| | The year 2007 was full of exciting plot twists, punctuated by growing excitement about dynamic languages, the open source evolution of the JVM, and the rise of Google as a strategic contributor to the Java community. The question is, what does all that tell us about the year ahead? Andrew Glover has some answers for Java developers who need to know -- now! -- what's coming in 2008. | When high-tech history is inscribed for the ages, 2008 may be remembered as the year Java tipped from a language-centric to a platform-centric technology. Andrew Glover kicks off JavaWorld's Year in Review series with a look back over the last 12 months in Java development, when alternate languages for the JVM took center stage, new directions emerged in the enterprise space, and Sun Microsystems staked its claim on the client side -- with or without Swing. | Tools for the software development lifecycle, or SDLC, moved to the forefront in 2008. For this Year in Review feature, tools expert John Ferguson Smart homes in on what's new and improved about his favorite build-automation frameworks, testing tools, and IDEs. If you haven't been keeping up on the tools front, here's your chance to modernize your Java toolbox, just in time for the new year. | Prediction is the art of making an educated guess about what the future may hold. When it comes to a technology like the Java platform, the "educated" aspect comes from studying the past and identifying the patterns that run deeper than mere fad. So far, JavaWorld's Year in Review series has looked closely at events and trends that defined Java in 2008 -- the language, the platform, and supporting tools. In this last article in the series I'll look forward, to what we can expect from Java technology, and the Java industry, in 2009. | Unlike previous years, 2006 has been a defining year for Java, marking fundamental change for what remains, by many objective measures, today's most popular programming language. Most critical to the fate of Java is Sun's decision to release its implementation of Java under terms of the GPL, a process that is well underway today with the release of the HotSpot VM, javac compiler, and a GPL Java ME implementation (Java EE was open-sourced last year as the GlassFish project). The SE pieces aren't enough to comprise a complete Java platform yet--that will happen next year when the class libraries are open-sourced. Still, the progress is a lot more than almost anyone would ever have predicted a year ago, and virtually nobody expected Sun to choose GPL for its open source license. | Editor's note: Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates are the authors of the recently released Head First Java, a language tutorial unlike any other. In this interview, they explain their unique teaching style and how it works in practice. If you haven't picked up a copy of their book yet, you'll notice their enthusiasm for their subject is palpable here. It's an attitude you'll find repeated throughout the pages of their first book in O'Reilly's newest series. Check out Head First Java, I think you'll see they certainly walk the walk. | In an interview from the JavaOne 2007 java.net Community Corner, java.net editor Chris Adamson interviews Brian Behlendorf about his early involvement with the Apache project, the creation and development of the Apache Foundation and CollabNet, his perspectives on the open-source community, and what his next big project could be. | | JSR 133, which was charged with fixing the problems discovered in the Java Memory Model (JMM), has recently entered public review after nearly three years in committee. The new memory model strengthens the semantics of volatile and final, largely to bring the language semantics into consistency with common intuition. | I notified the owners of the top 50 projects for February, and one of them, John Catherino, project owner of the Cajo project, asked why I don't make the data public. I said, "Yes, obviously we should and we are working on how to do that, but also I want to interview the owners of some of these most active projects," and would he like to be my first victim? He said yes. | Editor's note: In this interview, Community Manager Marla Parker continues her series of interviews with leaders of some of the most active projects on java.net. In this installment, she corresponds with Joe Walker of Direct Web Remoting, or DWR, a popular library for developing Ajax appliciations in Java, and one which we've highlighted in several java.net feature articles (see resources for links). | Project Darkstar is a collection of technologies around providing high-performance, high-uptime, low-latency servers for massively-multiplayer online games and other applications. A Darkstar Community has recently been approved for java.net and in this interview, Darkstar founder Jeff Kesselman talks with java.net editor Chris Adamson about the project, what it does, and what people are doing with it. | Kohsuke Kawaguchi, a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, is one of the most active project owners and developers on java.net, so it was no surprise to me that several of the top 50 most active projects on the site each month belong to Kohsuke. The project I chose to ask him about is Hudson. | Currently, I'm the lead of the performance team working on GlassFish, our open source application server. I oversee all the team efforts on performance, and then I get to dive into areas as they come up. So I've been spending a lot of time on the performance of Grizzly, the NIO HTTP connector, which we've managed to make just as performant (in fact, slightly better) than our previous C-based HTTP connector. | Bill Shannon is a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he is one of the architects of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. He has been with Sun since 1982 and previously worked on the JavaMail API, the HotJava Views product, the Common Desktop Environment, the Solaris operating system, and all versions of SunOS. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University with an MS in Computer Engineering. | Allen: I founded Digisoft.tv in 2000 to become a leading global provider of carrier-class solutions to IPTV operators. We deliver solutions that let operators develop, test, manage, and deploy next-generation interactive television services. Digisoft's scalable solutions reduce the capital expenditure needed to launch a differentiating IPTV service. We also make it possible to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU). | Do you have an opinion on the techniques mentioned in this article? Do you have a tool or technique you use to find good programmers? Please share your ideas in the News & Ideas Forum Topic: How to Interview a Programmer. | In a scene near the end of the 1973 movie the Paper Chase, four first-year law students, sitting around an antique table, present each other their outlines summarizing the year's work. One student's outline, comprising thousands of pages, clearly cannot aide anyone's studying. When challenged, he indignantly states that his outline represents a work of genius that he's unwilling to share. He clearly had lost sight of the goal -- create a study aide -- in favor of his own brilliance. That scene comes to mind while listening to Extreme Programming (XP) founder Kent Beck explain how software development frequently goes off track. You can imagine Kent railing against becoming enamored with clever complexity while failing at making the grade. | Best known as the developer of the JDOM Java XML modeling libraries, Jason Hunter volunteered a good part of his life over the past year to making it easier for open source projects to participate in the Java standardization process. | Although I would expect any book co-authored by Scott Ambler to discuss agile methods, I was still quite happy to see that the book describes how teams following such methods can work closely together to adapt database changes. Too often in IT, application development and database development are looked upon as separate entities, managed as organized silos, rather than as integrated components working toward a common goal. Refactoring Databases provides good guidance on how these groups really can work toward a unified goal with a single output at the end. | Since he first began work on the I-Way supercomputing network seven years ago, software architect Steve Tuecke has been one of the driving forces behind Grid computing. He is lead software architect in the Distributed Systems Laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory and lead architect of the Globus Toolkit, the de facto standard open source Grid middleware solution and the inspiration for the emerging standard OGSA (Open Grid Services Architecture), which it implements in the recent Globus Toolkit 3.0 alpha release. Steve is well positioned to offer insight on this cutting-edge technology area. And he did just that in this interview with developerWorks correspondent Robert McMillan. | Community reviews are an important milestone in the lifecycle of a JSR. At this stage, a group of individuals with interest and knowledge of the proposed technology form an expert group for the JSR. The expert group prepares the first draft specification of the JSR and releases it to JCP members. JCP members have the privilege to review proposed Java technology still in it's infancy. Members are encouraged to provide feedback to the expert group. Become a member now! Take part in the future of Java technology! | Gamelan.com will keep you informed of new draft specification as they become available for public review. The JCP is an open group with over 300 registered individuals and companies currently participating as members. While membership will give you additional rights and privileges, all Java programmers are welcome to view and comment on Java Specification Requests (JSRs). Visit the organizations's home page at www.jcp.org. | He manages software development for all application server, messaging and development tools in IBM's portfolio. This is a group that spans over 9 locations world wide with over 4000 software developers across a base of multiple operating system platforms. Prior to that, he was vice president architecture and tools development where he was responsible for the architecture and strategy for IBM's application development tools as well as IBM's overall web application servers and business integration software. He began his career at IBM in 1974 in telecommunications software (VTAM) in Kingston, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester in 1981, specializing in artificial intelligence and computer vision. He returned to the IBM Research Division and was responsible for the artificial intelligence effort, then programming languages, and finally for software technology. Dr. Sabbah has direct experience in both product development and in software research. |
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