A few things which I found interesting at the conference this week.

Java EE: Ajax and Web 2.0

Ajax has finally come of age. The were 63 (!) AJAX and Web 2.0 sessions. It is astonishing to see how the 10-year-old technology suddenly becomes mainstream. JavaScript and dynamic HTML are almost as old as the Java platform itself, and dynamic web pages with server-side logic have been used for years, but the potential remained greatly underutilized until recently. Nowadays we can see all sorts of applications deployed through a browser. Google Maps was only the beginning. Now everyone is using Ajax. Such traditionally thick software as IDE or OS can be run in a browser window offering quick response time and the full range of features complete with sound effects and video streaming (TS-6839).
Ajax is quickly advancing into the mobile space as well (TS-5525). Will Mobile Ajax revolutionize the mobile application development as we know it?

Java SE: language features

I just love Josh Bloch's Java Puzzlers talks. This year was no exception. Josh and prof. William Pugh put on a great show! (TS-2707) One of this year's puzzlers shows the harmful autoboxing. The following code will unexpectedly print "3.0" because of automatic unboxing, lossy conversion and boxing. Counter-intuitive and potentially dangerous!

    Number num = true ? new Integer(3) : new Float(1.5);
    System.out.println(num);

In JDK 7 we may see even more language features. Will they be a useful addition to the language? When I found out that Neal Gafter is doing a presentation on closures proposal (TS-2294), I knew I had to check it out. I must admit I had to download the slides after the session in order to understand what is being proposed. The goal is noble: provide an alternative for the hard-to-read syntax of the inner class and template combinations. But the proposed replacement isn't exactly easy to understand either. Here is one of Neal's examples.

Today:

    void addListener(final ItemSelectable is) {
        is.addItemListener(
            new ItemListener() {
                public void itemStateChanged(ItemEvent e)
                { doSomething(e, is); }
            }
        );
    }

Same code in the proposed syntax:

    void addListener(final ItemSelectable is) {
        is.addItemListener(
            { ItemEvent e => doSomething(e, is); }
        );
    }

The ugly construct is replaced with the one that is hard to understand and, possibly, maintain.

Java ME: interactive TV is finally here!

When I jumped on the Java TV boat back in 2000 (the boat was pJava-powered ), I did not originally expect the journey to take this long. A few years later I was thinking it may never be over. But we are finally arriving at the interactive TV age: BD-J players are now in the nearby electronics store. Unfortunately, it is still too early to claim success. There are more than 200 Blu-ray titles available, but only 6 (!) use BD-J features. Movie studios say that player compatibility issues and lack of applications are the primary reasons (TS-5723). The compatibility issues are troubling. Is this a sign of the "F" word in the TV space? I mean fragmentation, of course.