In a new interview on OTN, Oracle Java Language Architect Brian Goetz offer his many insights into Java concurrency, Java SE 7 and 8, Project Coin, the JVM Language Summit, how to write good code, and other matters.

From the interview:

"This is a really exciting time to be involved in the development of the Java language. The last batch of language enhancements came in Java SE 5; we've got new features coming in both Java SE 7 and 8. In Java SE 7, we have a number of language features developed through OpenJDK's 'Project Coin,' which has been a real community success story. The mission of Project Coin was to identify small language changes that could be considered 'rough edges' in need of filing down. The work engaged the community to suggest features and provide specification and implementation; there were nearly 50 submissions from which a half dozen were accepted."

Read the whole interview here.

It seems like there is always something happening around Java and there just isn't enough time to feature everything that happens.  So I'd like to start a new (weekly) feature where we strive to capture some of the major events that have happened over the past week or so.  Did I miss anything?  comment below and let us know!

• Obviously the big news this week is JavaOne Brazil. Brazil has always been a big (and vocal) support of Java so its great to see JavaOne take place in that great country. 
  
• Java Spotlight Podcast #5: Feature interview with Brazilian Java Champions Bruno Souza and Fabiane Nardon in preparation for JavaOne Brazil.  Also featured:  Devoxx recap and a Java SE update
  
• Java Spotlight Podcast #6: Feature interview with Michael Kölling and Ian Utting, BlueJ and Greenfoot creators.  Also featured: update on Java EE 7 draft specifications including JAX-RS 2.0, JPA 2.1, JSF 2.2 (HTML5), JMS and more!
• OpenJDK on Mac OS X:  Want to check out an unofficial build of OpenJDK 7 for Snow Leopard?  You're in luck!  This new project has published working binaries as well as everything needed to build and package OpenJDK 1.7 for Mac OS X 10.6
  
• Java SE Embedded run circles around Android: Oracle's Bob Vandette has published a lengthy blog comparing the performance of Android 2.2 (Froyo) with the latest Java SE Embedded release.  In his detailed writeup, he compares the two virtual machines using a series of benchmarks that show Java SE Embedded coming out ahead each time, and by a substantial factor of 2X-3X.
• Why I like the new JavaFX 2.0: Check out Jim Connors' thoughts on why he likes the new JavaFX including better tooling, performance, and integration with Java.
• Free, Pre-built Virtualbox Images for Java Developer: Java Developer Days... from the comfort of your own home!
• Register for a live Webcast on Java TV Standards presented by Oracle's Chief Digital Media officer on December 16th
  
• Preview: LWUIT Builder - check out a growing number of screencasts created directly by the LWUIT team on this exciting new tool for mobile developers

So, what did we miss?
  

I've been trolling again for the best buzz on 2010 Devoxx. Happily, there's plenty of food for thought - and the ideas are not half-baked.

Paris in Antwerp

Once again, Papo's Log, run by Java Champion Paris Apostolopoulos, provides a rich service with informed and insightful comments and observations about Devoxx happenings. Topics include:

* The Future Roadmap of Java EE
* Project Coin
* Cloudbees
* OpenJDK
* Activiti in Action
* Java Puzzlers
* Keynotes by Stephan Janssen, Mark Reinhold, Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith
* Reflection Madness by Dr. Heinz Kabutz
* Infinispan
* Josh Bloch on performance anxiety and system complexity
* HTML5 Websockets

Thanks once more, Paris!

Speaking of Paris, the Paris JUG team has now posted no fewer than 11 YouTube videos -- the next best thing to being there.

The void-main-args blog run by "anrizal" has worthwhile summaries of talks on Hadoop, Scala, caching, data management, modularity and other matters. It's a good place to gather ideas quickly and accessibly.

Java Asylum has very concise, clear daily notes on Devoxx sessions and keynotes. If you want "just the facts" check it out.

Floris' Blog offers an information-rich summary of Devoxx that is well worth a look.

Java Champion Adam Bien, who has a remarkable grasp of Java EE, gave a session, "Creating Lightweight Applications with Nothing but Vanilla Java EE 6". I was unable to cover a similar session at JavaOne. Here's the abstract:

"The combination of the Convention over Configuration and Dependency Injection principles, drastically simplifies the Java EE 6 development model. This session covers the approach for building lean, but still maintainable and scalable applications with nothing but plain Java EE 6 technologies. A (rich) JPA 2.0 domain object can be annotated with JSR-303 (Bean Validation) for validation purposes, EJB 3.1 Stateless / Stateful Session Bean provide the transactionality, remoting (JAX-RS / REST), concurrency. JSR-299 (CDI) enables the direct exposure to the JSF 2 view and extension points, as well as aspects. The interesting point: such minimalistic architecture still remains extensible and testable.

The pragmatic combination of EJB 3.1, JPA 2.0, Bean Validation, Context and Dependency Injection and JAX-RS (REST) will be covered from the real world angle and is especially interesting to Java (EE) developers and architects:

Pragmatic modularization and deployment of WARs / EARs
Stateful vs stateless architectures
Domain driven design vs. service oriented components
Component configuration with EJB 3.1, interceptors and CDI
incremental migration from J2EE"


Java developers are once again spreading information in the best tradition of Java.

Today, Jerome Dochez, Paul Sandoz and Linda DeMichiel presented the keynote on the future of Java EE. They summarized the new developments for Java EE platform. Java EE 7 will be improved to deploy cloud computing applications and infrastructures. Other signifiquant developments will be on JSF, web tier, the Java persistence and JAX-RS. Paul Sandoz showed code examples for injection integration improvements. He invited the developer community to contribute to speed up the development of JAX-RS 2.0. Developers can still give their feedback on JPA 2.1 and JAX-RS 2.0 as well.

Dalibor Topic, during the OpenJDK session, clarified Oracle's commitment to the OpenJDK and summarized the recent announcements regarding IBM and Apple participation. He also gave an overview of the OpenJDK community and the associated open source projects, going over contributors and contribution samples. The project is clearly popular with main companies such as Google and Redhat as contributors. Currently, a number of non-Oracle employees are contributing to the project and he encouraged any developers to contribute and have fun.  

Learn more:

Glassfish roadmap
The Aquarium blog
Shoal 

JDK roadmap
OpenJDK  at OpenJDK.java.net
Henrik Stahl Blog
PlanetJDK.org
Java Podcast 

 

Fans of Mac OS X and Java will be very happy to hear that Apple and Oracle are teaming up to collaborate on Java support for this popular operating system.  Key excerpts from the release:

"Apple will contribute most of the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client. OpenJDK will make Apple's Java technology available to open source developers so they can access and contribute to the effort. "

"Apple also confirmed that Java SE 6 will continue to be available from Apple for Mac OS X Snow Leopard® and the upcoming release of Mac OS X Lion. Java SE 7 and future versions of Java for Mac OS X will be available from Oracle."

Full text of the release is available here

If you missed the announcement yesterday, Oracle and IBM jointly announced that the two companies would be collaborating together on building an open source implementation of Java SE in the OpenJDK project. This is very exciting news because it brings together two of the largest developers of Java runtime environments and helps to improve alignment across the industry.  In addition, this partnership has been described as complimentary to the ongoing standards, such as the recently announced plans around JDK 7 and JDK 8.

For more of the context behind this announcement, check out the following blogs from key individuals at both IBM and Oracle:

Mark Reinhold: IBM to join OpenJDK
Henrik Stahl: IBM and Oracle join forces on OpenJDK and Java SE 7/8
Bob Sutor: IBM joins the OpenJDK community, will help unify open source Java efforts