Thursday Apr 24, 2008
by Dana Nourie
The 2008 JavaOne Conference, with events from May 5 to 9 in San Francisco, California, is a great place for new developers to learn about many Java technologies and see how these technologies fit together. In addition, you can learn about other technologies and scripting languages, such as Ruby and Groovy.
The conference kicks off on Monday, May 5, with Java University, which consists of classes you can take to learn how to program for the Java platform and how to incorporate other technologies and use tools, such as the NetBeans IDE.
The rest of the week is filled with technical sessions that last about one hour each and that cover many different topics. In addition, the JavaOne conference also has Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions where you can hear what fellow developers think, what they're doing professionally, and where they want to see technologies go. It's a week jam-packed with technical how-to and information that can be hard to find elsewhere.
This year, Sun will allow some student developers to attend the JavaOne conference for free!
Recommended sessions for students include the following:
| Session ID | Session Title | Speaker Name and Company |
|---|---|---|
| TS-5925 | A City-Driving Robotic Car Named Tommy Jr. | Paul Perrone, Perrone Robotics |
| TS-5841 | Project Aura: Recommendation for the Rest of Us | Stephen Green and Paul Lamere, Sun Microsystems |
| TS-6656 | Extreme GUI Makeover: Swing Meets FX | Christopher Campbell and Shannon Hickey, Sun Microsystems |
| TS-6611 | Filthy-Rich Clients: Filthier, Richer, Clientier | Romain Guy, Google; Chet Haase, Adobe |
| TS-5286 | Introduction to Web Beans | Gavin King, JBoss |
| TS-6169 | Spring Framework 2.5: New and Notable | Rod Johnson, SpringSource |
| TS-6528 | Listen and Speak: Teach Your Old Device New Tricks | Charles Hemphill, Conversay; Steve Rondel, Conversay |
| TS-6623 | More "Effective Java" | Joshua Bloch, Google |
| TS-5579 | Closures Cookbook | Neal Gafter, Google |
| TS-5165 | Programming With Functional Objects in Scala | Martin Odersky, EPFL |
| TS-5152 | Overview of the JavaFX Script Programming Language | Christopher Oliver, Sun Microsystems |
| TS-6050 | Comparing JRuby and Groovy | Neal Ford, ThoughtWorks |
| TS-4842 | Designing an MMORPG With Project Darkstar | Jeffrey Kesselman, Sun Microsystems |
| TS-6807 | What's New in Ajax | Dion Almaer, Ajaxian; Ben Galbraith, MediaBank |
| TS-6537 | Applications for the Masses by the Masses: Why Engineers Are an Endangered Species | Girish Balachandran and Todd Fast, Sun Microsystems |
| TS-5249 | The NetBeans Ruby IDE: You Thought Rails Development Was Fun Before | Brian Leonard and Tor Norbye, Sun Microsystems |
Additionally, you can attend fun sessions on how Java technologies are being used in the world of science: Mapping Mars (TS-6608); Universal Translator -- Breaking the Communication Barrier With JSAPI (TS-5908); Pushing Java OpenGL (JOGL) to the Limit With Stellarium (TS-4964); and Mars Rover Operations Imaging and Mapping With Java Technology (BOF-5044).
If you're interested in gaming, check out Video Game Development on the Java Platform: Past, Present, and Future of Java Technology Games (BOF-5832); Creating Games on the Java Platform with the jMonkeyEngine (TS-5711); Using Comet to Create a Two-Player Web Game (BOF-6584); and Project Wonderland: A Toolkit for Building 3-D Virtual Worlds (TS-6125).
Check the 2008 JavaOne Conference home page for more information, including a complete content catalog searchable by keyword, speaker name, track, and other parameters.
If you can't make it to the conference this year, you can read about the sessions as Sun writers blog from the trenches, sharing technical information and their impressions of the conference.
Hope to see you there!