JavaOne 2022: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Okay, this title is total clickbait. It was all good, except I did have to leave early on the final day, so let’s call that the bad and the ugly.
Two weeks ago, I had the amazing opportunity to attend JavaOne in Las Vegas! When I started my career one year ago, fresh out of university, I never could have dreamed I’d have an experience like this. This is the furthest I’d ever traveled in my entire life; I’d never seen a real palm tree, a wild cactus, or a desert. As soon as my plane pierced the clouds and I saw Nevada beneath me, I was awestruck.
Day 1 — Tuesday, October 18th
The first official day of the conference was Tuesday. The JavaOne portion of Oracle CloudWorld was held at Caesars Forum; below you can see pictures of the conference hall. This was my first ever conference so I was amazed at everything going on — and yes, I did play Pac-Man.
The first session I attended that day was ‘Java First. Java Always.’, a keynote for JavaOne. One of the notable speakers for this session was Sharat Chander, Senior Director of Java Product Management and Developer Engagement at Oracle! We learned about developments in Java over the past 25 years, and new features we can expect in the future. Then I attended ‘Java After Eleven’, presented by Nicolai Parlog at Oracle, which went over new features in Java 11+. This talk was presented as a showcase of new(ish) Java features, including improvements to collections, async error handling, more succinct switch statements, text blocks, records, and sealed classes, amongst other features. The rest of the day was spent staffing the booth, which entailed talking about the work we do, our involvement in the OpenJDK quality outreach program, as well as the open-source projects that we contribute to, like Eclipse Collections.
Day 2 — Wednesday, October 19th
Wednesday was the busiest day for me in terms of sessions and events. After breakfast and staffing the booth, the first session I attended was called ‘Deserialization Exploits in Java: Why Should I Care?’, presented by Brian Vermeer from Snyk. This was my favorite session of the entire conference! I’ve always had a peripheral interest in cybersecurity, brought on by a podcast I’ve listened to for years called Darknet Diaries (definitely worth a listen!) To get into the specific technical details of exploits potentially present in the Java code I work on daily was incredible! Brian showed us exactly how these attack chains are created and how you can better protect against such exploits — you can find more information on the topic here. Afterward, I attended ‘Surviving Open Source’ presented by my manager and Java champion, Donald Raab! He talks about open source in general, goals, fostering community, and his experience in open-sourcing Eclipse Collections. Don is a great speaker, and this talk was no exception — less technical, and more of a story about open source. Next, I attended ‘Inside.java’, a JavaOne keynote sponsored by Microsoft. There was a heavy emphasis on Microsoft products that run on Java; LinkedIn, Minecraft, Bing, and Azure! My final talk of the day was ‘Learn Java 19 with IntelliJ IDEA’ by Mala Gupta, Java Developer Advocate at JetBrains. In this talk, Mala demoed how IntelliJ can be leveraged to explore modern Java features. This was a very busy day; filled with sessions, staffing the booth, and exploring the CloudWorld conference at the Venetian! After dinner, we attended the CloudWorld party, featuring a performance by Steve Miller Band — amazing! 🎸
Day 3 — Thursday, October 20th
I had to fly out shortly after lunch on the final day. The last session I attended was ‘The Future of Java is You’, the final JavaOne keynote, hosted by Oracle. This session was very fun and an excellent way to end the conference! The focus was on the community; how the community has shaped Java and continues to do so, as well as various Java community programs. Community is an integral part of Java and the reason why it’s still going strong 25+ years later. Post-session, I said goodbye to my coworkers and headed to the airport. I can’t overstate how amazing this opportunity was; I met so many interesting, intelligent people. It was very inspiring to see and meet titans of the (Java) industry, and I learned so much. I’m excited to attend more conferences in the future! 🚀
