October2004

Jason Raymond Chair, attendance ~ 40
Presentation - Wilhelm Fitzpatrick on Generics in Java 5.0

Pre-talk-talk

Upcoming meetings:

• JDO Night
• Sun Presentation on Java 5.0
• Craig McClanahan on Java Sun Studio Creator
• Possible member presentation on JBuilder
• members, we would like to hear about your interesting Java experiences

• The Platform - downtown Seattle is looking for J2EE dev to work in digital media content presentation
• Mobliss - looking for J2ME, J2EE, JBoss developers
• A6 - hiring Swing and Web Application dev
• Duwango - seeking mobile gaming, ringtones development

• About four members
• Check the postings to seajug_jobs where volume has been good in the last few months

The new features of Java 5 dominated the early discussion. Topics ranged from variable args (new in 5.0), the Google Desktop, and the relative speed improvements experienced in Java 5 (a good benchmarking link can be found at http://www.shudo.net/jit/perf/). Wilhelm asked the group about unexpected behavior experienced in dealing with Resource (re-)loading. One member announced a new co-location project (Rimu), which was started as a community based co-operative. Jason brougth about 20 pounds of recent publications as give-aways (ed JR, please find a less time consuming method to gift these) The recommendation of contacting publishers for offerings to be used in book reviews, has paid good dividends, and look for more community development along these lines.

Presentation-Generics in Java 5

Java 5 marks the first release to introduce major changes to language constructs, chief among these is the use of parameterized classes and methods, or Generics. Wilhelm Fitzpatrick brought the group up to speed on the programming body of Generics. The presentation introduced us to the spectrum of languages which rely on static and runtime type checking. Since Generics only live at compile time, they offer another tool for the developer to better document intention, allowing the compiler to discern deeper semantics than Object base generification.

The group was skeptical of adding the archetypical parameter constructs that are employed in generics i.e. <T,V,K> which are easy to spot, but less descriptive than generally accepted practice. Concerns were raised about being able to isolate legacy Java from the strong type checking offered in Java 5.

The finer points of strong compile time type checking brought murmurs of disbelief; really, it sounded as though we had just heard the world was no longer flat.

Presentation slides: Java-Generics-Without-Fear.pdf ( missing!)

Sun's tutorial on Java Generics can be found at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/pdf/generics-tutorial.pdf

Angelika Langer's Generics FAQ -- the definitive resource on Generics in Java can be found at http://www.langer.camelot.de/GenericsFAQ/JavaGenericsFAQ.html