JavaOne Recap
JavaOne was interesting but I really did not feel excited about it.
The conference focus was on cell-phones (they really seem to have better support than Microsoft in cell phones, as most cell-phone makers were there with Java-enabled phones), Java games, Ease of Development, and the fact that they are trying to make Java a consumer brand. None of this subjects is very attractive for me.
There were some good conferences and some good BOF sessions. Some of the stuff they are doing with the HotSpot VM is quite interesting (for example, the 5th or 6th time you call the same method using reflection you get the same performance as if you make a direct call). JDK 1.4.2 seems to be much faster than 1.4.1, and the JDK 1.5 language features (generics, attributes, etc) look nice, even if they are not very innovative ;). Borland's sessions on JBuilder/Together were quite good too.
I liked the BOF sessions with the product teams (Class libraries, hotspot, etc). It has some advantages over the 'Ask The Experts' approach in MS conferences, because you can just go and hear what they answer to other people's questions... On the other hand, Ask The Experts are probably better if you have a difficult question to ask.
Compared to TechEd, there were two main differences:
- No free food (actually, much less free food than in TechEd)
- No IBM (there were no IBM conferences and there was not an IBM booth).
I met with some Microsofties, some expected (like David Weller) and some unexpected (like Pablo Castro). I also enjoyed meeting Ted Neward, who is my hero.
You can find more coverage in:
Cedric's weblog