After a bit of a palaver trying to get Travis' press badge for JavaOne we finally made our way down to the floor to dig the scene. Initially it felt like any other trade show--a bit vast and mildly depressing. Then suddenly the sessions let out and the place was flooded with humans. It definitely feels like the wind is blowing the right direction for Java, but that Sun still hasn't quite caught up. It makes me w After a bit of a palaver trying to get Travis’ press badge for JavaOne we finally made our way down to the floor to dig the scene. Initially it felt like any other trade show–a bit vast and mildly depressing. Then suddenly the sessions let out and the place was flooded with humans. It definitely feels like the wind is blowing the right direction for Java, but that Sun still hasn’t quite caught up. It makes me wonder if languages like Ruby and PHP encouraged Java developers to go even deeper into Java. I also suspect that SOA initiatives and open source Solaris and Java are encouraging heavy usage.There were a few interesting things that we saw on the floor. It seems like Spring continues to be the big wave in development and I actually think it overshadowed much of the Sun news about open source Java and other stuff. I was impressed with the traffic at the Terracotta booth and it seemed like a lot of people were interested in Liferay, both good signs for the growth of open source java apps. I also saw Xfire Dan, who told me about a bunch of cool web services things that his team is working on. Most importantly we got to hang out with the team from RedMonk, who I would argue get the double-whammy award for analyst firm with best haircuts and most fun/rewarding to work with. We’ll spend some more time with Cote on friday to continue talking smack. Open Source