TSSJS Recap
The Caucho team just got back from Las Vegas for TSSJS and we had a great time. TSSJS is a really good conference to attend, especially from the point of view of a company like Caucho, because there is a real developer focus. The people there build real server-side applications and know what they’re doing. There were a number of questions about Resin, our own Reza Rahman gave several talks (including a keynote on Resin), and I got to see some interesting presentations from a wide variety of speakers.
One of the hottest topics this year was JavaEE 6. Not counting Reza’s talks on the subject, James Gosling focused on the new standard heavily in his keynote. I think this tweet from @ligolnik sums it up, “Java EE 6 does not feel like a big cludge anymore, a lot of things are elegant and simple”. CDI is responsible for a large part of that. Talking to Roberto Chinnici at our both, he’s very positive about the standard and views it as one of the most interesting and important features of Java EE 6.
One of the talks that struck me the most was Rod Johnson’s Spring keynote where he presented a live demo of the new Spring Roo framework. It was a pure code presentation that broke from many of the past talks I’ve seen him give in which he simply railed against Java EE. I’m glad to see that we’re back to a positive technical discussion that presents a position and then lets developers make their own choices. As far as the presentation itself, Roo is clearly inspired by Rails/Grails, but targets Java development. There was mixed reaction based on the preferences of the individual developers, but I think these CoC frameworks have a place in the landscape. I predict a similar set of tools will emerge for Java EE 6 soon, if it hasn’t already.
Overall it was a great conference and we appreciate everyone who came by to ask questions, tell us success stories, and attend Reza and Steve’s talks.