Although Java started life targeted at desktops, its popularity has really grown to dominate the server and subsequently cloud spaces. Many people would dismiss Java on the desktop, but you would be surprised at the number of people and organisations still using it. The reality of “Write once, run anywhere” dramatically simplifies the deployment of…
TechRepublic recently published an article about languages that developers love and those that they hate. This produced an interesting set of results since Java was the third most loved language as well as the second most hated. Clearly, Java, as a language, polarises opinion. When I tweeted about this, I got one reply which quoted…
There was an interesting discussion on the Java Champions alias recently under the title, “Fear of Java”. The initial post was related to a University faculty that was evaluating which version of Java to use. Given the issue that it brought up, I thought it was worth discussing in a blog post. I’ll quote…
It occurred to me recently that I had just passed a substantial milestone in my career. I started working for Sun Microsystems in February 1996 but, at that time, with Java being so new my role was to help drive adoption of Solaris on Intel with major ISVs like Oracle, Informix and Lotus Notes (hands…
Four big things are happening in April 2019 that I can think of right now: On the 25th we have the release of Avengers: Endgame. For anyone who’s a Marvel fan, this is big news, especially the way that Avengers: Infinity War ended. I think it’s going to take some pretty creative writing to get…
I’ve written several blog posts that list out all the changes for each of the most recent releases of Java (JDK 10, JDK 11). With JDK 12 just having been released, it seemed the obvious thing to produce another blog in this series. I’ll be doing the flip side of this later, which is the…
Around the middle of the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the metal movable-type printing press. I think it would be easy to argue that this was one of the most significant inventions in history for enabling widespread access to information; something today we take very much for granted. The metal type pieces of Gutenberg’s press…
Last month was of particular significance to both Java developers and users. The reason was the release of update 202 of Oracle JDK 8, which was the final public update (for commercial users) of JDK 8 from Oracle. Users now need to think carefully about their strategy for updating the Java runtime in the future….
Last week was the annual Jfokus conference held, as usual, at the Waterfront Conference Centre in Stockholm. Looking at the Jfokus archives, the conference started back in 2007 and attracted about 450 people (an impressive achievement for a new conference). This year was the thirteenth edition, and there were over 2,000 people in attendance. When…
Happy New Year everyone! For the last two years, I’ve started with a blog post (2017 link, 2018 link) giving my predictions for what will happen in the world of Java in the next twelve months. I saw no reason not to start this year in the same way. Overall, from a technical perspective, I…
I’ve been in the IT industry for quite along time now. In fact, if you count from when I first started working as a programmer during my degree, it’s a little over 34 years. During that time I’ve seen quite a few changes, one of which is how much space it takes to install an…
When Java was first launched, in 1995, the thing that made it really stand out was its ability to add an animation to a web page (good old tumbling Duke). Thinking about how we interact with devices today makes that sound ridiculous but, for those of us old enough to remember this, it was something…
