The Disco Blog

Napoleon Bonaparte cleverly mused long ago that

history is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Indeed, as 2008 begins to draw to a close, it’s time to start reflecting on the hip world of Java, and how over the course of this year, it may have changed for better or for worse. Because it’s my bag, a few events, occurrences, or aspects that come to mind (in no particular order, man) are

• September’s inaugural JVM Language Summit, which brought together the various language factions in an effort to ultimately learn from one another and incorporate new features in the underlying execution engine for all languages. In essence, this summit was tangible realization that Java is now more of a platform than a language.
• The release of Google’s App Engine, which includes an application environment that notably doesn’t include Java. What’s particularly interesting is a subsequent move by Sun to more formally embrace Python.
  • Google’s App Engine is also one of a growing list of cloud-like infrastructures, such as Amazon’s EC2 that more and more teams are beginning to embrace– will this trend continue?
• A general awakening to the applicability of REST. REST is by no means a new buzz word; however, this year saw JSR 311 formalize and the Restlet framework’s 1.1 release (after almost a year since its 1.0 debut). What’s more, REST articles appear to be increasing as well as related conference topics.
• Java EE 6, which had some pundits declaring “Java EE 6 gets it right“, while leaving others to deliver a collective yawn over the news.

What’s your version of 2008′s most memorable moment for the world of Java? If it’s not listed below, leave a comment and leave your record of Java’s history, baby!