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From JavaOne to JavaOne-Half


By Allen Holub
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August 15, 2004 —  (Page 1 of 2)
The most interesting thing about this year's JavaOne was that it wasn't-interesting, that is. Over the years, the conference has gone from one of the best technical conferences that I've ever attended (in 1996, if I remember right) to one of the most vapid.

Admittedly, as the platform matures there are fewer wowie-zowie features to discuss, but most of this conference just rehashed the new features of Java 5 (formerly known as 1.5)-material that was covered last year in sessions that used the same slides as this year's sessions. You come away from a great conference knowing how to do new things and having lots of new ideas. I came away from this year's JavaOne ready for a vacation.

SD Times' editor-in-chief, Alan Zeichick, came up with an interesting characterization of the problem: The goal of a technical conference should be to educate, not to influence or persuade developers.

The context for Alan's comment was Microsoft's recent developer conferences, but his comment applies to JavaOne as well, which has developed a very Microsoft-like flavor of late. The main goal of this year's JavaOne seemed to be to convince attendees that Sun, and Java, were relevant. I don't need to be convinced that Java is relevant, but Sun's relevance is another issue.

The first JavaOne was so good because it was focused entirely on education, on learning to program in Java. I came away from the conference eager to apply what I had learned, and I had learned a lot.

I vividly remember a session on the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), for example, where the speaker analyzed the library in terms of the implemented design patterns and showed how the APIs fit into those patterns. The APIs were put into a context that allowed me to understand the whole library, including those APIs that were not discussed during this session. The talk, which didn't follow a rigid format, was packed with information. I came out of this session thoroughly understanding AWT and its architecture, and could immediately apply what I'd learned.



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