SWAINE'S CAFE

Black. No Sugar. Extra Caffeine.

March 2007

At last week's Software Development West, Java fared well. The Jolt Award winner in the category of Development Environments was the NetBeans IDE, and Sun took home the Website and Developer Networks Jolt Award for its Sun Developer Network.

Other Java Award winners reflect what's hot in software development today: being virtual, being agile, being on the internets. Ajax- and Soap-related products cleaned up. The full list of Jolt and Productivity Award winners recognized some up-and-coming languages, too: Ruby, Python, C++. C++, hmm. Oh, for Symbian.

Anyway, apparently Java's still hot. In case you were wondering if Sun was getting distracted.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 03:43 PM  Permalink |

While most of us here are focused on Software Development West this week, we aren't forgetting that JavaOne is fast approaching.

JavaOne in San Francisco May 8 to 11 is the big Java conference of the year. The day before JavaOne starts, there's a related event of some importance for many Java developers: NetBeans Day. It's free for anyone who wants to attend, even if, for some odd reason, you aren't signed up for JavaOne.

And they really mean free. Including food and drinks. Apparently there still is such a thing as a free lunch. I know Netbeans was founded as a Czech company, but didn't the Czechs all turn into dedicated capitalists in 1989? Still, as a journalist I never question a free lunch. I just hope it's not beans.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 01:10 PM  Permalink |

The DST crisis, which was supposed to be a sort of reduced-size clone of the Y2K crisis, will be played by Vern Troyer.

Y2K was itself a bit of a fizzle as a threat to Western Civilization, so maybe it's appropriate that mini-Y2K appears to be a mini-fizzle. At least that's what the early returns show. Your Mileage May Vary.

As of the posting of this blog entry, it was unclear whether the Daylight Saving Time crisis would delay the planned Monday launch of Sun's new and improved Java Community Process site. That launch is probably highly susceptible to crises, having been delayed several time in the past week.

Or was I not supposed to say that?

I put it down to a twitchy finger on the press release trigger.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 05:30 PM  Permalink |

Spring forward, fall back. Got that. But has your Java got it?

I, for one, will be tweaking some coding on the night of March 10 to ensure that my Java runs correctly on March 11, when Daylight Saving Time goes into effect in many locations this year. But I didn't come here to discuss the settings on my coffeepot.

As you doubtless know, Daylight Saving Time comes earlier this year, and some Java code out in the wild doesn't know that. Sun has an extensive FAQ on DST, plus an overview.

The complexities of local time are so peculiar that one is tempted to go all Rodney King on how we all ought to just use GMT. Of course, even that standard hasn't always been universally accepted

Maybe we should ask the people who publish TV schedules how they manage the DST transition. As Homer Tilton pointed out five years ago, some of these folks somehow manage to publish a program schedule that smooths over the fall or spring time-slip as though it didn't exist. Wonder what their trick is?

Posted by Mike Swaine at 06:05 PM  Permalink |