I will be speaking at Jazoon next week. This will be a brand new presentation called “A quick guide to modern languages and interesting concepts for the busy Java programmer”.
Here is the description:
A lot of new languages have emerged to challenge Java these past years: Ruby,
Scala, Groovy, Erlang, etc… Can Java survive? In this presentation, I will do
a quick analysis of these various languages and explain why, despite its old
age, Java is in the best position to face the challenges that await software
developers for the next decade. I will cover topics such as dynamic and duck
typing, functional programming, concurrency, distribution and much more.
As you can see, the topic is very broad and the main challenge will be to keep the presentation within the allotted time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to carry on the discussion over beers or dinner.
See you all in Zurich.
#1 by Gabriel K. on June 19, 2008 - 11:58 pm
Have a good trip in Switzerland!
Will you see some football matches? ;-))
More seriously, will your conference be available after Jazoon?
#2 by Anton on June 20, 2008 - 11:21 pm
Hi! I’m Looking forward for this session! See you there! 🙂
#3 by Igor on July 2, 2008 - 9:01 am
Cedric,
I’m trying to organize an ALT.Dev “patterns, practices, tools and agile” open spaces conference in Boston (next spring) of a kind that was never done before – how about combining Alt.Net and Java architects and developers to talk about these topics? All in all – we do the same things and there is no reason to have 2 fighting camps.
Will you be interested in participating in such an event? Shoot me an e-mail for more details (I don’t have your direct e-mail).
#4 by Anonymous on July 7, 2008 - 3:29 am
Cedric,
Having read your presentation I am (still) not convinced Java is future proof.
The multi-core trend is not going to stop and with the current setup of Java (C# too for that matter) it is very, very tricky to implement multithreading in a precise and correct manner. Java applications will soon consume 1% of the available processor power (when a CPU contains 1000 cores or more – which it actually will do in a forseeable future). Google for “the free lunch is over” for a very explainatory article by Herb Sutter on this topic.
Erlang, for example, has parallelism built into the language itself. It is much easier to implement applications that are safe to run in an parallel environment in such a language.
Since Java (and C# and others) have been constructured in a way that allows the programmer to code in a non-safe way, or at least very difficult way, (considering parallel execution) I feel that this will open up the way for other contenders in the programming languages market.
I am not saying Java will die an instant death. I agree with that there is a huge ecosystem for Java out there. I am just saying that the Java community (which I am a part of) must wake up an smell the coffee (no pun intended).
What are your thoughts on this?