Java in 2015: Predictions and More

I've been looking ahead with analysts and industry watchers at what 2015 might have in store for enterprise software developers in general, but I also reached out for some predictions for Java Jocks about the future of their favorite language and platform.

Al Hilwa, program director in IDC's Software Development Research group, sees the continued adoption of Java 8 as a preoccupying enterprise trend in 2015, though "absorbing major new language releases is typically a slow process." He also expects to see growing interest in functional programming as developers begin putting Lambda and the stream API into "serious applications."

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Posted by John K. Waters on January 14, 20150 comments


Jelastic Hires 'Father of Java' Gosling and Brazil's Souza

James Gosling, whom we all know as the Father of Java, and Brazilian Java community leader  Bruno F. Souza, whom the community knows as "the Brazilian Javaman," have joined the platform development advisory team of  Java/PHP Platform-as-a-Service provider Jelastic, the company announced this week.

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Posted by John K. Waters on November 19, 20140 comments


Is There a 'Masterpiece' Among Modern Applications?

Forrester Research analysts have been talking about "modern applications," a term they more or less coined, for a couple of years now. One of the clearest definitions of a modern app comes from application development and delivery specialist Jeffrey S. Hammond, who listed the qualities of a modern app in a 2013 blog post.

According to Hammond, a modern application is designed to work across a range of devices, from smartphones to desktops (not to mention your car and toaster). They react to multiple modes of input, including voice, touch, and the good old mouse. They're highly elastic and "take advantage of cloud economics." They use open source software. They're API-oriented, built on open web techniques, and use REST, XML, and JSON "to make it easy for all types of devices and clients to easily consume data." They're also responsive, organic, and contextual. (It's well worth reading the whole post.)

Increasingly, the source for this modern species of app is non-traditional developers, he said during a recent panel discussion among in-the-trenches coders.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm living in two completely different markets these days," Hammond said. "There's the market of the traditional IT developer, where we have conversations about whether they're a .NET or Java shop, and whether they're going to release two times this year or three, and how many millions of lines of code they're writing for the middleware they're building on top of these app servers.

"And then there are the outside-the-firewall developers who are releasing every couple of weeks, using technologies like JavaScript, Go, and Scala; who are putting all their stuff up on [Microsoft] Azure or the Amazon public cloud or the Google's public cloud infrastructure; who are even sometimes embedded inside the businesses, as opposed to a centralized IT organization. If you see that happen often enough, it begins to look like a real sea change in the way developers relate to the business, the way they drive the business, and their cultural practices."

Hammond moderated the panel, which was held last month at Telerik's Silicon Valley headquarters in Palo Alto. It featured representatives from Telerik partner organizations who are facing the challenge of bridging the two worlds Hammond described. In keeping with the theme of the event ("Coding Tomorrow's Masterpieces"), Hammond asked the panelists for examples of modern apps they considered to be masterpieces.

Thomas Stein, computer systems manager in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who works in the school's NASA laboratory, pointed to Uber as a modern masterpiece, calling it "an amazing piece of work."

"I've hated the taxi experience my entire life," he said. "Uber puts me in direct contact with the driver, separating out the awkwardness of payment and tipping and all of that, and just really focusing on making me comfortable, giving me what I want, and getting me where I need to be -- with the mobile device is the touchpoint. It's not just the business model; the application is brilliant. I know it's not simple underneath, of course, but it feels simple from the top, and that's essential in a masterpiece."

For Chuck Ganapathi, founder and CEO of Tactile, which makes a mobile CRM app called Tact, it was DropBox. (It was actually his org's app, but they made him name another.)

"To me, a modern software masterpiece is something the users just fall in love with, because it does something simply and it just works," he said. "DropBox has that kind of feel. Suddenly, you have this file that you drop onto your computer and it magically appears on your computer at work."

Krupa Rocks, senior manager in the Clinical Data Systems group at St. Jude Medical, Inc. (not the hospital, but the medical device company), cited Google's driverless car, because it exemplifies the coming tight integrations of hardware and software.

"People don't know how to drive," she said. "Computers can do a better job. If Google can really provide a self-driving car, that would definitely be a masterpiece."

Todd Anglin, executive vice president of Telerik's Cross Platform Tools group, pointed out that modern software masterpieces are being created all the time that most people never see. "Consumer apps get all the attention," he said, "but there are masterpieces out there that never make it to the app store. Working with our customers, we get to see the apps that make business go and help people get their jobs done. When I look at those kinds of applications, it's really clear to me that a software masterpiece is something that evolves over time. That's one of the things that makes it modern."

Not surprisingly, Anglin also argued that modern application development is more dependent than ever on the evolving capabilities of modern tools. (His company is all about the dev tools.)

"We assume now a certain starting point," he said, "and tools are what get us there. They give teams the space to really think about how to define an application elegantly, rather than just 'how do I make this thing work?'"

Long Le, principle and App/Dev Architect at real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) , agreed with Anglin."Picking the right tools at every stage of your ALM process is super important to how fast you can get [the software] out there," he said, "especially if you have limited resources."

Ganapathi added that, for modern apps especially, analytics capabilities that help developers truly understand end users have become critical. "Today, it's all about being very iterative in your development and constantly re-tuning that on a day-to-day basis," he said. "You put something out there, and then observe the data to see how people are actually using it, and then you respond to that. And you don't rely on what they're telling you in user interviews, which is so often very different."

He also pointed to the growing importance of designers in modern app development. "As developers, we've always said to designers, we'll develop it, you just make it look pretty," he said. "That's so wrong! Everybody expects phenomenal design today. If you don't have great designers -- especially when you're thinking about modern mobile apps, let alone creating a masterpiece -- you're screwed."

Rocks added that in her organization, automated testing tools have become fundamental to fast solution delivery. "Developers aren't the best testers," she said. "So testing would become a bottleneck for us without those tools." She also agreed that designers have become essential to the process. "Users may not know what they want," she said, "but they know what they don't want."

Hammond noted that the emergence of such new tools as Grunt and the enormously popular Git could be evidence that classic IDEs, such as Visual Studio and Eclipse, aren't as useful for modern application development. He also suggested that the modern application space has birthed "a new humility" among developers.

The panelists also agreed that modern apps are increasingly being built by those non-traditional developers Hammond mentioned, people with a wide range of skills, from software engineers with computer science degrees to "not developers" in the sales department who rely heavily on tools and frameworks.

And they might even come up with a few masterpieces.

Posted by John K. Waters on November 12, 20140 comments


Oracle v. Google at the Supreme Court: Industry Watchers Weigh In

Google has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its argument against Oracle's now four-year-old claim that 37 Java APIs used in the Android OS violated copyright (details in this report). It's an important question, and in my opinion, one worthy of the high court.

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Posted by John K. Waters on October 17, 20140 comments


JavaOne Wrap-Up: Top Third-Party Product Announcements

Oracle and the Java community made relatively few new announcements at the annual JavaOne conference last week, but a number of Java vendors did. Three announcements from local companies stood out for me at this year's show:.

Hazelcast, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of an open-source, In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG) solution by the same name, made big news at the show with the launch of its JCache implementation. Hazelcast 3.3.1 JCache, which is the JCache-compatible version of Hazelcast, is now drop-in "pin compatible" with Oracle's Coherence IMDG and Ehcache. Hazelcast CEO Greg Luck wrote the latter, which is one of the most widely used open-source Java caching solutions. Luck is also a co-author of the JCache spec, along with Brian Oliver, who architected Oracle Coherence. Coherence, Ehcache, and Hazelcast are the only JCache implementations currently available.

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Posted by John K. Waters on October 7, 20140 comments


Ellison Speaks at Oracle Open World

Is it possible that Larry Ellison's decision to step down as CEO of Oracle will mean we actually see more of him? He has made two appearances so far at the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week under his new titles of Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer. Last year he bailed on his conference keynote to focus on the America's Cup, during which Oracle Team USA was staging an admittedly thrilling comeback. Attendees who traveled from...well, everywhere....and paid to see the guy were not sympathetic.

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Posted by John K. Waters on October 1, 20140 comments


JavaOne 2014 Preview: NetBeans Day, IoT and Rock 'n' Roll

It's time again for the annual JavaOne gathering of Java jocks in San Francisco for a week of drink…I mean, learning and networking. I kid, but that's because the anxiety over how well this touchstone event would weather its assimilation by Oracle OpenWorld has largely dissipated. For all intents and purposes, JavaOne continues to survive with its identity intact.

The primary venues for this year's event, which runs from Sept. 28 through Oct. 2, are the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the Parc 55 Wyndam, but some related events are scheduled for the Nikko Hotel. (My feet ache already.) The annual Strategy Keynote is set for Sunday afternoon at the north hall of the Moscone Center, the event's former home. The usual suspects will be on hand: Georges Saab, Peter Utzschneider, Cameron Purdy, and John Duimovich. Mark Reinhold will again give the Technical Keynote. The Community Keynote is set for Thursday morning.

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Posted by John K. Waters on September 24, 20140 comments