The title of this blog post is a Haiku that also has some poetic justice. In September 1992 the programming language named Oak that James Gosling created was first demonstrated on a PDA device named Star7. This device had a graphical interface and a smart agent called "Duke" to assist the user. The Oak programming language, named after the Oak tree outside of Gosling's window, was designed to be a new technology for programming next generation smart appliances.
Oak was subsequently renamed to Java, which went on to become a nearly ubiquitous language and runtime platform. Exactly twenty years after the first demonstration of Oak, tremendous focus and momentum is occuring in the Java embedded space. For example:
- JDK 7u6, released a couple of days ago, contains a general-purpose port of the JDK to Linux ARM, making it available under the same licensing terms as Oracle Java for other platforms. This JDK release is aimed at the emerging ARM server market, and for the community working on development boards such as the BeagleBoard, PandaBoard and the Raspberry Pi. This port provides 32-bit binary for ARMv6 and v7, with full support for Swing/AWT, both client (C1) and server (C2) compilers and runs on most Linux distributions. Support for JavaFX on ARM is planned for an upcoming JDK release.
- A new conference named Java Embedded @ JavaOne will provide business and technical decision makers, as well as Java embedded ecosystem partners, with a unique opportunity to meet together and learn about how they can use Java embedded technologies to enable new business strategies. This conference will occur during JavaOne 2012, and can be attended as a standalone conference, or as an add-on to the JavaOne conference. Learn more about the business session line-up.
One aspect of embedded Java that excites me is the ability to use a common language and UI toolkit to develop applications for devices, thereby drastically reducing the development and maintenance costs.
Java Embedded @ JavaOne promises to be a very exciting and useful conference, so I hope to see you there!
Regards,
James Weaver
james.weaver@oracle.com
