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Year in Review: Java in 2008 - What just happened?

Java development trends, announcements, and upsets in 2008

By Andrew Glover, JavaWorld.com, 12/10/08

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When high-tech history is inscribed for the ages, 2008 may be remembered as the year Java tipped from a language-centric to a platform-centric technology. Andrew Glover kicks off JavaWorld's Year in Review series with a look back over the last 12 months in Java development, when alternate languages for the JVM took center stage, new directions emerged in the enterprise space, and Sun Microsystems staked its claim on the client side -- with or without Swing.

As any student of history will tell you, understanding the past yields a better grasp of what's to come. Many significant events punctuated the year 2008 in Javadom, from the release of Java EE 6 to the JVM Languages Summit to Sun's recent announcement that it will no longer actively contribute to Swing. Most of these events are interrelated. In hindsight they stand out as bellwethers in a year where Java's evolution was defined by alternate languages and rich Internet applications.

Alternate languages for the JVM

Alternate languages running on the JVM aren't new (in fact the JVM today supports an estimated 240 languages), but they continue to grow in popularity. In 2008 they appeared to be energizing Java-based developers in especially interesting ways.

By far, one of the most exciting developments of 2008 was the snowballing growth and adoption of JRuby and Groovy, fueled by collective excitement about Ruby on Rails and Grails. These two Web frameworks have steadily freed software developers from the fetters of old, having embraced the speedier application building enabled by convention over configuration, and a lot of behind-the-scenes magic. It doesn't hurt that both frameworks and their respective languages run on the JVM and can leverage the wealth of libraries available within the Java platform.

The year also saw the emergence of two relatively new languages -- Scala and Clojure -- as well as the reemergence of the more yesteryear language Jython. Toward the end of the year Sun launched JavaFX 1.0, which includes the first Java-based language intended for rich UI development: JavaFX Script.

JVM Language Summit

One of the more intriguing events of 2008 was the inaugural JVM Language Summit, which brought together some of the brightest minds focused on language design, compilers, and JVM tools. JRuby, Groovy, Scala, and Clojure were all amply represented, and so were Fortress, PHP, Python, Jython, and Jatha (a Lisp variant). Also on the agenda were the Parrot VM, along with HotSpot, the DaVinci Machine, JavaFX, and Kawa. The subject of closures in Java also came up.

All in all, the summit was a meeting of venerable giants who collaborated and ultimately learned from one another. The keynote of the summit was attendees' commitment to the design of JVMs that will support a multitude of languages. Although it might seem odd that a bunch of brainiacs got together to discuss the esoteric details of what many of us take for granted, it highlights the realization that the future of Java programming isn't tied to the language so much as to the platform itself. In fact, this summit might have been the first time in Java's long history that a series of non-Sun engineers collaborated on what's arguably the bread and butter of Java: the runtime engine.

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Resources
  • Programming Languages for the Java Virtual Machine, a Web page created by Robert Tolksdorf, presents a comprehensive list of commercial, experimental, and research-oriented JVM languages.
  • See excellent coverage of the JVM Language Summit from InfoQ. You can also check the summit's agenda, and presenters, here.
  • The busy Java developer's guide to Scala series (Ted Neward, IBM developerWorks) is a starting point to learn more about Scala on the Web. In print, see Programming in Scala (Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon, Bill Venners; Artima Inc., December 2008). Also listen to author Bill Venners on The rise of Scala -- a JW podcast.
  • Stuart Halloway made waves in '08 with his "Java.next" series of blog posts, discussing the defining features of the languages he believes represent the future of Java: Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, and Scala.
  • "Will Google App Engine Support Java? Can it?" (Rick Ross, JavaLobby, April 2008) discusses why the GAE "lets you program in any language you like, as long as it is Python."
  • SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson (now a JCP executive committee member) got behind Java EE 6 with his blog post "Java EE 6 Gets it Right."
  • It's not all hearts and flowers for Java EE 6, however, according to "Java the bloat" (Robert Mullins, SD Times, June 2008).
  • Sun Director of Web Technologies Tim Bray has suggested that Sun ought to focus its future energies on owning the "Web deployment platform of choice." As blogger Riyad Kalla recently noted, smaller firms like SpringSource and RedHat already are doing just that. (RedHat Middleware CTO Sacha Labourey appears to point in this direction, also, with his anticlimactic announcement of the release of JBoss AS 5.0.)
  • See "Jump into JavaFX, Part 2: JavaFX Script" (Jeff Friesen, JavaWorld, December 2008) to learn more about Sun's language for creating rich Internet applications for desktop, mobile, and Web environments.
  • "Sun setting down on the core Swing" (Kirill Grouchnikov, Pushing Pixels, November 2008) discusses Sun's decision to stop funding Swing development.
  • We'll wait just a little longer for Java 7, according to OpenJDK Principal Engineer Mark Reinhold. Sun is redirecting its energies to modularizing the JDK, which will push the release, Sun hopes, to "early 2010."

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