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Coding the Architecture RSS feed for Simon Brown [Coding the Architecture] As mentioned before, we were speakers at, and community sponsors of the Software Architect 2008 conference (3rd-5th June 2008, London). This is the first dedicated software architecture conference that I've been to and the majority of the ...

Geeking out

PowerBooks make an appearance at the London Java Meetup (again)

Popped along to the London Java Meetup last night, which took place at Smiths of Smithfield in Farringdon. I used to work in this area for a couple of years (our office was just opposite the market) and it was nice being back on a warm summer evening. It's kind of sandwiched between the West End and the City, being fairly chilled out as a result.

Anyway, it was a good night. Turnout was pretty good, with a nice mix of regulars and newbies. Some interesting discussion (over a beer, of course) about Java 5 and how it's still not been adopted by many companies. We're getting there, but it's hard to upgrade when you're running an application server that is only supported under earlier JVMs. Jez had the Java 5 in a Nutshell guide with him, which we agreed was now one damn large nut! At over 1000 pages it's huge. Somebody commented that J2EE was complex, at which point I replied, "have you seen the size of the Java API!".

Other than that, there was just lots of chatting about random technical (and non-technical) stuff. Unsurprisingly, some laptops made an appearance, started by Jez getting out his PowerBook to demo Chuckie Egg (written in Java 2D).

Geeking out at the London Java Meetup

Sometime later and another appeared! I resisted making it a trio. :-)

Geeking out at the London Java Meetup

Thanks for a good night guys - see you next month.

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Responses[7] RSS feed for responses to this blog entry
Posted by Simon Brown on 10 August 2005 14:10:10 BST #


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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Edward on 10 August 2005 14:47:17 BST #
I'm disappointed that I missed it :-( I was doing other things though.
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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Erik Weibust on 10 August 2005 17:34:52 BST #
I couldn't agree more with you on the size of Java 1.5. I really think Sun is making a HUGE mistake by throwing all the crap they have into the SDK. I think it scares people away. I'd like to see J2SE split into a basic and a "extension" (first thing that came to mind). Make the basic SDK real small, maybe only include java.lang, and java.util. What do you think?
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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Tom Hawtin on 10 August 2005 21:42:46 BST #
Not much more than cut down java.lang and java.util. You mean like J2ME?
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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Simon Brown on 10 August 2005 23:04:06 BST #
I think cutting down the JDK is a double-edged sword. On the one side, you reduce the size and complexity. On the other, the JDK loses the ability to "do anything and everything" by default.

I think what would be interesting is to build a tool that you can run over a codebase, giving you metrics about how much (and which packages) of the JDK you are actually using. This would be fascinating if you could get these figures off lots of projects, both open source and commercial. Anybody willing to guess how much of the JDK they are using? 10, 20, 30%?
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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Erik Weibust on 11 August 2005 05:34:50 BST #
that's a great question, simon. i gotta believe there is something that gives those numbers. if not, i see a very popular OS project in the making... erik
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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Mark Gordon on 11 August 2005 22:53:51 BST #
"Smiths of Smithfield in Farringdon" Boy you make me pine for London. So many miles away from the USA.

I use to work near Smithfield for a company called LevelSeas. I believe you may have had a brief association with the company, when you were commissioned to look into the possibility of changing our SilverStream driven site to a pure J2EE one.

Nice clean website you have here.
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Re: Geeking out

Comment from Simon Brown on 11 August 2005 23:08:59 BST #
Thanks! LevelSeas, yes, I did a few days with you when I worked at Concise (the other side of the market). The thing I like about SOS is that they have a pretty good selection of beers from around the world. Shame they're so pricey!

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