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JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider
Inside views on essential and emerging Java technologies from the developers shaping the future of the Java platform.
June 23, 2008
Brian Sletten on REST done right
Brian Sletten
is a regular speaker on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour and an established expert on REST and RESTful Web application development.
In this talk with Andy Glover, Brian demystifies REST as an application protocol, not a transport protocol, and describes
the series of interactions that define REST. As he explains, REST is best used for managing information and information spaces
without revealing back-end implementation. What it is not about, he says, is hijacking the GET verb and abusing it badly.
June 10, 2008
Ted Neward on why Java developers need Scala
Scala often gets lumped in with dynamic languages like Groovy and Jython, but
in fact it is a very different creature -- a statically typed functional-object hybrid language written for the JVM. In
this talk with Andrew Glover, Ted Neward explains the difference between functional and object-oriented languages and what
you can naturally do with them. He then discusses some important domains where Java and other purely OO languages simply are
not a good fit, including concurrency and database programming -- both areas where Scala really shines. You'll also learn
about lift and some of the highlights of Scala syntax, in this discussion with the author of "The busy Java developer's guide
to Scala."
May 13, 2008
Ken Russell on making applets FAST
As lead architect of the next-generation Java Plug-in, Ken Russell
is passionate and convincing on the topic of client-side Java development and the return of the applet. In this interview
with Andrew Glover, Ken offers an engineer's perspective on the historic problems of applets. He then explains how the new
Java Plug-in has been re-written to run on a separate process from the Web browser, enabling applets to start fast, consume
the memory they need, and run without stopping or freezing the browser.
May 01, 2008
Scott Davis on GIS beyond Google Maps
When Scott Davis isn't editing AboutGroovy.com you'll find him on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour, where he is known as both
the Groovy guy and the Google Maps guy. 
Here he talks with Andrew Glover about what Google Maps has done to make geomatics, or geographic information systems, more
accessible to your average Web developer. He also discusses in-depth the options available for Java developers who require
a more sophisticated, less closed-stack GIS solution than Google Maps provides. This is an informal primer from a leading
authority on using geospatial data, Web services, and open source APIs in Java Web development.
April 03, 2008
Sebastien Arbogast on OSGi and Java modularity
Like many Java developers, Sebastien Arbogast only recently realized OSGi's tremendous potential for bringing modularity to
the Java platform. Since then he has become an OSGi enthusiast and founded 
DZone's OSGi zone. In this discussion with Andrew Glover, Sebastien succinctly introduces OSGi and explains why its contribution
to Java modularity is such good news for Java developers on the server side. He also discusses the competing Java modules
specifications (JSR 291 and JSR 277), talks about the app-server migration to OSGi, and makes a tentative prediction about
what might be coming next for this exciting technology.
February 28, 2008
John Ferguson Smart on Java Power Tools
John Ferguson Smart's long-awaited book, Java Power Tools, is due to be published by O'Reilly Media in March 2008. 
In this episode of JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider, John talks with Andrew Glover about some of the open source tools
he's most likely to use for agile development on the Java platform, including Maven 2, Subversion, Hudson, DBUnit, Selenium,
JUnit 4.4, and more. Tune in to this discussion where Andrew picks John's brain about some of the top tools for writing, testing,
measuring, documenting, and maintaining quality code in today's fast paced and competitive development world.
February 26, 2008
Ted Goddard on Ajax development with ICEfaces
In this episode of JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider, ICEfaces Senior Architect Ted Goddard 
talks with Andrew Glover about the inner workings of ICEfaces, including the framework's JSF component library, its Ajax
Push technology, how the framework handles application security, and how it compares to Google Web Toolkit for component-based
Ajax development.
January 03, 2008
Jay Zimmerman on Java application development in '08
As creator and director of the No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium Series, Jay Zimmerman is uniquely positioned to stay ahead of the curve in Java application development. In this year-end discussion with Andrew Glover, Jay addressed a wide range of questions about what Java developers were doing to manage software complexity in 2007, and which languages, frameworks, tools, and techniques could help you make Java application development fun again in 2008.
December 18, 2007
Andrew Binstock rounds up the Java IDEs
Andrew Binstock sits on the judge's panel for the prestigious Jolt awards 
and writes about enterprise development tools for InfoWorld and SD Times. In this discussion with Andrew Glover, Binstock explains the technology and market factors shaping the rapid evolution of
Java IDEs today. Find out what makes Eclipse the "800 pound gorilla" of Java IDEs, what its weaknesses are, and what the newly
released NetBeans 6 is doing to catch up. Binstock also explains the respective appeal of commercial tools like JBuilder,
JDeveloper, and IBM Rational Application Developer, and why IntelliJ IDEA is his choice for an IDE that "just works."
December 06, 2007
Bill Venners on the rise of Scala
Scala is a scalable language that blends functional and imperative programming styles in an 
object-oriented framework familiar to Java developers. In this discussion with Daniel Steinberg, Bill Venners explains why
some experienced Java programmers are unwilling to give up static-type checking, even for the productivity benefits found
in dynamic languages like Ruby and Python. He also delves into the particulars of programming with Scala, like what makes
it so scalable, how it supports code quality, and where it best fits into your Java development toolkit. Take this opportunity
to learn from a master about what's under the hood with Scala. You'll also gain deeper insight into why functional programming
is moving from margins to center for many Java developers, and why dynamic languages should not be your only functional programming
alternative.
November 20, 2007
Neal Ford on what JRuby has that Java doesn't
Neal Ford and Andrew Glover are both well respected Java developers, as well as big fans of Ruby. 
In this in-depth discussion, Ford talks about why he believes Ruby is the most powerful language you could be paid to program
with today, and explains the particular benefits of programming with JRuby. Ford also reveals why he believes Java developers
will continue to migrate to languages other than Java, even as many continue to call the Java platform home. This is an essential,
engaging discussion for those interested in learning more about JRuby and the trend toward what Ford calls polyglot programming.
November 06, 2007
Bruce Johnson on writing JavaScript in a Java IDE
Google Engineering Manager Bruce Johnson explains the steps involved in writing an Ajax application using your favorite Java IDE and Google Web Toollkit, in this talk with LinuxWorld Editor Don Marti.
November 01, 2007
Scott Davis on Groovy programming for Java guys
Scott Davis is the self-proclaimed "Java guy" who today edits aboutGroovy.com. Davis believes Groovy is "what the Java language would look like had it been written in the 21st century," and calls it a
"concise, natural" language for Java development. In this conversation with Daniel Steinberg, find out what has Davis sold
on Groovy (and Grails) and what he has to say about scripting with other dynamic languages for the Java platform, including
JRuby and Jython.
October 25, 2007
Alberto Savoia talks shop about C.R.A.P.
According to Alberto Savoia, 
80 percent of developers spend most of their career working on other people's code -- and a depressing percentage of that
code is crappy! In this engaging interview with code quality evangelist Andrew Glover, Savoia reveals the thinking behind
the C.R.A.P. metric, and explains how you can use it, in tandem with the new Crap4j plugin for Eclipse, to evaluate inherited code. Andrew also gets Alberto talking about some of the recent critique of the C.R.A.P. metric, and
how he and co-creator Bob Evans would like to see the metric evolve.
October 18, 2007
Michael Stonebraker on why row storage is obsolete
Vertica co-founder Michael Stonebraker 
recently made waves with his claim that the traditional RDBMS is a legacy system, and that row-based data storage is insufficient
to the needs of the enterprise today. In this episode of JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider, Howard Wen speaks with Dr. Stonebraker about the advantages of switching to column-oriented data storage, and also gets his
candid thoughts about the future of data management in the era of Web 2.0.
August 21, 2007
Chet Haase on maximizing Swing and Java 2D
In this first interview in JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider podcast series, Daniel Steinberg chats with Chet Haase about
rich client development using Swing and Java 2D. Listen in as Chet, a Sun Microsystems client architect, makes the case for
Java desktop applications, tackles the big issues facing Swing developers, and talks about the near future of Java development
on the client side.
Some reader favorites:
EJB fundamentals and session beans
Create a scrollable virtual desktop in Swing
Web services test code generator
Klaus Berg has recently released a test-code generator for JUnit-based Web service clients. If you're developing Web services
using Axis2 and XMLBeans this wizard could turn your JUnit test client coding into a powerful code generation process. It
also has uses for those using GUI-based testing tools like soapUI.