arnold's blog

JCP Wants You, Sort Of, It Thinks...

The Java Community Process -- they want you, but it seems like they still don't quite know what to do with you.

As I briefly mentioned in a previous blog, the JCP people want you to sign up as an individual member.

A Second Language for the JVM!!

Graham Hamilton today said that with Visual Basic, we now have a second language for the JVM!

Getting underway

Nice music. No network. Blog as if there was one...

Every year they don't start this on time, and every year I show up on time anyway. Every year they do something interesting with the music. Sometimes more interesting than music, but this year definitely not.

Harmony

I've been waiting all conference to see something that can be exciting about the future of Java itself, not just for individual subparts of the Java community. So now I've found something. Apache is starting a serious project to create an open source implementation of the Java VM.

Names matter

A clue for the folks who run this conference: When I run into someone I've met at last year's JavaOne, what's the first thing I want from the conference badge? Let me give you a hint: it isn't to see whether they have the same X-Ray of a cell phone that every other attendee has.

Miss Manners at JavaOne

On behalf of a friend: When you leave a BOF early, can you please close the door quietly? It seems basic courtesy to those left behind. As a counter-courtesy, maybe speakers at BOFs where there is no amplification could repeat questions? Next: Which fork do you use to skewer an ignorant speaker?

Generics Considered Harmful

I don't know how to ease into this gently. So I'll just spit it out.

Generics are a mistake.

This is not a problem based on technical disagreements. It's a fundamental language design problem.

Any feature added to any system has to pass a basic test: If it adds complexity, is the benefit worth the cost? The more obscure or minor the benefit, the less complexity its worth.

Oh no, not again

So we begin again. Another JavaOne.

The place has certainly calmed down. Which is to be expected. The first JavaOne was at the rush of the .com boom. Everything was new, everyone was doing business with everyone else, new ideas, new possibilities. Every corner hid a new frisson. You felt you could just live off the vibes.

By now it's much more staid.

Unicode marches on

I'm working on the 4th edition of The Java Programming Language, and everyone of course has heard of the major new features. One of the odd little corners, though, is that Unicode has now grown beyond a 16 bit character standard, and so has lots of interesting new complications.

Ludicrous as a Balm for Patent Idiocy

Pamela Jones's GrokLaw website has kindly noticed my suggestion to make ludicrous patents a form of fraud. She raises a few questions that overlap with some from other folks, so I thought I'd clarify my thinking.