One thing I forgot to mention from day 2: the technical general session with Mark Reinhold and others. I was mainly interested in Reinhold’s stuff. He gave a brief overview of JDK7 and JDK8 roadmaps, including some interesting background on closures (the Lambda project) and default methods. Unfortunately this stuff won’t be in until JDK8 (2012). It’s notable how much closures have evolved from the CICE and BGGA proposals that have kicked around for a couple years, though the current Lambda proposal bears some resemblance to CICE to my eye.
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I attended a Java Desktop lunch at Anzu. There were about 30 people there, including lots of FX folks, but also lots of others, including a special surprise appearance from James Gosling! James isn’t officially at the conference but is hanging around and meeting with lots of people. After his departure from Oracle he’s turned into a bit of a rabble rouser. See his eWeek interview for example.
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Stephen Chin and Dean Iverson had a BOF on JFXtras. Historically the role of the JFXtras project has been to fill in the gaps and to add “extra” features that aren’t in the core JavaFX platform. With the transition of JavaFX from JavaFX Script to Java as the main API and implementation language, the role of the JFXtras project will change. Specifically, Steve announced an initiative to continue the development and evolution of the JavaFX Script language in open source, and eventually to rehost it on top of the new Java-based JavaFX APIs when they are delivered. Steve already has a grab bag of features he wants to add to the language, such as a map type and the ability to bind over a key in a map (even if it’s not yet present in the map). Steve’s provisional name for the project is “Visage.” He doesn’t have a site up yet for this effort, but keep an eye on his blog. I’ll update this post with links when they become available.
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Kevin Rushforth and Jim Graham gave a talk on JavaFX Graphics. They gave an overview of the scene graph along with some information about JavaFX 3D capabilities that will be in the next release. They had some cool demos too, including a few snippets and behind-the-scenes information about the FX demo that was shown during Thomas Kurian’s JavaOne keynote. Kevin and Jim also showed some other, more pedestrian demos, some of which were based on my Flood Game sample program. Thanks for the shout-out, Kevin!
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Of course, no JavaOne day 3 update would be complete without a description of the Oracle Appreciation party (“Rockopolis”) on Treasure Island. This is really part of Oracle OpenWorld, and one of the advantages of JavaOne being combined with OpenWorld is that JavaOne attendees get to partake of the Big Event. This year the top acts included Don Henley, the Black-Eyed Peas, the English Beat, and Steve Miller.
Now, officially this event is for Oracle customers and partners, not employees. The employee speaker badges don’t include tickets for the event, but it turned out that there were some extra tickets available so most of my team was able to go. In addition, a lot of regular (non-employee) conference attendees didn’t actually want to go, so that made more tickets available. Finally, through some … connections … several of us were able to score VIP tickets, which promised better food, shorter lines, and special reserved areas near the stages. Fortunately, I remembered to bring earplugs!
There was even a black market for the tickets. I heard that they were going on Craigslist for $100. Not too surprising really, since the ticket included free food and drinks, carnival games and rides, and six A-list musical groups. (No, I didn’t participate in the black market!)
Really the Treasure Island event was quite a spectacle. As I described last year, it was pretty much like an entire county fair that had been set up for one day. Truly amazing.
