Expanded offerings at this year’s Java University
Attendees prepare for certification and improve their Java programming skills
June 4, 2001— Java University 2001 is huge. In fact, there are so many classes offered this year that the campus has been split between the Palace and Marriott Hotels. Java U. runs concurrently with the first two evenings of JavaOne; following JavaOne daytime conference sessions, you can choose among classes attended by anywhere from 20 to 200 students. On the main campus, 16 classes are offered in large venues. For the most part, Sunday’s presentations scaled well, and the speakers adjusted to the large audiences. For those who didn’t get a chance to ask their questions during class, speakers made themselves available during breaks and provided email addresses. I tried to cover as many classes as I could and attended the Sunday morning keynote address.
The warm-up and keynote
The Java University keynote kicked off at 8:00 a.m. Sunday with a short set by engineer/comedian Don McMillan, who describes himself as the only comic working in PowerPoint. He mixed comments on technology with stories about how engineers look at life. The audience concurred with his father’s dictum: “There are those who can code. Those who can’t, manage. Those who can’t manage, sell.” He also provided his own definitions of technical terms. For example, “Java, Jini, Jiro” is Latin for “I came, I coded, I conquered.” He reprised some of his material from last year but updated it with what he referred to as the J2CE (Java 2 Comedy Edition). When audience members responded to most of his jokes and quickly studied his slide on the Joke core architecture, he declared them all to be J2CE certified.
Jon Bostrom, Sun’s chief architect for wireless Java technologies, delivered the keynote address. Java technology is now available on mobile devices; the next step, Bostrom explained, is the delivery of applications to those devices. He outlined the idea of a Java service vending machine: with such a service, you will be able to locate applications of interest depending on your context. Your options might depend on who you are, where you are, what device you are using, and other factors. Clients will be able to select and purchase applications and download them to their devices over HTTP. A descriptor file will first be sent to the device so that the customer can decide whether or not to make a purchase.
At the server end, the application will be packaged with a packing list. Bostrom described this as being similar to WARs and deployment descriptor files. The difference is that instead of managing Web content, you will be able to vend Java services.
Bostrom repeated the message that there is money to be made throughout the chain. The engineers at the session, however, were more interested in hearing details about the technology. Bostrom did not provide much in this respect, though he did present some demos of the vending machine’s look and feel. He concluded by advising developers to start working on applications that would fit this model; as he put it, “A vending machine without candy bars isn’t very interesting.”
The offerings
This year, Java University has been expanded to include classes on Monday and Tuesday nights covering a wide range of topics. Choosing among so many courses presents quite a dilemma. Established classes tend to be more stable, and their instructors are much more polished. For instance, you can’t go wrong with Philip Heller’s two-day Programmer Certification Fast Path class.
The other certification classes were uneven. David Geary gave a solid preparation course for the new Web Component Developer Certification, but the exam itself is very new and will continue to be refined. Mark Cade got off to a rocky start in his Architect Certification Fast Path presentation. He skipped through material that he said everyone should know, and often replied to people’s questions about the material by saying, “Don’t worry about it, it’s not on the exam.” He was unable to provide attendees with sample questions, as they’d come to expect after taking Heller’s class, and was unwilling to discuss many of the topics in detail. He did tell attendees that the test would not be revised until January 2002, when it will include the J2EE 1.3 spec.
But JavaOne featured more than just exam preparation courses. Web developers could learn about JavaServer Pages and servlet development from Marty Hall, or hear Todd Greanier talk about using Swing to create the UI for client-side applications. Hall is a popular speaker; a lot of information from his book on JSPs found its way into his talk. Greanier also presented a session on using Java technology with XML.
Veteran presenters Kelby Zorgdrager and Simon Roberts offered a two-day course in core Java programming language concepts. Roberts, always a popular presenter, codelivered this quick jump start into Java programming. Whereas most programmer exam preparation courses assume an audience with quite a bit of experience with Java programming, this course was a whirlwind tour through the basics.
Peter Haggar’s popular course headlined the advanced developer offerings. Based on his book, Practical Java Programming Language Guide, the course focuses on advanced Java programming techniques. Haggar is a good presenter who is careful to verify his techniques before passing them on. For a more cutting edge-course, you could have taken Design Patterns Applied to the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. But while Haggar’s presentation was full of code and concrete examples, there was little more than a flyby of concepts in the Design Patterns course. To be fair, the J2EE architecture patterns are fairly new. (See Resources for additional information.)
The final course for advanced developers was a bit different. Several of the developers involved in Java Grande collaborated to give a one-day course on high-performance computing using Java. The presenters argued that Java technology is a good framework for large-scale computing, and offered evidence that Java performance has improved dramatically. Some of the issues discussed included improved floating-point performance and improvements in complex arithmetic and multidimensional arrays. It was proposed that Java be extended with the introduction of lightweight objects and operator overloading. The presenters, however, did not feel that this was likely and suggested that preprocessors such as VNI’s Zeta and IBM’s Ninja be used as translators that generate portable Java source code.
An EJB course was updated to include material on the EJB 2.0 spec. The three presenters spent time both on the technology and on the philosophy of creating reusable components for both internal use and resale. They also stressed that developers should look for existing components before creating their own. Popular author Jim Farley offered a two-night course that compared J2EE to Microsoft’s .Net architecture.
More is on the horizon for Monday and Tuesday nights, including a course on developing wireless solutions with MIDP.
