Reflections on JavaOne 2012 by the NetBeans Community (Part 2)

Following part 1 of this series, NetBeans community members continue discussing their highlights of JavaOne 2012, which was packed with news about NetBeans IDE as Oracle's IDE for the Java Platform.

Thomas Kruse, Germany. JavaOne 2012 felt very special. I first felt this when I saw slides mentioning NetBeans IDE alongside of the JDK Roadmap during the JUG leader's brunch. (These were later shown as part of the keynotes as well!)

Besides showing the commitment of Oracle to projects I have particular interest in (NetBeans IDE, Glassfish), I got a better understanding of the roadmap and how the product offerings complement each other. Getting more confidence in a long term future, I will certainly invest more resources myself in learning and sharing of NetBeans and Java technology. I especially liked developers and Oracle staff in person, discussing the challenges of HTML5 applications and the solutions that will be offered by NetBeans IDE 7.3

Mark Stephens, UK. As a regular attendee of JavaOne, 2012 was the most exciting conference for years—lots of promises delivered and a buzz and confidence back in the Java world. 

Still work to do, but Java is alive, flourishing and runs on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a super-computer. And NetBeans IDE is very much at the heart of this. Maybe what was most impressive from a NetBeans stance was how much NetBeans showed up in the 'non-NetBeans' sessions/talks. And how the NetBeans development team were more interested in discussing what they still wanted to achieve (memory usage please guys!) rather than just resting on their laurels.

Michael Nascimento, Brazil. JavaOne is getting back on track. After a couple of disappointing editions starting with the transition, we finally had the great technical content we used to have.

Now that the JCP has finally started to move on and OpenJDK is being supported by several players and some community members, Java is finally moving forward. JSR-310 which I originally submitted with Stephen and is now being co-lead by Oracle was mentioned on the keynote, so we really saw how much Oracle is committed to delivering it into Java SE 8. Lambda will also change the way the design Java application and APIs, especially due to default methods. Lots of focus was given on the community, with SouJava and London Java Community being mentioned time after time and several of its members delivering talks and participating in the keynotes.

Regarding NetBeans, it is good to be at JavaOne and not being afraid of hearing it will be discontinued or become a community initiative with no support from Oracle. Rather, it was the opposite: it was very clear NetBeans is the official IDE for Java development, supporting the latest Java language and library features as they are being developed. It was featured in the technical keynote and several people, even James Gosling, would naturally use it in their presentations. This means NetBeans got so pervasive people are not surprised as in years ago, when they would ask: Do you use NetBeans for real code? I am honored to use the same IDE as the father of Java uses for daily coding. 

This JavaOne edition and some experience I had with two great teams during this year (I now work for TecSinapse after working for 9 years at Summa) shows that now that NetBeans is the common choice of several good developers, we need to start showing in which areas it excels when compared to others. It always amazes people when they see how much smarter the editor is compared to their IDE of choice, reacting to changes in a "for each" template, for instance, changing the type on the left as the expression on the right is changed. 

I am now looking forward to JavaOne Latin America which I only attended when it took place the first time in Brazil, since at that time it seemed it would be as disappointing as some previous JavaOne editions. This edition will probably be the best so far. I hope I can make it to JavaOne 2013 - both of them.

David Heffelfinger, USA. This JavaOne, like the previous ones I have attended, sometimes felt like drinking water out of a fire hydrant. So much information in so little time, so many ideas to try when you get back home. There were so many impressive demos, I'm still drooling about the "angry bids" demo during the technical keynote, showcasing NetBeans IDE Project Easel and the Java EE 7 WebSocket API.

This year I had the honor and pleasure of being a speaker at the NetBeans Day, talking about NetBeans and Java EE, as well as during the main conference, taking about JSF development with NetBeans. Both sessions were well attended and well received. Interest in NetBeans and Java EE was high, after my talks I had attendees stopping me in the hallways, asking for more information about Java EE development with NetBeans. I was glad to be able to spread the word and let others know that, like one of the reviewers of my NetBeans book said, "NetBeans and Java EE make a lethal combination".

Michel Graciano, Brazil. The feeling I had during JavaOne was that the community around Java technology is stronger than I had realized. We can see this when we see a lot of languages running on the JVM as well the JVM running on new environments and the community engagement around these new, or not so new, environments and languages is stronger than before. We can see even different technologies as robots or other physical/embedded stuff which wasn't so common at Java events years ago, and most people, if not everyone, are really excited about all these.

It is worth highlighting that almost everything shown during the conference, from big corporations to simple projects, are open source or work really close to open source communities, which demonstrates that people are really willing to share and contribute code and ideas in more open ways.

Another important aspect of JavaOne is that not every conference has so many highly skilled people, which make the presentations, conversations and discussions really interesting. It was an amazing experience to see it on site and I hope to be there next year again!

Thanks all and watch this space because there'll be more articles such as this one in the coming weeks, highlighting the insights that NetBeans community members gathered from their attendance at JavaOne 2012!

Click here to jump to part 3!