Mark has been working with Java and PDF since 1999 and is a big NetBeans fan. He enjoys speaking at conferences. He has an MA in Medieval History and a passion for reading.

Having had a long plane ride back from San Francisco, I have had some time to mull over a very hectic and exciting week and what really came out of it. And I can tell you:-

1. Oracle is prepared to invest very heavily in Java. There were an awful lot of things to show off at Javaone (improvements to NetBeans, Glassfish, Nashorn, FX2, progress on Java 8, etc) and all the development team were hiring. And the Javaone/Oracleworld event was clearly big budget – any guesses what it must cost to hire all those venues, have a couple of roads closed for you by the city authorities and bring in all those music acts?

2. Java is alive and growing. The show was bigger and busier than 2011 with lots of companies showing off new products. JavaFX is now a very serious option for client development and even without Jigsaw, Java8 is going to be a big step forward.

3. Oracle is getting Java almost everywhere. A lot of effort had gone into getting Java running from everything from huge systems to the Rasperberry Pi. And while Jigsaw is delayed, profiles will give us some benefits before then. The two ‘elephants’ in the room are Android and Ios. There were 2 talks on IPad which we both cancelled (leading to alsorts of conspiracy theories).

4. Oracle is getting much better at handling this Community/partner thing. The Community keynote was very good and as one speaker said, Larry likes to win at everything so if he wants a Community, it will be the best. Oracle is also mending fences. James Gosling was back as a speaker at the Community keynote, talking about some very clever marine robots his current company deploys. The one critical bridge to mend is Google, who used to be a big part of the convention.

5. It is still worth the money going to the shows. Aside from the amazing free concerts organised, the interaction with Oracle and other developers and the chance to share ideas is priceless. Sitting at home coding that week is a false economy.

What did you think of Javaone 2012?

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