Zarar Siddiqi's Blog

March 2007 Archives

A look back at The ServerSide Java Symposium 2007

Sure there was fluff, fluff is everywhere and TSS Java Symposium was no different. But in the end there were more code examples than SOA hand-waving and even when the so-called SOA gurus went about trying to sell you stuff, they usually backed it up (or at least tried to) with some kind of a demo which would translate through to the lowest common developer. Advertised as the most pragmatic of conferences, TSSJS kept its word for the most part with only a couple talks bordering on inanity.

Most of the speeches were tin-canned and delivered a thousand times before but if you've never heard it, its new to you, right? That's the optimist in me talking. There were some talks which could cure insomnia (Nati Shalom) while others entertained and informed (Brian Goetz - Java Performance Myths), but most fell into the category of "Here's a product X, it does A and B and it's good for people who are doing C". Maybe I'm being naive and not critical enough but at least that's what I got out of the talks.

Does all this AJAX stuff really belong at a conference dedicated to the "server side". Prototype and GWT? No matter how you swing it, it's still simple old JavaScript. I can see this being a topic at JavaOne where there's plenty of sessions to fill out but at a specialized conference like this one, it seemed out of place. I know a lot of developers are making the crawl over to the client side but to me these were sessions where the knowledge gained could've been done so using Google searches.

This was a smaller conference without any security guards armed with guns at the doors so technically anybody staying at The Venetian could get in (and some did thanks to Tech Target - lazy SOBs). All the sessions I went to had plenty of room to sit or move up and almost all the sessions went without an AV hitch (Ross Mason's Mule2 and Chet Haase's Rich Client one being the exceptions). Most of the talks were focused and concise and although the aforementioned fluff reared its ugly head often, it was in most cases, quickly put down in favor of practical speech.

The keynote speaker simply sucked, maybe I was expecting too much of Eric Gamma but the guy kept droning on about Jazz and how great the Eclipse team is. Didn't really feel the vibe man. After that on Wednesday morning, my expectations were pretty low but things got progressively better over the day thanks to some Spring2, OSGi, ESB and AOP talks. I think I also felt a lot better after Mark Richards told me that I'm not an idiot for not really knowing what an ESB really is or whether I need it. This was probably the best ESB talk that I went to. It's good to see a speaker who wants to make a singular point and dedicate his entire talk to it by guiding you through what went in his mind as he reached his conclusions.

I stepped up to the Google desk in the vendor area and asked some Googly guy what he was doing for his side project, for those in the dark Google has a policy of allowing employees to work on side projects for 20% of their paid time. It turns out he was wasting it by thinking about it for the past four months. I get a sick feeling every time I meet a Google employee. Can't really explain it. I think it might even be jealousy. My colleague still isn't over the fact that the Google supplied computers in the "Cyber Cafe" were missing J2REs.

The GigaSpaces logo was about as abundant as Gordie Brown posters, even penetrating a few talks through their new Interface21 partnership. Spring2's endorsement of SBA includes declarative XML and annotation support for the architecture, making the product-pitch much easier for GigaSpaces.

One of the regrets I have is forgetting to attend the cocktail party on Wednesday night, if anybody did go to it, do let me know how it went. Since I've already attended the one conference that I get allotted a year, I can't go to JavaOne which is a shame. If anybody's feeling charitable enough to fly me out, be so kind to do so. Great to meet a fellow Arsenal fan at the conference. Go Gunners.

If anybody cares, my reviews of the sessions are posted here:

• Part 1 - Eric Gamma, how could you?


• Part 2 - Spring2 + = cool; ESBs exposed; OSGi love


• Part 3 - Rich GWT Clients using SBA


• Best Session - Java Performance Myths by Brian Goetz

JavaOne vs. TSS Java Symposium

The people I work for have rewarded my countless hours of hard labor by approving my application to go to TheServerSide.com's Java Symposium. This comes a year after I attended JavaOne in San Francisco. So why did I choose TSS Java Symposium over Java One? I'm sure you give a rats ass about my opinion but here it comes anyways.

JavaOne is too big: It's f***ing huge! There's like 10,000 people there and although you might argue that the size of people attending is proportional to the quality of the presentations, you're wrong. I did attend a couple nice sessions last year but there were more than a few crappy ones (Spring Web Flow, Composite Applications etc.) which tells me (keeping proportions in mind) that there are many crappy ones. The rooms are huge which takes away from the learning environment that it should be; it feels like a first year chemistry class rather than a conference where you're supposed to quickly pick up stuff while having some fun at the same time.

The Commercialism: Everyone's trying to sell you something and as soon as you tell them you don't have any purchasing power in your company, they throw sharp pointed objects at you. I talked to the guy from Terracotta last year for about 15 minutes asking him all kinds of questions and at the end he asked me what I did at my company and when I said I was a measly developer, he gave me one of those I-can't-believe-I-wasted-20-f***ing-minutes-on-this-guy look.

Bad Food: Just horrible and awful. I was scared to touch it, let alone eat it. But when I finally mustered up the courage to eat it, I regretted it after two bites. I threw the sandwich away and gave my warm soda to what appeared to be a homeless developer.

Repetition: There were around four different sessions on Java Persistence API which covered the same subject matter. I made the mistake of attending two of them only to realize they're talking about the exact same thing, they just labeled the sessions differently just so everybody on the expert group had their crack at impressing the bored audience how they copied Hibernate.

Bad Party: Any party where the ratio of men to women is 6:1 is never going to be good but you can make up for it by actually providing accessible food and drink. When you shove 10,000 people in one big room and setup 4 stations where you can get drinks and food from, your appetite will force you to exit the premises and the lack of women will only motivate you to do so quickly. I scampered off to the Marriot nearby and admired San Francisco from towering heights. Also, chugging T-Shirts out of a cannon is not entertainment.

Long lines at sessions: Again, the size issue. The Gestapo regime that is the event staff forces you to lineup before every session and swipe your conference card. The lineups are long and painful and if you're in the line, you'll often here more than a few people muttering "I don't believe this shit". Don't believe me? Ask anyone who attended last year.

Spam after you come back: Here's a tip to anyone attending this year, give a fake phone and email address in your JavaOne registration form. You'll thank me as you're laughing at your friends for having to deal with daily spam and intruding phone calls imploring you to buy some product from Quest Software and pay for training courses from Sun. These people have a knack of bothering you during lunch hour which is a double whammy. Every moment you're in the pavilion, somebody's begging to swipe your conference card like they were get paid by the swipe. They probably are.

No Networking Opportunities: Aside from the BOF's which you may or may not be interested in, there are really no parties or events that will allow you to network with other people. Given how most IT folks are socially inward and scared of light, the task of networking at JavaOne is a little tough. The best time I had last year was at the Geronimo party, although I've never even used Geronimo, I sure enjoyed the free food and drinks provided by IBM etc. Side note: Again, aside from the waitresses, no women at this party either. I actually exchanged a few business cards with some fine folk; more of these events would only help JavaOne.

Now I've never been to TSS Java Symposium before but from what I can gather from the session descriptions, they seem to cater more to my line of work: enterprise development. I read some horror stories about TSS last year but it's time I take a look and judge for myself.

Since I write about other stuff besides just Java, I primarily use a wordpress blog: arsenalist.com. I'll be talking and reviewing the sessions at TSS Java Symposium over there. If anybody cares.

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