Servlet 3.0 (JSR 315) available for review

The Servlet 3.0 Specification (JSR 315) will be an update to the existing Servlet 2.5 Specification.

Potential considerations are:

  • Web framework pluggability.
  • EoD (Ease-of-Development)
  • Asynch and Comet support
  • Security
  • Alignment
  • Misc

All in all it seems sensible. A great technology taking a step further. See the JSR for more details.

You ain’t agile till…

…you stop saying you are!
Every time I hear someone claim they are doing agile at their project I get suspicious and ask some more questions. In most cases it turns out that they are using some agile techniques, but at the same time still struggling with the organization’s old more heavyweight methodologies.

My project is no exception. We are running Scrum (there I said it ) in our third sprint, but there is still some way to go before we are truly agile. Such as use user stories rather than the old requirements, get more involvement from our product owner, estimate using story points or ideal days, use velocity as a measurement for sprint size etc.

Anyway, life is much easier now than it was before so I guess half-way-agile is far better than not-agile-at-all. It is all about adapting to the environment and doing whatever fits your organization best.

JavaOne 2007 Wrap-up

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?

JavaOne 2007 – Day 4

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

JavaOne 2007 – Day 3

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… 🙂

JavaOne 2007 – Day 2

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….

JavaOne 2007 – Day 1

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!