Open Possibilities was the main theme for JavaOne 2007. There is no arguing that with the open-sourcing of Java, the technology is more open than ever. This in turn opens up for more possibilities than ever.

Some of the important things from JavaOne was:
– The completion of the open-sourcing of Java was announced, maybe not too exciting news, but important that it is happening.
– JavaFX, formerly known as F3, was introduced. Sun focuses on winning back the client. There is still a way to go, but only the future will show…
– There is a strong focus on tools with NetBeans and Eclipse as the two major players. Why would anyone pay heaps of money for an IDE when you can get NetBeans or Eclipse for free?

The last day of JavaOne 2007 was no different from the previous days. As always, James Gosling presented an impressive “Toy Show” with everything from Java powered dancing robots and autonomous underwater vehicles and helicopters to monitoring features in NetBeans.

My favorite presentation the last day was Neal Gafter’s presentation of closures in the Java language. It seems that this is something that has to come in one form or the other. Quoting Mark Jason Dominus: ”In another thirty years people will laugh at anyone who tries to invent a language without closures, just as they’ll laugh now at anyone who tries to invent a language without recursion.”

To find out more about closures, look up the following links:
http://www.javac.info/
http://gafter.logspot.com

Today was yet another exciting day at JavaOne. I went to presentations of JPA, Seam, refactoring and Beans Binding. Beans Binding is something that maybe should have been included from the start, but it is great that it is finally coming.

I also went to a presentation of NASA’s World Wind project. This really looks cool! Kind of Google Earth in Swing. I think I will play a little bit around with this when I find the time for it…

The annual reception for Sun Certified Java Professionals was held today. This year I did not win anything at the drawing (as I have done the last two years), but a free beer is still a free beer… 🙂

Day two of the conference was fully packed with excellent presentations. The highlight was Joshua Bloch’s presentation of Effective Java Reloaded. He still has not finished his book, but promised that it will be published at the end of the year. This book, as the previous one, will definitely be a “must-have” for all Java developers. I also went to a presentation of JavaFX to find out more of this. It looks cool, and I will look deeper into it when I am home. It really speeds up the process of creating good-looking rich interfaces….

Open Possibilities is the key word of JavaOne 2007. This is the first JavaOne conference since Sun open sourced its implementation of the Java platform. Besides the everlasting theme of open soucing Java, the keynote of the first day focused a lot on what Java can contribute to the humanity. Scott McNealy was on stage with a representative from the UN to promote the Curriki, a site to help education the world.

JavaFX and JavaFX Mobilewas announced. This is probably the future of Java on the desktop and on mobile devices. Pay attention to this!

For me, the highlight of the day was the sixth version of Java Puzzlers with Joshua Bloch and William Pugh. As always they were tricky, but cool 🙂

JavaOne is great fun, and JavaOne 2007 is no exception…. I look forward to upcoming days!

Back in San Francisco! This year is my eight time at the conference, so it is starting to look like a tradition to me. An addition this year is that the airline company missed to bring my luggage, but it will hopefully come during the day…or so they say…

I am kind of jetlagged now, but I hope I will not promise to much by saying that I hope to be able to post something at least once a day during the conference.