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Java 2009: The language moves to the platform

By Alex Handy

December 29, 2009 — (Page 1 of 2)
Any discussion of Java in 2009 must begin with acquisitions. Between the now-stalled grab for Sun made by Oracle, and VMware's unexpected purchase of SpringSource, two of the most influential companies in Java are now parts of larger entities. It was a year of change not just for Java, but also for the people who work with and maintain the language.

The real question behind these acquisitions is which company is more important to Java. Traditionally, Sun has been the big company on the hill watching over the village of Java. But in more recent years, SpringSource's Spring Framework, along with the company's acquisition of Covalent (the largest service and support group for the Apache HTTP Server and Apache Tomcat), had placed Rod Johnson's company at the forefront of Java. With VMware now controlling those aspects of the SpringSource business, and the Eclipse Foundation continuing to expand the scope of its hosted projects, the future center of gravity for Java may no longer be at Sun.

Meanwhile, IBM, instead of growing its Java business through acquisition, decided to grow it through open source. IBM continued to offer its own version of the Apache Geronimo project as WebSphere Community Edition. The company also began using Apache Harmony libraries and components in commercial products, a sure sign that the world's oldest computing company is confident in Harmony despite Sun's refusal to make available the verification and certification tools that could give the Java runtime an official stamp of approval.

SUBHED: Other big changes
It is perhaps appropriate that this is also the year when a fundamental change to the structure of Java was announced: closures. Mark Reinhold, principal engineer at Sun and member of the OpenJDK guidance committee, said that closures will make their first appearance in a preliminary form when the OpenJDK, Java SE 7, arrives next fall.

Reinhold has said that this is a move that comes from his LISPy upbringing, and it will bring the language more in line with the advanced programming ideas embodied in that and other LISP-like languages.

Related Search Term(s): Java

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