The Future of Java
On March 12th, 2008, Dr. Bruce Haddon came to Virginia Tech to give a presentation entitled "The Future of Java". Dr. Haddon is a Sun Java Architect and was able to captivate the audience by highlighting how programming languages have evolved over the years and where he thinks they are headed.
The ACM chapter at Virginia Tech (of which I am a member) co-hosted the event. They provided free pizza and refreshments that helped to drive a big audience. An estimated 50 hungry Computer Science, Computer/Electrical Engineering, and Business Information Technology majors showed up to hear Dr. Haddon speak.
Dr. Haddon started off by telling the audience that "Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it", then proceeded to give us and in-depth history of programming languages. He showed why some languages have died and why others still flourish. He provided some code examples and provided just enough technical detail about the design of languages for the audience to follow along.
He then applied some of the lessons of the past to Java. Java is in the unique position of having over 4.5 million Java developers worldwide, with that number growing every single day. He showed how Java continues to grow, with its developers, through the JSRs (and even a brief mention of the cool new language Fortress).
With all freshman CS majors learning Java for two semesters, we had a lot of very knowledgeable students asking very interesting questions. "Will we see operator overloading? Will we ever be able to directly manage memory, like C++?" Dr. Haddon was very eager to listen to students wishes for the language as developers and I'm sure he will keep them in mind as Java continues to evolve.
Dr. Haddon's presentation
The ACM chapter at Virginia Tech (of which I am a member) co-hosted the event. They provided free pizza and refreshments that helped to drive a big audience. An estimated 50 hungry Computer Science, Computer/Electrical Engineering, and Business Information Technology majors showed up to hear Dr. Haddon speak.
Dr. Haddon started off by telling the audience that "Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it", then proceeded to give us and in-depth history of programming languages. He showed why some languages have died and why others still flourish. He provided some code examples and provided just enough technical detail about the design of languages for the audience to follow along.
He then applied some of the lessons of the past to Java. Java is in the unique position of having over 4.5 million Java developers worldwide, with that number growing every single day. He showed how Java continues to grow, with its developers, through the JSRs (and even a brief mention of the cool new language Fortress).
With all freshman CS majors learning Java for two semesters, we had a lot of very knowledgeable students asking very interesting questions. "Will we see operator overloading? Will we ever be able to directly manage memory, like C++?" Dr. Haddon was very eager to listen to students wishes for the language as developers and I'm sure he will keep them in mind as Java continues to evolve.
Dr. Haddon's presentation
