Ted Neward interviewed Josh Bloch and Neil Gafter at JavaPolis 2005. (To view the interview, go to the JavaPolis web site, log in or register, and then select the interview.) In the interview Neil and Josh talk about Google's involvement in the Java Community Process, what they'd like to see in futures versions of Java, how they continue to contribute now that they are no longer at Sun, the secrets behind their puzzlers and much more.

JavaPolis, put on by the Belgium Java Users Group (BeJUG), combines the best elements of large and small conferences. This provides a perfect environment in which to bring together such well known luminaries and provide them with an opportunity to share their views. Both Josh and Neil continue to be active JCP participants. Josh is looking forward to Dolphin, hoping that he can add block constructs to the language in that release. In his opinion it is too late to incorporate closures into Java.

Ted asked the questions that many want answered - "What's happened to Java?". In response, Josh listed a number of things that he believes are simpler then they were before Java 5. However he was a little disappointed in how Generics have resulted in more complexity than expected. Neil added that things are simpler but you need to learn more and that the new features help people to avoid certain classes of errors. Neil also talks about how it took them three tries to add generics to the JDK core libraries.

On future directions Neil commented:

"I don't see an ideal platform for deploying clients."

What he would like to do is make it easier to deploy Java client technology. Neil added that GMail would be much more useful if it were deployed as a Java application.

Is the idea of a Java client finished or is there something that Neil could do to improve Java to make it viable for client deployments?

To view the interview, go to the JavaPolis web site, log in or register, and then select the interview.

JavaPolis, put on by the Belgium Java Users Group (BeJUG), combines the best elements of large and small conferences.

So... this forcing me to register to view the interview thing... is that from the large conference part, or the small conference part?

So... this forcing me to register to view the interview thing... is that from the large conference part, or the small conference part?

From the small conference part, whenever it was from the big conference part, you would have had ads also...
Fair enough.

Neil added that things are simpler but you need to learn more

LOL! I like sentences like that!

Would have liked to hear their opinions on how Java could have benefited from Ruby’s
syntax features than the whole generic and Java vs .NET talk.

It was interesting to hear Neal Gafter talk about Java's persistent deployment problem and how Flash is so prevalent on the client compared to Java. I wonder if Google has some Flash plans.

Ted Neward did spell my name correctly.