Peter Pilgrim :: Java Champion :: Enterprise Blog

I was asked by someone where can they download GlassFish. Of course, I pointed them to the official website. The site was revised in time for the Java EE 7 last year, and when I recently the ask advice that I passed on, then I realize the server download is old.

So do we get a more recent build of GlassFish 4? We can build the server ourselves from source code and I already documented this process. The most conveniently way is to download from the promoted directory, which is listing version 4.0.1Tweet

Start your new year with Java EE 7 learning. Stay update on us. Packt Publishing have kindly offered me a discount code for my book Java EE 7 Developer Handbook for the New Year 2014. So I am passing this code directly to you, readers of my blog and the wider community.

You have less than a week to do it: apply the discount code. Don’t miss out!

Discount code: abcde18
Expiry date of code : 19/January/2014
Discount percent for eBook and print format : 18%

How do you get the discount? Please apply the promotion code directly at Packt Pub website on checkout.

+PP+

PS: My sincere thanks to Amol Bhosle for getting this organised at Packt Pub.

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This is one old Java question from 2011 that landed on my desk. Admittedly, at the time, I was really looking for permanent role, senior Java developer in investment banking in London. I had given up on searching for that perfect banking Scala programming role, I went back to job hunting on Java EE 6, Spring, whatever I could find and I sent my CV down for Java developer in Markets Risk at some big bank. The context here was I had to write a Java project before I could get a vital face-to-face interview. Here is the reveal:

#ITMustChange2014

Please see below test for Market Risk at INVESTMENT BANK in the CITY.

Imagine this is a tasks/features in your current job and do everything you would to make a real-world task complete (e.g. javadocs, etc.).

import java.util.Map;

/**
 * Design a class to implement the StringUtil interface
 *
 */
public interface StringUtil {

        /**
         * sortChars - return a string containing all the characters of the input string, sorted in ascending order
         */
        public String sort(String input);
       
        /**
         * reverse - return a string containing all the characters of the input string, in reverse order
         */
        public String reverse(String input);
       
        /**
         * distribution - return characters found in the input string, along with a count of their occurrence in the string (order is unimportant)
         */
        public Map<Character, Integer> getDistribution(String input);

        /**
         * distribution - sort the characters of the input string and return the first n
         */
        public String getFirstNSortedChars(String input, int topN);
       
        /**
         * get characters in input string ordered by frequency of occurrence
         */
        public String getUniqueCharsSortedByOccurrence(String input);

        /**
         * get the character(s) that occurs most frequently in the input string
         */
        public String getMode(String input);

}

Unfortunately, I did not get very far in the process. It transpired that they were after experts in multi thread programming. I wondered then why did they not say so on the job specification or why the Java test did not reflect the true duties of the role?

Addendum: This test was dated 5th July 2011. I had nothing against the validity of the test itself to demonstrate how a developer can code against an application programming interface. On the other hand, as a chief engineer, I must emphasize this test, and many questions that are very similar to it, are just one part of an interview process. For instance, an answer to this example question does not necessarily reveal how the developer communicates with others, plays well in a team, and handles variability in the working environment.

Patronising the experienced

As a seasoned Java EE contractor, I think that I might find the question to be now patronising. If I was asked to fill in a question like this one from 2011 before a telephone interview, I would think it would be unusual. It would take second priority to a job inquiry that was a face-to-face or a telephone interview. Granted, there are always candidates and low-end contractors who want to chance their arm in order to get a gig with an exorbitant contractor rate, when in fact, they are truly incapable of delivery on their promises. From my point of view, the recruitment process would be flawed and the client may be inexperienced in hiring an engineer or may be the human resources department do not know quite what they doing. The burden of the recruitment process is unfortunately the responsibility of the hirer. If your process is like this: a preamble Java programming test, then Java test, then a telephone interview and then 6 hour assessment in a team situation and then a face-to-face interview with the development manager and then another face-to-face with human resources or the final decision-maker, then think about how many contractors of decent quality you will eventually see? Do you actually think that you will see lots of them? In a recessed economy this sort of long hire-to-work process may work, indeed it may have worked last year, but now, in 2014, we expect the green shoots of recovery to prosper and in a very competitive economy, it is less affordable.

Kitchen fitting

When you want to hire a kitchen fitter to install a £15,000 kitchen, you hunt for good rated recommendations from other people who have had similar kitchens installed or even talk to the people who sell kitchens and get a list of recommended installers from them. You certainly never put the kitchen fitter through a basic test of do you know what is best screwdriver to remove this old 1980′s cabinet from a prefabricated wall? You never question his modus operandi and the number of tools inside his work boxes. You as the customer (the client) trust the fitter to do his or her job, they will complete the installation and usually everybody will be satisfied. This is my point.

Aim for standards

The IT industry is a bit unusual in comparison to the physical world of labour, which invariably has a list of professional bodies to assert accreditation through guilds and apprentices; and also government licenses and (inter)national standards (e.g. Gas safe registration). I am definitely sympathetic to the hiring client who is going through grave difficulties getting the right sort of engineer at the right level and quality that understands them, their hot problem(s) and wants some co-operation on a project from day one. All I ask, and I probably speak for many professional Java contractors, and I have been loquacious enough in this post already, is that clients do not slap down the good in order to compensate for the pathetic.

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Instead of moaning, groaning and whining about the frustration of job search in the industry like I did last year and the years before. I am doing something about it this year, #ITMustChange2014 is the start of the awareness campaign. Here is the media, which is Creative Commons Licensed 3.0, Share-A-Like, No-Derivatives and Non-Commercial. So you are allow to copy this set of files and share with other. Please do share, re-tweet and repost in order to educate the entire industry. Thank you.

This is the logo:

This is the initial poster:

Here are the files for public consumption. JPEG are full-size here or the half-size and don’t forgot the logo PNG 24-bitand PNG 8-bit files.

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09/Jan/2014 I fixed an imperfection in the poster image’s emblem. I add link to the CC license legal code.

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Jason Lee Cameron McKenzie of  The Server Side .COM recently interviewed me late last year about my experiences of writing the Java EE 7 Developer Handbook. I gave some advice on to how to get into Java EE 7 as well as promote my book! I was quoted with “What would be nice is if we could use annotations to create our own administrative objects for JDBC, JMS, or even a managed task executor”. By this I meant that although Java EE 7 made significant progress to moving all of us closer to a future Java enterprise Platform-as-a-Service standard, obviously we all expect bigger progress in the next revision. I believe that Java EE 8 should have a standard way in application code to automatically inform the underlying application server (or cloud provider) container the resources that are required at deployment time. You can find the full interview here.

• Article 1: WebSockets to HTML5: What’s new and what’s next for Java EE 7
• Article 2: Getting Java programmers up to speed on Java EE 7 need not be a ‘Pilgrimage’

PS: On the subject of interviews in 2014, I got into a Linked-In conversation with a certain Peter Lawrey, of Vanilla Java blog; his popular site all about high frequency trading, low latency and Java performance fame. We discussed how he got started with his relatively brand new  consultancy business. We both agreed to turn my questions and Peter’s answers into an interview. I definitely recommend that you go read that if you are into core Java.

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[It was Cameron McKenzie who interview me for The Server Side on Monday, 28th October 2013. Sorry about that Cameron, how could I have forgotten? My mind has been like a sieve.]Tweet

This is my first blog entry of 2014. Happy New Year and I hope you all had a good break.

Here is my quick interview with Java Oracle Technology Network at Devoxx 2013 with Tori Wieldt. I am promoting the #javaee7handbook here.

And yes, I am going to be working on second Packt book for this year 2014 that will be more “Webby” in nature.Tweet

I posted a video introduction for readers who are learning Java EE for the first time. This is useful for budding engineers who bought my recent book, Java EE 7 Developer Handbook, and want to understand how build the software using Git and Gradle.

Introduction to Java EE 7 Developer Handbook from Peter Pilgrim on Vimeo.

In an earlier video, I only demonstrated salient parts of the Xentracker AngularJS application. As a bonus to IDEA 12 users, I now fully describe the procedure to construct an exploded WAR in IDEA as an project artifact and then deploy it to a managed GlassFish 4 container. The result is that you can code Java classes and change resources such images, CSS, HTML and JavaScript as then switch over to the browser. IDEA will automatically update the deployment on the fly without having to redeploy or restart the container. This is great for debugging dynamically and cuts down the length of engineering.

Enjoy

PS: I recorded the videocast in HD, so make sure you select that option in the Vimeo player!Tweet

There are 3 lucky winners of the Java EE 7 Developer Handbook competition.

Congratulations to Cathy White, the special selected winner, who wrote the best comment and wins first prize!

The next two winners in second and third place, respectively, are Rui Morais and Seb Rose. They were chosen by this following Groovy program that randomly shuffles a list collection of elements:

// LICENCE is GPL 3.0 (GNU PUBLIC LICENSE 3.0)
// Peter Pilgrim, Xenonique.co.uk
package uk.co.xenonique.je7hb.competition

import java.security.SecureRandom

/**
 * The type JE7HBLottoTest
 *
 * @author Peter Pilgrim
 */
class JE7HBLottoTest extends GroovyTestCase {

    List entrants = [
    /* SPECIALLY SELECTED WINNER FOR BEST REPLY COMMENT
     "Cathy White, @athyC, 21 Nov, Learning Java EE7
    so I can use existing Java code to build a robust, scalable,
    modern system with a great web UI #javaee7handbook", */

    "Himadri Pant ,‏@himadripant, 21 Nov, JEE 7 packs a powerpunch of " +
            "Project Coin and other features of Java 7. Hopeful of " +
            "getting this master guide into JEE 7 #javaee7handbook.",

    "IanonP, ‏@iPolding, 20 Nov, Being so new to development, the " +
            "#javaee7handbook sounds like just what I need to " +
            "kickstart my new career",

    "Seb Rose, , 14 Nov, It has been a long time since I immersed " +
            "myself in EE Java. This book will give me the information " +
            "I need in a format I can use. I know this because I am a " +
            "long time reader of Peter's work. " +
            "If I don't win this book, I'll buy it anyway!",

    "Mohan Radhakrishnan, , 14 Nov, I have been following your blog for " +
            "several years.The stress on communication and " +
            "presentation skills is what attracts me most.",

    "Harmeet Singh, , 10 Nov, #javaee7handbook I am new in JavaEE " +
            "and so, i want to learn JavaEE new technologies and " +
            "i am still wait for Java 8. The future plan for " +
            "JavaEE 8 is really good. The Arun Gupta Articles " +
            "are amazing for J2EE 7.",

    "Andrew Bell, ,  17 Nov, I'm a recent college graduate " +
            "(read poor) and new Java developer trying to suck up " +
            "all the information I can!",

    "José antonio, , 18 Nov, IMHO JEE 7 brings new fantastic " +
            "features like Websockets and JSON to just name a few " +
            "and I'd like to learn it to be a java top developer",

    "Vivek Krishnan, , 19 Nov, #javaee7handbook Make it my birthday gift :D",

    "Mariano Eloy Fernández Osca , , 19 Nov, JEE has been moving forward " +
            "so fast the last couples of years ... curated information " +
            "is so valuable when there's so much ground to " +
            "cover. Hail #javaee7handbook.",

    "suresh, , 19 Nov, very much interested in understanding the" +
            " support for PAAS in Java EE 7. Its inclusive support " +
            "for jpa 2.1 and JAX-RS 2.0.",

    "Rui Morais, , 19 Nov, This would be perfect to revamp my Java " +
            "EE knowledge!!",

    "Daniela, , 19 Nov, what a nice book to read! (my bday is on friday...   )",

    "Carsten Cerny, , 19 Nov, Hallo, ich kann leider nicht zur " +
            "Konferenz kommen. Würde das Buch aber trotzdem gerne lesen."

    /* (Duplicate) "Himadri Pant, , 19 Nov, JEE 7 packs a power punch of
    Project Coin and other features of Java 7 into the enterprise edition.
    I am hopeful of getting this master guide into JEE 7." */
    ]

    void testPickRandomWinners() {

        warmUpTheJVM();
        def N = entrants.size()

        SecureRandom secureRandom = new SecureRandom();
        for ( int j=0; j<Math.abs(secureRandom.nextDouble()) * 32678 + 16384; ++j ) {
            Collections.shuffle(entrants)
            assertEquals( N, entrants.size() )
        }

        println( "First winner is ${entrants[0]}\n")

        println( "Second winner is ${entrants[1]}\n")

        println( "Third winner is ${entrants[2]}\n")
        println( "Fourth winner is ${entrants[3]}\n")
        println( "Fifth winner is ${entrants[4]}\n")
    }

    final private static int MIN_NUM = 12;
    final private static int MAX_NUM = 25;

    private static void warmUpTheJVM() {
        SecureRandom secureRandom = new SecureRandom();
        Random rnd = new Random(System.currentTimeMillis());
        for (int j=0; j<Math.abs(secureRandom.nextDouble()) * 1048576 + 524288; ++j ) {
            calcFibonacci((int)(Math.abs(secureRandom.nextDouble()) * (MAX_NUM - MIN_NUM)) + MIN_NUM);
        }
    }

    private static int calcFibonacci(int n) {
        int result = 1;
        int previous = -1;
        int sum = 0;
        for(int i = 0; i <= n; i++) {
            sum = previous + result;
            previous = result;
            result = sum;
        }
        return result;
    }

}

But it doesn’t just shuffle a list, I  copied the blog comments and the Twitter #javaee7handbooks tag entries into a Groovy list. The tricky part was being fair and smart. I wanted to be fair and generate a good random selection of winners. When the program first runs, it warms up the JVM. I also used a javax.secure.SecureRandom object instead of the mathematically crackable PRG implementation java.util.Random.

After ensure the program actually did what it was supposed to, I ran a few iterations , capture a definitive sample to the standard output:

First winner is Rui Morais, , 19 Nov, This would be perfect to revamp my Java EE knowledge!!

Second winner is Seb Rose, , 14 Nov, It has been a long time since I immersed myself in EE Java. This book will give me the information I need in a format I can use. I know this because I am a long time reader of Peter's work. If I don't win this book, I'll buy it anyway!

Third winner is Carsten Cerny, , 19 Nov, Hallo, ich kann leider nicht zur Konferenz kommen. Würde das Buch aber trotzdem gerne lesen.

Fourth winner is Vivek Krishnan, , 19 Nov, #javaee7handbook Make it my birthday gift  

Fifth winner is Daniela, , 19 Nov, what a nice book to read! (my bday is on friday...   )

From output, Cathy White was already excluded from the list collection.

Congratulations to all the winners, enjoy your e-book, and to the other contestants, thanks for entering the competition.

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Here is a HTTP Response Java Enumeration type from yesteryear.
In some client’s project, I have seen various constants like this:

final static int OK = 200
final static int OK_STRING = "200"

Which is absolutely awful and these constants are not consistently used in the code base. Worse of all, the code I have refactored will use literal constants.

assertEquals(200, webResponse.getStatusCode() );
assertEquals("404", someOtherResponse.getStatus() );

Even more worse, is the fact these bad coding practices appear in unit test code, if you are lucky to find any testing code at all. (It seems code should just work with no proof of measurement or check of behaviour

So here is my solution for clients:

// LICENSE GPL 3.0 Peter Pilgrim, Xenonique.co.uk, 2012
// http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html GNU PUBLIC LICENSE 3.0
package uk.co.xenonique.http.net;

/**
 * Implementation type HttpStatusCode
 *
 * (Only codes 400 to 417 and codes 500 to 524 implemented)
 *
 * @see "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes"
 */
public enum HttpStatusCode {
    CONTINUE(100, "Continue"),
    SWITCHING_PROTOCOL(101, "Switching Protocols"),
    PROCESSING(102, "Processing"),

    OK(200, "OK"),
    CREATED(201, "Created"),
    ACCEPTED(202, "Accepted"),
    NON_AUTHORITATIVE_INFORMATION(203, "Non-Authoritative Information"),
    NO_CONTENT(204,  "No Content"),
    RESET_CONTENT(205, "Reset Content"),
    PARTIAL_CONTENT(206, "Partial Content"),
    MULTI_STATUS(207, "Multi-Status (WebDAV; RFC 4918"),
    ALREADY_REPORTED(208, "Already Reported (WebDAV; RFC 5842)" ),
    IM_USED(226, "IM Used (RFC 3229)"),

    MULTIPLE_CHOICES(300, "Multiple Choices"),
    MOVED_PERMANENTLY(301, "Moved Permanently"),
    FOUND(302, "Found"),
    SEE_OTHER(303, "See Other (since HTTP/1.1)"),
    NOT_MODIFIED(304, "Not Modified"),
    USE_PROXY(305, "Use Proxy (since HTTP/1.1)"),
    SWITCH_PROXY(306, "Switch Proxy"),
    TEMPORARY_REDIRECT(307, "Temporary Redirect (since HTTP/1.1)"),
    PERMANENT_REDIRECT(308, "Permanent Redirect (approved as experimental RFC)[12]"),

    BAD_REQUEST(400, "Bad Request"),
    UNAUTHORIZED(401, "Unauthorized"),
    PAYMENT_REQUIRED(402, "Payment Required"),
    FORBIDDEN(403, "Forbidden"),
    NOT_FOUND(404, "Not Found"),
    METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED(405, "Method Not Allowed"),
    NOT_ACCEPTABLE(406, "Not Acceptable"),
    PROXY_AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED(407, "Proxy Authentication Required"),
    REQUEST_TIMEOUT(408, "Request Timeout"),
    CONFLICT(409, "Conflict"),
    GONE(410, "Gone"),
    LENGTH_REQUIRED(411, "Length Required"),
    PRECONDITION_FAILED(412, "Precondition Failed"),
    REQUEST_ENTITY_TOO_LARGE(413, "Request Entity Too Large"),
    REQUEST_URI_TOO_LONG(414, "Request-URI Too Long"),
    UNSUPPORTED_MEDIA_TYPE(415, "Unsupported Media Type"),
    REQUESTED_RANGE_NOT_SATISFIABLE(416, "Requested Range Not Satisfiable"),
    EXPECTATION_FAILED(417, "Expectation Failed"),

    INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR(500, "Internal Server Error"),
    NOT_IMPLEMENTED(501, "Not Implemented"),
    BAD_GATEWAY(502, "Bad Gateway"),
    SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE(503, "Service Unavailable"),
    GATEWAY_TIMEOUT(504, "Gateway Timeout"),
    HTTP_VERSION_NOT_SUPPORTED(505, "HTTP Version Not Supported"),
    VARIANT_ALSO_NEGOTIATES(506, "Variant Also Negotiates (RFC 2295)"),
    INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE(507, "Insufficient Storage (WebDAV; RFC 4918)"),
    LOOP_DETECTED(508, "Loop Detected (WebDAV; RFC 5842)"),
    BANDWIDTH_LIMIT_EXCEEDED(509, "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded (Apache bw/limited extension)"),
    NOT_EXTEND(510, "Not Extended (RFC 2774)"),
    NETWORK_AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED(511, "Network Authentication Required (RFC 6585)"),
    CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT(522, "Connection timed out"),
    PROXY_DECLINED_REQUEST(523, "Proxy Declined Request"),
    TIMEOUT_OCCURRED(524, "A timeout occurred")
    ;

    private int code;
    private String desc;
    private String text;

    HttpStatusCode(int code, String desc) {
        this.code = code;
        this.desc = desc;
        this.text = Integer.toString(code);
    }

    /**
     * Gets the HTTP status code
     * @return the status code number
     */
    public int getCode() {
        return code;
    }

    /**
     * Gets the HTTP status code as a text string
     * @return the status code as a text string
     */
    public String asText() {
        return text;
    }

    /**
     * Get the description
     * @return the description of the status code
     */
    public String getDesc() {
        return desc;
    }

}

On the other hand, if you work with JAX-RS (Jersey or RestEasy) in Java EE, you get these constants for free!

assertEquals(HttpStatusCode.getCode(), webResponse.getStatusCode() );
assertEquals(HttpStatusCode.asText(), someOtherResponse.getStatus() );

Please tell me, as a Java enterprise engineer, what you would prefer?

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Devoxx 2013 is most definitely and undoubtedly the best Java related conference in Europe. It stands second only to JavaOne, San Francisco, in importance in my humble opinion. I only attended the actual conference days for this year Devoxx. Elsewhere, I read that the quality of the university days were useful, in particular, Java EE, Angular JS and Scala tutorials were pretty spot on.

Not quite the last supper. Actually, this photo was taken in the Eastern turkish diner upstairs in the Metropolis late after the Java Users Group BOF on Thursday night.

Java EE 7

During my three days in Antwerp, I spent a lot of time talking with fellow conference goers on Java EE 7 and where they felt the umbrella specificatgion was heading to. The enterprise edition was critical important to many engineers. I asked them if they liked the new feature set in Java EE 7, and everyone said yes with a caveat. Some people wanted more features like No-SQL support or integration to other architectures and certain messaging systems. For my limited conversations, I found the impression that JAX-RS is the probably the most important API to learn, it seems many developers have to interact with RESTful services of some type, and they tend to rely on Jersey to communicate with the client and server endpoints.  I was surprised that lots of developers do not know a lot about CDI, especially how it works and that is type safe by design, but many are already very familiar with the Spring Framework and its mode of bean configuration. Yet, they acknowledge that there were issues with configuring any dependency injection framework with just using XML configuration. I was not surprised by developers who told me personally they are still using Java EE 6, however they still wanted to know the big differences between that specification and the new Java EE 7. Engineers are genuinely encouraged by the productivity features in Java EE 7 and they think the changes were a good step in the right direction. [My clients tend to use Java EE 6 and some of them use Spring Framework to wire objects, still others rely on OSGi services and activation.] They were enthused by the Java WebSocket specification and thought that Java EE Concurrency Utilities was rather helpful. I got the feeling that the Java EE 7 adoption still has some way to go and we will see greatest benefits in 2014. One thing is for sure, I did not heard that precious word, cloud, in any of our discussions.

Richard Bair and Stephen Chin hold court at the Wednesday keynote.

Lambdas

After the Wednesday Keynote, with Mark Reinhold and Brian Goetz, I had a chance to see once again the presentation of Lambda: A Peak Under The Hood. The implementation of Lambdas was pretty huge as it lends itself to efficient future improvements without tying the Java runtime to a set recipe. I think developers will see the benefits of functional programming in the 2014 as Java SE 8 is released. I believe Goetz’s talk re-emphasized Lambdas are the single most important new language feature since the introduction of generics in Java SE 5. Thankfully, Lambdas are easier to understand than the multi-variances between parameterised types on collection and the oft derided wildcard syntax.

You always get a chance to meet and greet at great conferences like Devoxx. (R) Mattias Karlsson, the organiser of JFokus conference in Sweden, and (L) Tori Wieldt, who interviewed me for the Oracle Technology News, about my recently published Java EE 7 book.

Eva Veenstra-Kazakov (R) holds a loft the quadcopter in the taming the drone presentation on the last session on the last day of Devoxx 2013.

Venkat Subramaniam had a great talk on Lambda programming, Java 8 Language Capabilities – What’s in it for you?, which you do not want missed when it appears on Parleys. The speakers talks very fast and the jokes are quick fire. He is a very entertaining speaker and a real hoot. If you want a nice positive introduction in to why we have Lambdas in JDK 8 then this talk is unmissable.

I’m now officially a supporter of the Gingerbreadmen. No it is not a famous rock band, rather we talking about the next release of Android here.

Venkat Subramaniam is just getting set up for his Java 8 Language talk

I briefly stopped by Dierk Koenig’s session where he talking about UI Engineering.

Java Client

This year’s conference at Devoxx punctuated by the Internet of Things in big way. Stephen Chin, Oracle’s JavaOne Ambassador, together with Richard Bair, showed off the latest embedded Java ME (Mobile Edition) demonstration at the Wednesday keynote. They shipped the entire chess robotics arm table over to Belgium from sunny California, including the moulded plastic pieces, which were printed on 3D printers and then etched chemically. They demonstrated the latest possibilities of the soon-to-be-released JavaFX 8 and 3D animations. For European developers, who did not have the affordance of JavaOne, this was impressive stuff. Attendance also had a chance to see up close the chess table at the Oracle booth in the exposition area.

The Java Posse Live (FL) Dick Wall and (FR) Chet Haase with Les Cast de Codeurs (L) Guillaime Laforge and (R) Emmanuel Bernard.

Gerrit Grunwald at his quickie presentation on Nashorn, Raspberry Pi and Java FX 8

Mark Reinhold talks about the perennial rise and growth of the effort to modularise the JVM. We will have compact profiles in Java SE 8 as a stop-gap to the proper solution.

The ARM processor in the Raspberry Pi is 25,000 slower in performance than this Mac Book Pro Retina machine and yet the GPU (Graphical Processor Unit) is capable of deliver full HD video. There was keynote demonstration showing a movie trailer written in Java and JavaFX running on the Pi board. So it is quite capable. Simon Ritter declared that the Arduino is more of microcontroller than a general purpose computer.

At this Devoxx, there was even a IOT (Internet of Things) shop available. Oracle showed their intent on embedded Java SE on the Raspberry Pi. In fact, on the Thursday afternoon, I did peak my head into the Java ME and Raspberry Pi lab 3 hour lab that Stephen Chin, Angela Caicedo and Simon Ritter were jointly running. It was well received.

Last and by no means least, Gerrit Grunwald had a short presentation on The Nashorn, Raspberry Pi and some JavaFX. Here he explained how JavaScript implementation, Nashorn, allowed for easier configuration and hotfix changes in a user interface without having to use SSH and redeploying an embedded application. Nashorn can be embedded into a Java application using the Scripting Engine for Java API.

Hot Stuff

Sadly, I did not get a chance to see any of the JavaScript talks. There was a morning and afternoon AngularJS talk on Tuesday university day, but I was travelling.

One of the most impression talks that i did see in its entirety was Remi Forax‘s What Java EE can learn from dynamic languages? Here was a thought provoke session on the issues of containers, injections and annotations. The sense of Forax’s talk postulated on an improvement of the invokedynamic construct being brought into Java EE and ultimately would require a language keyword change. Whilst getting rid of interceptors, injection points and the current way we have dependency injection in Java EE 7 might appear a great, I do not think it will be happen in the timeframe JDK 9. I believe this future stuff and whilst a nice idea, a dynamic construct would have far reaching consequences for library writers and median skilled developers unless also the tools also improve.

If you have never seen the JavaPosse Live then you do not know what you are missing. This year the show had a surprise French contingent, Guillaime LaForge and Emmanuel Bernard, who produce the audio podcast, Les Cast de Codeurs. Sadly this talk conflicted with the CDI Extensions session with Jason Porter, which I am assured was also very good for Java EE 7 developers.

Probably the most dramatic talk, appeared on the last session of the last day. Taming the Taming Drones: How Java Controls the Uprising of the Drone Force by the Eva Veenstra-Kazakov and Timon Veenstra. They wrote an embedded Java interface to Parrot A R Drone 2.0, which costs about 650 Euros to automatously flying around farms and gather essential agricultural data on the health, growth and sustenance of crops and fields. The drone was controlled by basic WIFI, and two speakers demonstrated the quad-coptor inside the session. A couple of lucky attendees even had a chance to fly the drone. The software was based on JFXtras and heavily made fabulous use of Gerrit’s gauge components.

Here, Josh Sureth, of TypeSafe Inc, is talking about reactive programming in Java with examples in Scala and Play Framework

The Next Step

Everyone knows by now that Modularity for Java Runtime will be arrive in 2015-2016 with Java 9. We all have to wait until then for proper break up the JRE. The next step for Java 8 is a set of structured profiles: compact one, two, three and four, reaching just 11MB in size to the full JRE of about 56MB in Java 8. Mark Reinhold gave these figures in his talk about modularity and the JVM.
Modularity has taken so long, because the team attempted to solve the transient dependency problem, which is a very hard problem as well as divide up the JDK into parts. However, work has progressed such in that we will soon be able compose our own custom JRE and then also deliver application that only elements that we need. By Java 9 we can get rid of CORBA and we can chuck the IBM java.util.Date and hopefully, fingers crossed, java.util.Calendar implementation. Now that is a good thing.

The End

Devoxx 2013 was great and the content was up to the high levels again. This is despite that is only room for 200 speaker slot sessions and they are fiercely fought over. At this point in time, JavaOne is a bit easier to submit a presentation to. I certainly found Devoxx useful to see the progression of Java EE 7, and I actually did sign my book properly for some folk. It’s also great to come out on the other side of the needle. See you next year, 2014.

James Ward speaking about webjars

I’m fulfilling a regular duty at Devoxx of recording the European Java User Group Leaders BOF. I used to run the JAVAWUG from 2004 to 2010, so it has been something of a tradition.

The Shout Outs

In no particular order, here are the shout-outs of Devoxx 2013:

• Heather Vancura
• Amelia Eiras
• David Blevins
• Jacek Laskowski ‏
• Simon Bordet
• Ivan Stefanov
• Roberto António Cortez‏
• Yara Sanger
• Victor Gamov
• Hildeberto Mendonca‏
• Rabea Gransberger
• David Delabassee
• Vinicius Senger
• Stephan Janssen
• Martijn Verburg
• Dan Allen
• António Gonçalves
• Arun Gupta
• Daniel Bryant
• Agnes Crepet
• Constantin Partac
• Samuel Santos
• Dominik Dorn
• Justin Lee
• Josh Sureth
• Stuart Marks
• Andres Almiray
• Josh Suereth
• Richard Warburton
• Chet Haase
• Stephen Chin
• Dick Wall
• Johan Vos
• Jo Voreendecker
• Bartosz Majsak
• Aslak Knutsen
• Regina Ten Bruggencate
• Venkat Subramaniam
• Jim Weaver
• Gerrit Grunwald
• Mark Reinhold
• Brian Goetz
• Simon Ritter
• Tasha Carl
• Guillaume Laforge

Club Noxx and Clojure mixing jam playing all of the dance music!

I am wearing the Devoxx 2013 conference wrist band.

+PP+ (;-)

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