log4p

I was debugging a Java application for a customer this afternoon when I noticed something fairly unique in my activity monitor:

I knew that Java can be memory hungry from time to time but this exceeds everything I’ve seen before

Could it be related to the 10.5.3 update which I recently installed?

1 day of CommunityOne and 4 days of JavaOne went by in a flash. I’ve been to a lot of great, a couple of not-so-great and some really bad sessions.

To avoid information overload on semi-interesting topics I really tried to only go to sessions about topics I’m really interested in. For this JavaOne these where (in no particular order):

• alternative languages on the virtual machine
• methodologies
• the future of Java / JEE
• cool new stuff

I tried to avoid product pitches as much as possible! Some of my personal highlights:

• the No Fluff Just Stuff session at the g2one party
• Both Neal Ford presentations I’ve attended (JRuby vs. Groovy / Enterprise Debugging techniques)
• the scripting bowl
• Taming the Leopard with Java

I’m still processing everything I’ve seen, but so far I didn’t see to much I didn’t know about before; certainly nothing shocking. Here are some of my observations:

Java 7

Sun is adding more and more annotations, the Java 7 spec-leads feel it’s a safe way of extending the language; even though it decreases readability (well, that is MY opinion). They are even planning to extend the number of targets for annotations; in the future we will probably see annotations inside generic type definitions… auch!

I also sincerely doubt that we will see a useful implementation of closures in Java 7; the spec-leads don’t want to burn their hands on it; Gafter seems the only one who dares to risk his neck…

Alternative languages on the VM

Groovy gained a lot of traction the past years. Most mayor app-servers offer out of the box support and major speakers are promoting it (Neal Ford repeatedly called it JDK 2.0).
JRuby is looking better and better. It is now even possible to just drop your Rails app in Glassfish to make it run. I do however feel that some users should stand-up and really demonstrate the virtues of Ruby on the VM to get peoples’ attention. The Jython presentation(s) where horrible; I think they did more harm to the language than good. I saw some great demonstrations of scala; but popularity seems to be at an alltime low.

As I said I’m still processing al the information and probably blog about various nice details and insights. Now I’m heading towards a restaurant and some beers!

Yesterday I (with two of my collegueas) travelled to San Francisco to attend JavaOne 2008 and the Community one sessions which start on May 5th. The interesting conversations began during the flight; we we’re located just in front of the David Booth (JetBrains Executive Manager) and had a nice little chat about what features we would pay for in IDE software.

After arriving we just walked through San Francisco and had some beers, good Italian Food en Coffee. The weather is just fine!

Today I’ll probably walk arround to see the Fishmens’ Wharf, Golden Gate and various other touristic attractions.

I’m uploading foto’s to my flickr account; you can browse my JavaOne related pictures here.