Java-ites Love to Tinker

Last week was JavaOne where Paul and I spent 5 action-packed days and nights immersed in Java technology, socializing with other like-minded practitioners of the art of inventing, building, explaining, exploring, speaking, writing, and pontificating all things Java. This is the third year we’ve presented a hands-on lab, although this year was particularly challenging due to the last minute “request” to merge our lab with another. The result? Lab participants received in excess of 3 hours worth of instruction crammed into two hours. However, with nimble herding and crucial prebuilt steps, most of the attendees were able to chat (first part), slide (second part), and see the parrots (third part). The lab was truly a double dose of JSF and Ajax. The full lab, Building Ajax-Enabled JavaServer Faces Web Applications With jMaki, Dynamic Faces, and the NetBeans IDE, is available online.

In the process, our own experience was enhanced because we got to work with some great people. Chris Kutler (from whom I mined the above photo) writes more on the lab and JavaOne here and Winston’s blog lists the other Ajax-related labs that are available online.

Each year several new words or phrases pop up in more than just a few talks. This year I noticed two:

agnostic: not caring about the underlying system, framework, application, or language. Example: One goal of a robust Ajax technology library is to be browser agnostic.

DRY: don’t repeat yourself. This applies to almost all software engineering principals, since repetition means duplication of effort. This is not a new concept, but it certainly made the rounds in the technical presentations. (Duplication in the photo below equates to architectural artistry.)