DonaldOJDK Blog

I saw a few comments about the OpenJDK Interview I did in the most recent Java magazine, and some concern friends raised that it’s a “register to read” publication.  I highly recommend Java magazine to anyone in the Java Community, and we’re looking for ways to make it easier to get, so stay tuned if this really puts you off.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in just the OpenJDK interview section of the most recent edition, you can get it – no registration required – here: OpenJDK Interview in Java Magazine.  And as always, follow @Java on twitter to keep up on various tidbits in the Java ecosystem.

- Don

Today marks the end of exactly one year since I started back at Oracle, working on OpenJDK and other things.  It’s been a heck of a year, and a lot has changed.  Many things I thought would be hard, turned out to be easy.  Unfortunately, many things I thought would be easy, are still in progress.

Here’s a really quick summary on some of the high/lowlights of my first year:

• Working with Dalibor is a pleasure.  As a manager, my key responsibility to Dalibor is to make sure he doesn’t burn out – which is a challenge, because he’s maniacal about the Java community.
• I was blessed to have Cecilia join the team a couple months ago.  She’s brings a lot of development experience from running JRockit sustaining engineering and is going to be instrumental over the coming months in making OpenJDK build/test/qa more accessible and understandable to OpenJDK participants.  It’s an area I unfortunately neglected from a PM perspective over my first several months, and am so glad to have Cecilia able to help.
• I personally wish I had more time to do technical and speaking type engagements.  I managed to do about a dozen or so events, JUGS, conferences this past year, and even got to write some code (!) and talk about what’s new in Java 7.  Unfortunately, though, I tend to be doing more internally focused activities – including closing up some loose ends from the SUN days.  It’s actually a lot of fun though, as I’m working with a diverse team who are all keen to keep moving the ball forward, and trying to pickup the pace.  The phrases “technical debt” and “process debt” comes up a lot.  And I’m getting to work with and meet all kinds of interesting people and companies that are keen to keep ramping up their participation.  So, it’s not all hum-drum.
• I underestimated the scale and momentum of the Java platform.  My whole technical career has been focused on “Enterprise Java” and “Tools”, so I thought I knew all there was to know about Java.  HA!  Java is in more geo’s than I ever imagined, and there are some amazing niches in all kinds of componentry that I had never heard of.
• I underestimated the legacy of Java.  This actually leads to one of the areas we’re struggling – opening up the infrastructure in OpenJDK.  When I joined last May, I had expected the bug tracking system to be migrated to JIRA in ‘a few months’.  Unfortunately, it’ll still be a few months.  It’s easy to underestimate the effort, until you experience the history.  The Java code base is starting to get onto twenty years.  Thousands of developers have touched the code base in that time.  Millions of developers have used the code, and billions of desktops, servers and devices are executing the code.  When you have that level of inertia, it’s really a challenge.  Everyone agrees in the direction!  But it’s like trying to steer a battleship – it takes a wide berth.

- Don

Volker Simonis, from SAP, posted to the OpenJDK-Discuss mailing list yesterday a proposal to start a project for PowerPC ports (AIX/Linux) in OpenJDK, driven jointly with IBM.  I think the technical and community benefits of this are self evident – but I want to highlight a side point.

This is a great example of diversity in action.  I am not a fan of diversity for the sake of it, but I am a fan of diversity that happens naturally as a symptom of a healthy ecosystem.  I believe that healthy ecosystems have three characteristics: Productivity, Robustness and Niche Creation – and in many ways, this project is an example of all three.  For more on this area from an academic perspective, check out the reference in a blog I wrote back in 2006 (and don’t be cheap, the $6 for the references paper is worth it )

Hopefully we will continue to see more of this.  One of the risks, though, is that we need to push harder on the infra.  We’re well aware of some of the areas we need to catch up (i.e., bug db), and have a wish list a mile long.

- Don

At EclipseCon Europe 2011 today, I presented a talk highlighting 55 New Features in Java 7.  I proposed this session because of a good ribbing from some friends that “Java 7 only had a couple new things”, yet I know the actual change set is much more substantial.  So, I had 55 minutes and (more or less) took a minute to introduce 55 new things.  I’m glad we did this talk, as there were almost 150 people in attendance!

You can see the slide by clicking the link above.  You should know that much of the information came from the Java 7 Adoption Guide produced by our tireless documentation team.  You can look there for more information on those, and many other new features.

If you happen to still be at EclipseCon and reading this, please don’t forget to drop by the booth and pick up your free Duke Plushie Keyring!

- Don