For those of you who (like me) are interested in the development of non-Java JVM languages, here are a couple of links that might be of interest. Alex Turner has a longish piece up on tuning the JVM for "unusual uses"; the use case in particular he focuses on is one in which the JVM runs bytecode that has been created from COBOL by an experimental compiler.

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What with all the upheaval in the world of Java over the past year, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that a shiny new iteration of the core language, Java 7, is on the horizon, or at least is supposed to be. In fact, an actual honest-to-goodness Java 7 is nowhere close to reality, for various Java community political reasons.

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Last week I asked if Google were fracturing Java, along the lines of Microsoft's abortive plans to market its own incompatible J++ language in the late '90s. The result was an outpouring of comments to an extent much beyond this blog's usual take, almost all of which dismissed my worries; in fact, most seemed to think that Google's moves with Android and Google App Engine have saved a language that was becoming moribund.

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Java faced an existential crisis very early in its existence, in the late '90s. Microsoft attempted to create its own version of the language, dubbed Visual J++, that integrated with its development tools, and which contained proprietary extensions and left out parts of Sun's spec. The effort ended in lawsuits and acrimony, but Sun did emerge victorious in 2001: the principle that Java would remain Java, implementing the same spec everywhere no matter the vendor, was firmly established, and this allowed Java as we know it thrive.

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Last week's Google I/O conference had pretty big news for Java developers: the release of a paid, souped-up Google App Engine for Java offering, in partnership with VMware, with support for the Spring Framework and an SLA promising 99.9 percent uptime. It's the sort of offering designed to expand the market for Google's cloud service beyond tinkerers and Web startups, and convince people in big organizations (with corresponding big budgets) that they should try the offering out. Will it work?

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InfoWorld's Paul Krill has meticulously put together a list of Sun folk who have fled the company since the merger with Oracle was completed. If you're interested in Java -- or Sun's software generally, much of which was to one degree or another built around the Java brand -- then what will really jump out at you from the list is that they're all software people.

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In years past, preparation for JavaOne would be reaching a fever pitch right about now, with the trade show traditionally taking place in June. But post-merger, it's still four months off, and will be part of Oracle's developer showcase, Oracle Develop. We will of course have to wait until the fall to see how well that works (or doesn't), but Java developers are starting get excited as the yeses arrive from Oracle indicating that their talks have been approved.

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Nokia is in a weird position: it's still the world's biggest smartphone manufacturer (for certain definitions of "smartphone"), but it's more or less completely out of the conversation when it comes to the future of handhelds and tablets. All the buzz is focused on the iPhone, Android, Windows 7, and (maybe more now that HP has bought it) webOS. Nokia's venerable Symbian OS is pretty much out of the running.

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Virtualized-Java-on-the-cloud news is still the industry's most intriguing storyline this Monday, as SpringSource absorbs another startup.

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A new cloud-oriented startup came out of stealth mode today, changing its name from the inscrutable VMOps to the much friendly, if 2001-ish Cloud.com in the process. While it isn't really a Java story the way VMForce and WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option are, Cloud.com does have a genealogical relationship with Java, as The Register details.

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Josh Bloch, author of Effective Java and current Google employee, was interviewed by InfoQ last week for his opinions on Java's future. All of his responses are interesting, particularly his lament on the lack of progress towards Java 7, but given his employer it's interesting to read into his firm comments on the Sun-Apache dispute over TCK licensing, along with the bastard child of that dispute, Android.

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So last week's Oracle announcement on Java virtualization has just been seriously eclipsed by a big joint announcement from VMware and Salesforce.com, centered on VMware's recently acquired SpringSource division.

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If you're at all interested in Java and where it's going, you owe it to yourself to check out the discussion from the very thoughtful roundtable of Java experts assembeled over at IBM developerWorks by Jenni Aloi and Athen O'Shea (both former JavaWorld editors -- we miss you!). Nine different Java developers contributed, all of whom had intriguing things to say.

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Perhaps I was a bit too sneery Monday about the newly stacked set of Java and other components that Oracle recently rolled out under the "WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option." While the product may not denote the end of the operating system, the JRockit Virtual Edition VM at the heart of it is in fact running directly on the Oracle VM hypervisor, rather than on some virtualized OS.

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Oracle unleashed a mass of tech gobbeldygook today with the release of its WebLogic Suite Virtualization Option.

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