JavaDay, JavaOne - Java Thoughts

I was attending Sun's Java Day this week, here in Israel. The main themes Sun is pushing are JavaFX and MySQL.

Some thoughts on both, as well as other topics.

JavaFX

Sun's interest here is clear. Every handset or any sort of device running JavaFX means more licensing fees for Sun. In fact, JavaME is one of the only Java environments which Sun's really see money from, at least for now. This would probably change in the future with much more agressive sell of JavaSE licenses for extra features and support, but still handsets is a very important addressable market, competing with others technologies such as the simple browser, Android, iPhone Objective-C, etc. Sun interest is to have as many applications as possible running on top of JavaME, JavaFX and LWUIT (the last two are a bit competing on the same square). More applications means more consumer power (consumers who want to run these applications) thus more pressure on the handsets manufectures to have JavaME and JavaFX on the handset, droping the required license fee at Sun's pocket.

All fine till this point. But now it comes to JavaDay event, or JavaOne conference in SF. These events shall reflect what interests the Java community, be judgmental, compare competing technologies. But instead it becomes more and more a marketing event for what Sun is trying to push. Thus, JavaFX catch very high percents of all sessions (even a session on Maven had to be called "Deploying JavaFX apps with Maven" or something alike to get in...) And it is totally lacking the critic perspective, comparing with other competing technologies such as Android, GWT, zool, YUI, Adobe AIR etc.

Is JavaFX interesting? probably yes, but not at the amounts poured at us.

As for the judgmental perspective, I'm missing in JavaFX the separation between content and style, without that this would be a step back. Does JavaFX work with CSS? not that I know of. Is there a similar alternative? The declarative approach of JavaFX is good, but why the choice of JSON-like declarations and not XHTML? The language is very close to Groovy, but not exactly the same (Groovy is from Spring creators), is there a path to consolidate these two new scripting languages? And why should we go with a propraietary environment and language, and not with W3C standards adopted by the browsers running on mostly all handsets? ... Yes, I know there are answers for some of the questions above, but in the huge time dedicated for JavaFX, alternatives, as well as known flaws and drawbacks, were not discussed.

Which brings me to the thought that independent Java events, such as Devoxx, are a better meeting place for the community.


MySQL

This was another theme at the event. MySQL is a powerful tool, the regulator shall take it out of the hands of Oracle to preserve competition.


Java Reference App

Together with Ronen Perez, I was presenting a session called "Java Reference Application - putting all the buzzwords together" focusing on our selected libraries and tools.


Java Community and New Technologies

It's good to see all these smart people together. Being smart, people follow the trends and new technologies carefully, asking "what is it for me? how does it make my life easier?" In the past you could see people enthusiastic about any new thing, today you see people much more careful and reluctant. It's either that we are fed up with disappointments from previous "innovations" or that the pace of things require us all to be more cautious and conservative. This, together with the competition between technologies, requires new technologies to be well cooked and invest much more effort in getting us in.

Technological Singularity

A singular point is a point in which the rules that define the spectrum around are no longer valid. In Mathematics a singular point is the point for which a function is undefined, in Physics, Gravitational Singularity means infinite gravitational field, known also to be a Black Hole.

Technological Singularity is the point of time when computers would be more inteligent than humans, thus creation of new computers and software programs can better be made by computers. Though sounds science fiction, something like the Matrix, I do know, as of today, of humans that are less inteligent than computers, one shall admit computers did part of the way.

The steps towards singularity in software engineering would be the creation of new software languages which are much more declarative rather than procedural. Computers would be able to get well-formed requirements, or constraints, to create the required piece of software. Prof. David Harel started talking about it back in 2000. Now the problem with our usual requirements is that they are not so well-formed, filled with holes and hacked with contradicting constraints. But what if a computer can identify the holes and contradictions and ask us what we really meant, then go and create the software. And maybe there is no need to ask us, since the computer knows better anyhow. The famous inventor and futurists Ray Kurzweil is speaking about technological singularity in his book The Singularity is Near with forecasts such as that by 2020 personal computers will have the same processing power as human brains and by 2030s Mind Uploading would become possible.

It's closer than you think. Declarative programming. Computers who understand requirements. Technological singularity. At which point the only occupation still relevant for humans would be lawyers, as computers cannot be mean enough for this job.

The future is surely an adventure. Some would see the upside potential of it, others may see the risks, which are there of course. For those and for those it would be good to read some advice from Daniel H. Wilson, on How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion.

Maven, Static Code Analysis, Code Coverage and more

Static code analysis and Code Coverage are becoming as basic as IDE syntax highlighting. Tools like FindBugs, Cobertura, Checkstyle, PMD, Eclemma and others, with plugins to Eclipse and Maven extensions, makes your life as a programmer more manageable, having Maven build a site for you with your code coverage results and following Checkstyle remarks in the IDE.

The title connects between things that are uncorrelated, except for being a measurement for modern Java development practicing. And of course Maven relates it all together also.

Today a Java programmer that knows only Java, even if very well, but intentionally ignores what's arround in the industry, e.g. sticking with good old Ant ("Why do I need this Maven, I'm doing just fine with Ant, just leave me in your mother") becomes a bit obsolete. The strength of Maven is that you can take a project with its POM.xml, and open it on another machine, even with another IDE that supports Maven.

So, to summarize.
As a programmer you are usually stressed and under pressure to close your tasks. Find some time to enhance your environment with the relevant Java Power Tools.