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JavaOne wrap up

Awards and cool tools

By Eric Armstrong, JavaWorld.com, 06/11/01

June 8, 2001-- During this year's JavaOne conference, the sessions covering low-level APIs were only about half full -- in contrast to previous years, where they were jam packed. Meanwhile, the application template and design patterns sessions were filled to overflowing. The implication is that tool builders and system library providers no longer dominate JavaOne; application developers -- people who are using the language and its libraries to solve real-world problems in real time -- are taking over the conference.

It's a sign that the platform is maturing and that Java is ready for prime time. In keeping with that theme, this wrap-up article presents the As-I-See-It Prime-Time Awards. It then finishes up with a look at a couple of marvelously cool tools you've just got to have.

The As-I-See-It Prime-Time Awards

In keeping with a tradition that has been going on in my JavaOne wrap-up articles for several years now, I hereby present the following collection of ersatz awards, all of which have been bestowed after a careful deliberative process that took well over 100 milliseconds.

Stand-Up Comedian Award

Presented to the most entertaining speaker of the show, Gilad Bracha, for his presentation on Java generics. It was hard to get all of the pearls, but here's a small sample:

• On one of the code authors: "Actually, he was involved in the early days. But we haven't been able to eradicate all of his code..."
• On the spec: "It's fairly conservative. We didn't want to do a live experiment on 2 million developers."
• On the 1.4 compiler: "Actually, it's a lobotomized version of the generics compiler."
• On a particularly complex example: "If you're familiar with functional programming, you'll recognize this example. If not, the mental gymnastics will do you good."

Rock Star Award

For the session with the longest line of attendees and the largest number of people turned away at the door, this award goes to Joshua Bloch (the author of the Java Collections API) for his talk on effective Java programming. If you are one of the hundreds who missed the talk, or one of the thousands who wish you could have been there to miss it, then buy his book, Effective Java Programming Language Guide, (Addison Wesley Professional). It features even more of the wisdom he has collected on elegant and effective Java programming.

Most Unheralded Cool New Technology Award

VisiComp's VisiVue: the most amazing new technology you've never heard of is an awesome tool that exposes a program's inner workings in the form of animated graphics. We'll take a look at that in the next section, along with a cool customizer for the GridBagLayout.

Cool tools you can't live without

To finish up this year's coverage of JavaOne, here are some super cool tools that you'll want to have in your tool bag, right next to your power drill and chainsaw.

Make GridBag usable!

GridBagLayouthas always been a powerful layout management tool that is murderously difficult to use. It could do everything you need, if you could only figure out how to use it.