techno.blog("Dion")

This morning, one of the Microsoft head honchos had a high level conversation with the crowd, where he explained that:

Microsoft is a software company.

Microsoft lives to make Windows the most compelling platform.

A lot of the crowd didn’t get this. There was a lot of talk about open sourcing Windows (huh?), and porting the CLR to other platforms. They aren’t in that business. It isn’t going to happen. Mono is out there, and MSFT are watching it, and they think that it is cool the Miguel and company think .NET is cool, but that is it for now.

Since MSFT is all about Windows, they are very interested in making Java more compelling on the Windows platform. I think they are hoping that the check to Sun will help them in this regard.

I would love to see a windows.* or com.microsoft.* package which allows me to do the cool low level things that I can do in the CLR. What about Indigo from Java? Avalon with Java? etc etc.

Who knows what will be allowed here, but I would be happy to see this support, from a pragmatic perspective.

Obviously, there is an interesting tension between Microsoft wanting you to run Java on Windows, and Sun wanting to have Java as a platform to allow you to work on other areas.

Read Matt Raible’s blog for the details, but in a nutshell what we learned from the technology summit today was:

• “If I could wave a magic wand we would all just use Ruby”, Don Box.
• Schema Sucks. RelaxNG is the way to go, Don Box.
• We are “sucking less”, Everyone.
• security, security, security. It is the #1 priority now. Honest.

In all seriousness, it was a very interesting day.

The old chestnut of “Java vs. .NET” has reared its head again (e.g. Java vs. Microsoft .Net debate rages).

I actually wished that one of the instant audience polls would have been:

How would like like TheServerSide to include other technologies outside of Java?

• Only Java Tech please! This is your niche! Have a TSS.NET conference for that stuff
• Other fringe tech, but from the point of view of an enterprise Java guy
• I have to work in a heterogenous environment, so would love a hard core .NET track. Besides. I don’t have to go :)

The reason I mention this, is that I think the community has chilled out from the days of “oh man, I hope .NET doesn’t take over!”.

Now, several years have passed, and J2EE is doing fine. .NET is doing fine too. We can live in harmony ;)

These days, a lot of developers work in the world of both Java and .NET. In fact, what does it even mean to be an “enterprise Java developer”.

Why, just today I wrote SQL, Java, JavaScript, ruby, Groovy, bash, and had to look at XML. Hardly Java only :)

Now the politics has died down, I think there is a lot to gain by having a conference where the camps mix. I enjoyed my time at MS Tech Ed last year, and learnt a few things.

Are we ready?

I have a fun and busy couple of weeks coming up:

TheServerSide Symposium

This week I will be in Vegas for the 3rd TSS Symposium. It is always a pleasure to see everyone, have some good geek talk, and some drinks ;)

I am going to be presenting on AJaX technology, Groovy, and may even be on a panel ;)

Microsoft Developer Technology Summit

I am really looking forward to the Microsoft summit, with the likes of Matt Raible, Ben Galbraith, and everyone else. It will be really interesting to see what Microsoft has to say to us, how they pitch it, etc. I am going to soak up having the time to spend looking at Indigo and the like.

I was even going to see if Don would like to bring in his kids to do some Ruby, but I guess now It’s down to Scheme or Logo :)

AOSD

AOSD is in Chicago this year, which is nicely down the road. I will be chairing a panel, and spending time with great guys to discuss libraries for AspectJ 5, which I am really excited about.

All, in all, a great few weeks! I hope to see some of you there!

Bill Gates to Receive Honorary UK Knighthood.

This was brought to my attention from a friend IM’ing me:

Lloyd: man they give that crap to anyone.

Of course, we won’t call him ‘Sir’ since he isn’t a brit. Although, if he gave enough money I am sure the monarchy would change that rule ;)