new category, let us know.

Community Leaders for E&R: Dr. Robert S. Stephenson, Daniel Brookshier.

Dr. Robert S. Stephenson
Community Leader - Education & Research at Java.Net
E-learning Architect
Assoc. Prof., Biological Sciences
Wayne State University, Detroit MI
http://www.science.wayne.edu/~rstephe
rstephe@sun.science.wayne.edu

Daniel Brookshier
Community Leader - Education & Research at Java.Net
Author - 'JXTA: Java P2P Programming'
Editor: P2PJournal.com
President JavaMUG
Director on the Board of JXTA.ORG
turbogeek@cluck.com

My Apple Does Java

From MS to Apple: Don't hate me because my computer is beautiful.

I now own an Apple. Its a nice 17" PowerBook. I still own an XP P IV 2GHz laptop and a few desktop PC's, but the Apple is used for 99% of my work.

Why an Apple? Because it is as close to Linux as I can get without having to install it myself. Linux is cool, but I like something I can blame a real company for glitches. Imagine calling you PC manufacturer to complain that your application is not running.

Support: What version of Windows are you running?

Linux User: I'm running Red Hat, the latest drop.

Support: **click**

There is also the nice feeling you get when you unpack your computer and it boots. The last laptop that I tried to convert to Linux... It was not pleasant. Suffice it to say, the experience sucked and I spent more time looking for drivers than writing software. Not that I hate Linux, but I need to spend more time working than fiddling with my OS.

Apple's Java

One of the coolest things about the Apple version of Java is its implementation of the Java shared archive (JSA). The JSA has optimized standard Java classes that would otherwise be loaded from classes.jar. The key is that these are loaded into shared memory thus saving a lot of memory and startup time for Java applications. See Java shared archive for more information.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.