JavaOne – Keynote Impressions

16 May 2006

Just got out of the keynote session….

All in all, not too impressed. It basically consisted of a number of sun dignataries introducing their corporate friends and newfound Netbeans adopters.

Very little talk on the whole open sourcing of Java issue, with a luke-warm committal to figure out the ‘how’ in open sourcing the platform.

Mark Shuttleworth got on stage and talking briefly about Ubuntu and gave a pledge to get Linux working on Sun’s new Niagra platform. Marc Fluery was up mentioning that JBoss has officially adopted Netbeans. The CEO of Motorola started off the session with a plea for increased developer support for the mobile platform.

The session ended with a bit of a coding demonstration of how easy it is to develop something using the recently ratified JavaEE 5 spec. Not all that impressive, we’ve been able to do the same stuff for the better part of the last year using Hibernate/Spring annotations, etc.

All in all, an absolutely massive conference. The keynote hall is a sight to see. Free wireless is always good tho.

If you’re interested in what Romain Guy has been up to, see Aerith.