Jazoon '08 impressions
Update: You can see the keynotes for yourself now thanks to parleys. Just search for jazoon08 tag.
Two weeks ago i attended Jazoon - Java conference in Zurich, Switzerland.
Although the conference was all about Java and Java-related technologies it was really useful for me as a .net developer to be part of it. The point is that if you step back and de-focus of the platform/technology presented, you'll be able to see the model, architecture or design of the presented solutions which i can freely say - is platform independent.
After all, stepping out of the regular .net development and reviving my knowledge of my previous platform of choice (yes, i'm coming from java camp) was a pleasure. It is always nice to see how the whole community around Java is constantly evolving and you can tell by events like this about the current hypes and shifts in the technology focus in the software industry in general.
The conference it self was very well organized and there were plenty of presentations and topics to choose upon (there were 5 parallel track for technical talks). This can sometimes be tricky, as two talks of interest can be held at the same time, so you must choose one (or change rooms constantly which will only make you tired).
The main focus on such events are definitely the Keynotes. This year we were able to see plenty of speakers which are well recognized in the software industry:
Martin Odersky opened this year Jazoon with an interesting talk about scalable languages. He mostly talked about Scala, functional and truly OOP language based na Java that he invented. The paradigm of functional languages is gaining it's momentum for sure.
Ted Neward - Neward & Associates is well known specialist when comes to software architecture in both java and .net camps. He's talk was the most inspiring of them all. The main point he gave is that we, as developers are responsible for architecture design choices, and that we need to rethink that process a lot. What we do is that by inertion, we always tend to reuse the same technology we work with from project to project, regardless of project's requirements and technology applicability in that area. What we know is that we feel comfortable in that domain and this is, in most cases, path to disaster. So, the main point of this talk was: Stop. Think. Rethink. Be sure that tools you use will be the ones most suitable for the problem you're trying to resolve.
Roy T. Fielding is one of the authors of HTTP and the creator of REST Architecture.He's working as Chief Scientist at Day Software, company that had 6 presenters on this year Jazoon. His talk on Open Architectures was focusing on openness of the architecture in terms of extensibility and scalability. One of the key points presented was that open source is not the prerequisite for success of the software - it is the open architecture that counts. As an examples, he mentioned couple of such architectures, like: Mozilla Firefox, Emacs, Eclipse Platform etc.
Simon Phipps is Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems. His talk about open source in the enterprise business was really inspiring. Actually, the fact that Sun's core business model is focused around open source solutions and providing of service & support was really interesting. He convinced the audience that open source can p(l)ay well in the enterprise business. More on his Adoption-led theory can be found on his blog.
Last day of the conference was reserved for Joshua Bloch. He is a Principal Engineer at Google and author of "Effective Java" - the book, and also one of the contributors to Java platform (Java Collections, java.math.). He had three talks on Jazoon, and each one of them was interesting in his own way. When he talked about the famous closures what got me was the energy he put in in order to defend his believes. Whit such carrying community, you don't have to worry about the future of the platform.
Beside the above speakers and talks, there were plenty of other interesting presentations which also deserve attention. More details can be found on Jazoon official site: jazoon.com.
Overall, i suggest that if you have chance to attend similar event, do not hesitate to do so. Even if you're not part of the target audience. Sometimes, seeing things from a different perspective can bring additional value and new points reveals that cannot be seen otherwise. Also, communication with other developers, your colleagues is very important for your personal growth as a developer - is all about communication!