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Congratulations to Bob, Cedric, Romain, and the many many engineers that worked on Android.

Today the Android SDK was released, and along with it a raft of video content and documentation.

For all intents and purposes for developers Android == the SDK right now (until killer phones ship in short order). The development experience for Java programmers will be a dream, and I really like the architecture. They have really learned that declarative markup for UI is a Good Thing &tm;.

If you want to get a high level look at what this is about, I would start off by seeing what the phone can do:

Then, if you want to write some code, start by watching Dan build a simple application on Android and then delve deep into the Androidology that shows you the full architecture. Learn what .dex files are. See how cool Intents are. Check out the markup.

devphone.com: phones are decent now

I am really excited to see the bar being pushed by Apple, Google, and other players out there. You know that when the iPhone came out, Nokia had a lot of meetings and engineers got a better budget for doing innovative processes on their phones. With Android pushing the bar too, in a different way, I think that we can safely say that the phone that we hold in a year or two is going to be amazing.

I am quite astounded at how little Emily uses her laptop since she got an iPhone (apart from Scrabulous. She uses her laptop for her scrabble addiction.). You can see the future today by visiting Europe and Asia. Ben and I were so excited about this, that we went looking for a community to rally this excitement, kinda like Ajaxian for mobile. We were surprised that we couldn’t find it. It seems like most developers hang out in the forums and such of the various platforms. Since we are interested in development that transcends one implementation, we decided to start devphone as a place to throw all of the ideas into. It just launched and is very raw, so who knows what will come of it. Check out our welcome, an interview with Joe Hewitt, and subscribe to the feed

I just posted about the Sun announcement on Java Applets 2.0 (even if the PR folk kept telling us it was an “update” not an “announcement”).

The web community tends to poo poo the applet. We scoff at the startup time. We complain at the cross browser issues that went against the point. We moan at the speed. We groan at the image mouseover examples.

However, if we get off of our high horse for a minute and think about what a world where Java in the browser was actually decent, we get an interesting picture.

If the plugin could be in control of the cross browser / platform issues, then it could allow us to write rich components that work on all. We could build and register a really nice file upload component for example that takes over type=”file” to do a lot more. We could use JNLP (or something else) to register the modules, and when we get winners, could even standardize them.

If we then think about SQLite databases in the browser. We could actually use Hibernate to work with it. The JavaScript / Java bridge is already decent, and could get even easier / better.

If the Java Plugin is done well, it could become a platform to build on. This is a big if though, and there is the spectre of Java 1.x in IE looming out there. Is there a way to get around that though?


// beginning of the plugin simply does
if ie and freaking old Java 1.x
run the installer
end


As I think about this, Gears and Java could actually do some interesting work together.

I was really glad to hear that my ruby in the browser toy is probably going to happen for real shortly.

When we interviewed Ken Russell of Sun he talked about how JNLP will be supported in Applets, so you could write a JNLP extension for JRuby, and have every Ruby app just use it. No more mega download all the time.

Just as long as I don’t have to learn JavaFX Script ;)

IntelliJ 7 has now shipped and I am most excited to see the non-Java support. If you take a peak at the Ruby features, it looks pretty good and thorough:

• Smart, scope based JRuby-aware Ruby code completion
• Automatic completion of built-in methods
• Smart Ruby statements completion
• Completion and automatic resolution in require and load calls
• Ruby code syntax and error highlighting, with brace matching and folding
• Code style support with automatic formatting, indentation and TODO marks
• On-the-fly Ruby code analysis with quick-fixes
• JRuby and Ruby-aware intention actions
• Advanced Ruby code and project navigation
• Ruby-aware structure view, quick structure popup
• Go to Ruby class, file, symbol and declaration actions
• Quick declaration view, context and method parameter info
• Quick overriding of classes, modules and methods with active navigation gutters
• Multiple ruby-aware refactorings
• Ruby code usage search for local variables, method parameters, class fields and constants
• Dedicated Ruby run configuration and quick script execution
• JRuby support for running Ruby applications, with cross-resolution of classes between Ruby and Java
• Unit testing support with quick tests launching for a specified method, class or set of tests
• Stack trace analysis with one-click Ruby code navigation
• Ruby code documentation lookup with hyperlinks and navigation
• More than 50 Ruby and RSpec live templates
• Shortcuts settings for rake tasks, generators, RSpec, etc

I like Textmate and all, but it is far from being IntelliJ. Textmate is fast, clean, and simple. IntelliJ is smart. Netbeans has done a great job with Ruby support, and it is fantastic to see IntelliJ put its hat in the ring. I am looking forward to putting it through its paces. As much as I like IntelliJ, I have to admit that sometimes I wish that I still have version 3 around…. which was lean and mean. Hopefully the performance improvements are real in v7.

Paul Hammant has been involved in a ton of fantastic open source projects, and some cool toys too. Thicky was a toy that I would often show off when I was doing the Groovy thing. Building prototypes of Swing apps with a nice builder API was great.

Now he is having a bash on the web, and has written up his thoughts on SWeb 3.0 which gratuitously joins the Web 3.0 debate although it isn’t some drivel about how “Web 3.0 will include even MORE participation ….”.

Paul has joined up to make Swiby happen:

With Swiby the pages, should be shipped from the server side web frameworks like those today (Ruby on Rails, or Waffle), and executed in the browser via that plugin. All of these will be possible:

• AJAX-like behavior
• lazy loading of hidden tabs, or sections of a page
• threaded / timed events
• client side object storage more sophistcated that the current browser cookie
• amazingly rich interfaces (YouTube, GMail, Writely should be easy to do)
• equivalent of CSS for properties of widgets
• server side decoration a la Sitemesh or PhpMesh
• tiny pages, quick loading, and quick transitions from one page to another

The philosophy is that Swing has a nice component model and the cool side of the Web is the REST stuff, and a page centric world.

Paul is trying to take the best of both worlds to make it easier to build very rich apps on the Web platform.

It is a bold play, and is obviously an up hill battle against the incumbants, but I am all for more projects pushing the edges here, and I can’t wait to see more.

Ted pointed me to the Multi-Language VM proposal. Nice to see Sun continuing to grok the whole Java as a platform meme. Maybe they will change their ticker symbol to MLVM once day soon ;)

Hello world. I propose a new OpenJDK project, the Multi-Language VM, to be abbreviated “mlvm”, and to be sponsored by the HotSpot group.

This project will be open for prototyping JVM features aimed at efficiently supporting languages other than Java.

The emphasis will be on completing the existing bytecode and execution architecture with general purpose extensions, as opposed to a new feature for just one language, or adjoining an unrelated new execution model.

The emphasis will also be on work which removes “pain points” already observed by implementors of successful or influential languages, as opposed to more speculative work on unproven features or niche languages.

Virtual machines produced by this project will be standards-conforming, in that they will not change the meaning or behavior of existing Java classes and classfile formats. They may define variations or extensions of the class format, or new kinds of objects, whose meaning and behavior are beyond the scope of current Java and JVM specifications.

However, these extended codes and data structures will interoperate as much as possible with Java objects.

In addition, as a way of delimiting separate prototyping efforts, each new feature will come with a switch which turns it off, and that switch will be “off” by default. This is the approach used in the Kitchen Sink Language project.

This proposal refines and completes a partial proposal I sent earlier this year to the HotSpot project, a proposal for a “Kitchen Sink VM”. The present proposal is more specifically directed at supporting new languages (i.e., those languages which are new to the JVM).

Here are some examples of features that could be prototyped in this project, if developers were found who are willing and able:

• tail calls and tail recursion
• continuations and coroutines
• tuples and value-oriented types
• lightweight method objects
• runtime support for closures
• invokedynamic

Prototyping for JSR 292 is likely to occur as a part of this project. Note that none of the above suggested features is specific to any single language.

As the current OpenJDK Project guidelines request, please send followups to the discussion list.

Thanks very much for your attention to this matter,

– John Rose

Is it just me that finds it a touch ironic that Sun is doing a better job impressing the Ruby community, that it has ever done on the Java side?

Having DHH sit back and wax lyrically about you is about as rare as getting Hani onto your governing body. Oh, wait.

The biggest surprise at RailsConf Europe 2007 was hearing Craig McClanahan from Sun speak. Craig is the creator of Struts, the original blockbuster web framework for Java, and more recently Java Server Faces. Not exactly an obvious advocate for Ruby on Rails, but he sure played the part well.

And not just on a superficial level because Sun was a diamond sponsor of the conference, but from months of experience developing Rails applications using the latest techniques and frameworks (like pushing the envelope with Active Resource). He even went as far as to say that developing web applications in Java after working with Rails would probably not be a particularly pleasant experience for him. Wow.

…

Yet there’s still that nagging doomsday image of a mystery man sitting somewhere inside of Sun petting a black cat with a hollow laugh just waiting to reveal his evil master plan as the reason for all this. But the exceptional work and high character of people like Tim Bray, Nick Sieger, Thomas Enebo, Charles Nutter, and now even Craig McClanahan championing Ruby and Rails inside Sun, I think I’ll have to waive goodbye to the last sliver of that suspicion very soon.

Wow. Finally, Tim Bray may be pushing them towards a world where their ticker should be JVM not JAVA as their realize where the power of the platform truly lies.

Ben and I are talking Ajax at JavaZone in Norway. The jetlag hasn’t been much of an issue this time around thanks to a bit of a doze on the flight (after watching the slightly painful Mr. Bean).

I did enjoy seeing Ben’s face as he opened the door to his hotel room, which is definitely euro-style (read: absolutely tiny). You couldn’t lay down across the room.

Oslo is a beautiful town, and I hope that we get to see some of it. Last night was the speaker dinner, and some of the usual suspects were there.

This morning though, the conference started with a jolt. I have never been to a conference (Java or other) that had a cover band to a “famous” German heavy metal group playing. At 8am. Screaming BITTEEEE. You also had to enter the conference arena via a space shuttle. This show is definitely similar to JavaPolis in many ways. You can tell that the conference committee has a lot of fun with it and the show is huge. I think these beat JavaOne hands down.

I couldn’t help but take a little video:

JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet, and a brand that’s inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability). And so next week, we’re going to embrace that reality by changing our trading symbol, from SUNW to JAVA. This is a big change for us, capitalizing on the extraordinary affinity our teams have invested to build, introducing Sun to new investors, developers and consumers. Most know Java, few know Sun – we can bring the two one step closer.

Oh man, I couldn’t help laugh when I read The Rise of JAVA – The Retirement of SUNW.

It had me immediately thinking of a room of people:

• Ok, what can we do to make a difference
• Brainstorm new names for JavaFX?
• Nah, we don’t have anything else to rename yet….
• Yes we do! Let’s rename the stock ticker symbol
• YAY! WHAT VALUE WE ADD

Oh momma.

Someone just sent me this:

“I’m still laughing, too. Maybe now Jonathan can honestly say Sun has monetized Java.”

I have proclaimed several times that I miss my Gmail for Mobile experience on the iPhone.

Ed Burnette then points out that Apple sneaks Java support onto the iPhone.

They didn’t really sneak it on though, it is just on the ARM chip (although not available):

Despite public comments by Steve Jobs that