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InfoQ Homepage News Keynote: The Future of Java Innovation

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Keynote: The Future of Java Innovation

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Jun 11, 2009 2 min read

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In the opening keynote at SpringOne Europe 2009, Rod Johnson wondered if Java innovation is going to be stifled by latest Oracle acquisition and expressed his belief that Java will continue to evolve outside of Sun as it has done for the last few years. As proof he mentioned: Grails, Roo, a tool for improved developer productivity, a free STS, tc Server and dm Server.

Watch: The Future of Java Innovation (1h. 55 min.)

Rod does not believe Oracle will contribute to Java innovation because:

  • Oracle is not an innovator
  • Oracle acquisition is for Wall Street not developers
  • Oracle is focused on making money not innovating

But Rod does not see that as a problem because the language itself is open source, licensed under GNU GPL, and Oracle won’t shutdown Java because they can’t and because it is not in their advantage.

Lately, the innovation has not come from Sun but from outside, and especially from languages built on the JVM like Groovy and Scala, according to Rod. Platforms and frameworks are what matters these days and that is where innovation must go on.

Rod did not try to convince the attendees that Java innovation is not going to die in the near future, but instead presented the latest SpringSource achievements expressing company’s goal: “Complete infrastructure for building, running and managing Java applications.”

The JVM is an excellent platform for large scalable enterprise applications but it is missing “the joined up experience from developers to production” unlike Ruby on Rails which “is very integrated, it is a one stop shop”. The focus should be on integration and productivity and SpringSource is committed to that with Grails, Roo, STS, tc Server, dm Server.

Grails was touted by Rod as the best web development framework for the JVM. G2One, the company behind Grails, was acquired by SpringSource last year.

Roo is an interactive and lightweight tooling meant to improve Java developer productivity. One can use it to code in Java using the Spring object model. Roo is the proposed name, but developers are invited to vote and choose the best name for this tool, one of: Spring Dart, Spring Spark, Spring Roo, Spring HyperDrive, Spring Boost.

Rod has also announced they are giving SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) for free, and the suite will contain Grails and Groovy tools later in the year.

Another announcement was the release of SpringSource tc Server, basically the Tomcat application server plus enterprise capabilities needed to manage a large installation of such servers.

Roo and tc Server were demoed during the keynote.

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  • RE: Keynote: The Future of Java Innovation

    by A D,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Didn't realize Mr Johnson has been appointed as the official spokesman by Oracle ;)
    The spring crowd really needs to stop using FUD around Java and JEE to push its own agenda.

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  • yup

    by Bill Burke,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Yup, innovation for Java will stall, except at SpringSource of course. So open your checkbooks now and buy tc Server.

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  • Re: yup

    by Liyu Wang,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Mr. Johnson become a Chrysler sellsman?

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  • java language

    by serge ----,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    if we really want to eliminate code bloat we should concentrate more on making Java the language more concise and productive.

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  • Half truth.

    by Christopher Churchill,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    But one of the truths that he says is that, Twitter is really slow. I mean, I can really feel twitter crawling, when compared to Ebay on my broadband, and by the way, Ebay has a freaking lot more content to serve up.
    There is something fundamentally wrong about the Rails platform, that does not allow its performance to move beyond a certain level.
    Like keeping a civic engine inside a Ferrari. All show, and no go. It may be easy to develop, but that doesnt mean I need to wait ages to see my pages.

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  • Re: Half truth.

    by serge ----,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I don't think performance will be as big of a concern post Java 7. Invoke dynamic and other initiatives will speed up Ruby and other dynamic languages on the JVM considerably. I think the argument will start to fall back on the productivity of the language and it's conciseness - Java has huge strides to make in this area. A framework will only get you so far, then your stuck programming all the business in the language you choose.

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  • We of WC Duck advice you... WC Duck

    by adrian collheart,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    In the Netherlands we have a famous commercial featuring a salesman, clearly representing the company WC Duck, supposedly giving the audience an independent and unbiased advice of which toilet cleaning product they should use. It goes without saying that this incorruptible salesman gives the advice to buy... WC Duck products.

    Somehow Rod reminds me of this salesman.

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  • ...

    by Oliver Gierke,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Curiously wonder what you expect of a keynote of an event driven by the company Rod speaks for, discussing technologies of the company Rod stands for? But hey, Sun of course does not claim JavaFx to be the next GUI technology, Oracle would not praise her own database on company presentations. To me it's just a matter of wearing the right glasses when consuming talks like this...

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  • Re: ...

    by A D,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I do agree with you but most of the companis generally present salient features of their products rather than using FUD which, sadly seems to be the way of the spring community to respond to any criticism. It just shows their desperation on their part as coomunity is movin forward but Rod & co stil seem to be hung up on spring legacy.
    Once Glassfish V3 is out, it will simply toast tc server, dm server and springsource knows it very well.
    Groovy is good but network operation guys use perl.
    Would reserve my comments on Spring Poo ....

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  • Re: ...

    by adrian collheart,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Curiously wonder what you expect of a keynote of an event driven by the company Rod speaks for, discussing technologies of the company Rod stands for?


    You are right that every such talk naturally leads to telling people how great their own products are. This is basically excepted by everyone and this is not really the problem. What the problem is, is the fact that Spring people and especially Rod make it sound like they are criticizing Java (EE) because the goodness in their hearts tell them to warn fellow developers. Their pitch is so slick that many people actually seem to belief it. When Rod says "Stateless Session Beans in EJB3 suck", he doesn't really say "Stateless Session Beans in EJB3 suck". What he actually says is "Use Spring and when you're stuck, buy our support contract". That's all there is to it, it's a sales pitch and very little more.

    Once again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a sales pitch, but for some reason some people do not see it as such. They seem to see it as something that is almost akin to a report obtained from scientific research, but it really is just a sales pitch.

    In recent years, luckily, more and more people have started to see this. It became painfully clear that Rod is not the 'benevolent dictator' that gives the poor mislead Java programmers all this nice and totally free stuff. Rod is a businessman, out there to make a buck like everyone else. Next to that, people have actually started trying to use EJB3 and discovered for themselves that it doesn't suck at all. Actually, for some people it has been nothing less of a revelation, trying their first SLB and crying: "Hey, this stuff is pretty easy, lightweight and cool. Rod has been lying to us all those years:.

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  • Re: ...

    by Dean JJ,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Couldn't agree more. I'm sick with Rod's FUDing talks.

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  • Use of aliases in this thread

    by Floyd Marinescu,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Fellow commenters, I'd like to ask if you could please edit your profile and add your real name to these posts. InfoQ does not condone posting under aliases as it takes away from the professional spirit and tone we are trying to create.

    thanks,

    Floyd

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  • Re: ...

    by Matt Giacomini,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Dean JJ & A. C.,

    I don't think there is anyone out there that hates Spring fan boys more then myself, and for that matter there are many things about Rod that I don't like.

    That said, I hope that Rod keeps the heat up on the JEE community at large and Sun/Oracle. The competition has made for a much better JEE stack and, in my view, has pushed the expert groups to innovate faster then they would have otherwise.

    ~Matt

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  • Re: ...

    by Matt Newboult,

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    A little bit of an axe to grind there AD?

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  • So down on Spring

    by Matt Newboult,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I'm no Spring fan-boi and I don't have long history with Java and JEE but I really don't get the bad vibe going Spring's way. What have they done apart from innovate with Java technology and try to produce a framework that people actually want to use? Roo and Grails are fantastic and innovative products for the future of JEE. Stop knocking them and name calling when lots of comments here are posted by fan-bois, just not of the Spring variety.

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  • Re: ...

    by A D,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Umm...what gives you that impression?

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  • Competition and FUD

    by Paul Dotsenko,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I think the negative reactions to this presentation by what one may assume to be Sun, Oracle and IBM partisans do say much about Spring's success so far. Posts telling Big Bad Spring to stop scaring developers away from Sun/Oracle are quite a complement to Rod's efforts so far;)
    Peace,
    Spring fan boy

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  • Great ideas...

    by William Barker,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    but
    #fail 2+ hour keynote (yawn)
    #fail Java Rock Stars thinking live coding is entertaining
    #fail Spring Management Demo

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  • Re: Half truth.

    by Michael Mullany,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Twitter failing on Rails is an old and discredited meme. Take a look at John Adams of Twitter at Velocity 2009: bit.ly/vR7SU

    Back to top

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