Oracle Code One: The new and improved JavaOne?!

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Another day another Oracle-related news. JavaOne is gone but fear not — it has been replaced by Oracle Code One, a conference for *all* developers. This means that Java is no longer the center of the now-defunct JavaOne universe anymore.
Oracle’s JavaOne is undergoing massive changes. For starters, it has metamorphosed into Oracle Code One, a “developer conference that’s inclusive of more languages, technologies, and developer communities than other conferences.”
According to the official website, Java won’t be the center of the conference anymore; attendees should also expect talks on Go, Rust, Python, JavaScript, and R as well as in-depth discussions of leading-edge topics such as chatbots, microservices, AI, and blockchain and sessions on trending open source developer technologies such as Oracle JET, Project Fn, and OpenJFX. The conference will have 11 tracks.
The new event will take place October 22-25 at Moscone West in San Francisco.
If you want to learn more about it, read this blog post by Oracle’s Stephen Chin.
Reactions
JavaOne was the Java conference so it’s only normal for the community to have mixed feelings about Oracle Code One.
This is a mad day, lots going. ICYMI – JavaOne is no more! Instead, Oracle have rebranded the conference to `Oracle Code One’, expanded beyond Java. See details: https://t.co/TsuiFpbLnC #in #OracleCodeOne #JavaOne (I told you all this in 2011, fragmentation of JVM space)
— peter_pilgrim (@peter_pilgrim) April 20, 2018
It is sad to see #JavaOne is gone. I don’t think that #OracleCode is a good idea. #OracleCode will be full of #OracleForm and #APEX technologies, so forget it. At least we still have @JavaLandConf!
— Dr. Lofi Dewanto (@lofidewanto) April 20, 2018
RIP #JavaOne @java @JavaOneConf
— Michel Erard (@michelerard) April 20, 2018
I can’t pretend that I’m not a bit sad. #JavaOne meant a lot for me and the entire @java community. The name had an emotional attachment…
— Edson Yanaga (@yanaga) April 19, 2018
Am I the only one concerned with #JavaOne being renamed #OracleCode? De-emphasizing #Java perhaps? #Oracle
— Kenneth J. Jaeger (@kjjaeger) April 19, 2018
Thoughts about the #JavaOne -> #OracleCodeOne rename: https://t.co/XbHXR9d7jF
— Paul Bakker (@pbakker) April 19, 2018
Change can be hard. Change can be difficult. But often, it’s best to embrace it and be part of it then to be left behind. I miss the #JavaOne conferences of the past, but I’m looking forward to see where #OracleCodeOne goes. https://t.co/3D5wFJlzE2#Java @Java @Oracle
— Eric Bruno (@ericjbruno) April 19, 2018
Paul Bakker, software architect and author of Java 9 Modularity explained in a recent blog post that even though he wasn’t too excited about the rename of the JavaOne, change isn’t a bad thing in this case. A lot has changed in the Java ecosystem and the community is now the place where the magic happens.
In contrast to the old days, Java now plays a role together with other tools, languages and runtimes. We don’t just care about Java, Java EE and app servers anymore. This puts a Java-only conference in a tough spot, and a wider focus makes a lot of sense. In recent years this has resulted in fewer attendees, and less of an urge to be there.
Paul is not wrong — a lot has happened in the Java ecosystem, starting with Java EE’s move, JavaFX being decoupled from the JDK, the six-month cadence and the list goes on. Of course, this might mean that with all the shifts within the ecosystem, JavaOne needed to be put to rest but I can’t help but wonder: is this headline more relevant now than ever? What happened to the “Java first, Java always” promise?
Perhaps this is what Mark Cavage meant when he announced that Oracle needed “to do a lot more to modernize, to get you to that world of cloud and microservices and serverless.”
JavaOne 2017 was a great conference but don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Simon Ritter had to say about last year’s conference:
Looking at tweets and postings on the Java Champions and JUG leaders mail aliases, the general perception is that this was the best JavaOne in several years. For me, that was certainly the case. I think that Oracle has made some significant decisions that will allow Java to continue to move forward at a pace that satisfies both developers who want new features quickly and those that need stability for deployment. With these changes and the inevitable rise in community involvement Java will continue to be the most popular software platform on the planet.
Read the entire post here.
Let’s not dwell too much on JavaOne’s passing, but rather on one particular aspect.
