Andy Reitz (blog)

 

 

JavaOne: General Session: Java Technology Contributions and Futurist Panel

I got to James Gosling's general session over a half hour late this morning (the balance I had to strike between Caltrain's schedule and my sleep schedule). Here are some highlights:

NetBeans has a new set of tools for developing code for mobile phones. Visual app. builder, can also deploy code to phone from NetBeans. Even cooler, if the phone supports the correct JSR, you can do debugging of the app. while it is running on the phone. Single step, breakpoints, etc. -- all over Bluetooth!

They did a demo of an UAV that is powered by real-time Java. The conclusions:
  • RTSJ determinism critical for navigational control
  • RTSJ JVM enabled significant productiivity gains over C++ (don't need to worry about low-level stuff like endianess, etc.)
  • Continue to perform research on newer RTSJ implementations
The summary for me is that I would like to check out real-time Java. Yet another thing on my list of "things to surf".

Sun is putting out multimedia versions of all of the JavaOne sessions onto the Internet, free for all (including slides, audio, etc.). Allowing Open Source contributions of translated audio tracks? It seems like people can watch in English, and record their own track, in a different language.
Shifting gears, the second half of the general session is a panel, about the future of Java. On the panel: James Gosling, Bill Joy, Paul Saffo, Guy Steele, and Danny Hillis (Applied Minds, Inc.). This was just a general talk on a bunch of futuristic mumbo-jumbo -- I wasn't really engaged to the point that I extracted anything interesting.