rbair wrote:I'm the Java Client Architect at Oracle. We're both very interested in supporting the Raspberry PI, not only with JavaSE Embedded but also with JavaFX. We have an alpha hard-float JVM and I'm going to be giving it a try along with recompiled JavaFX binaries in hard float to see how this device is going to look.
mpthompson, I'd love for you to come down to the Oracle campus in Santa Clara if you have a chance and I'll show you what we've been working on and spend a little time investigating what could potentially be done in Raspbian in terms of configuration / libraries / performance. If nothing else it should be a lot of fun
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I talked to some folks from Oracle at the Java education booth at the Maker Faire back in May about Java products being made as compatible with the Pi as possible (especially to take advantage of the FPU and GPU). I was assured that there was high interest, at least among the engineering folks, in that happening for all current and future Java releases. The last I had heard through informal channels was that there were multiple Oracle offices interested in the effort and that they were working out which office was officially going to be lead and what each of the other interested offices might contribute. No timeframe for releases beyond the general Java product roadmap had been developed, but, JavaFX compliance by sometime this coming Fall seemed to be an unofficial goal. Future major numbered Java releases including full Pi support at the same time as other supported platforms was reportedly the long-term goal.
Since the Pi is officially aimed at the educational sector and the folks I talked to are in Oracle's Java educational division, they said that full Java product support for the Pi would fit well within Oracle's business model and long-term strategy. The thinking is similar to how Apple achieved very high penetration in both K-12 and collegiate segments in the U.S. by not only offering essentially at-cost discounts to students and faculty on Apple ][ and Mac hardware and software.
Graduating users carried their experience and passionate brand affinity into the commercial world, especially in the arts, publishing, and many science and engineering disciplines, especially for data visualization. Pascal also enjoyed a great deal of popularity due to its heritage in computer science education (when strong types and structured programming were still relatively new concepts in the 1970s through mid-1980s) and the low cost-of-entry for Turbo Pascal, UCSD p-System Pascal, etc.
If you're looking for another local Pi and Java enthusiast to help get things ported and/or tested, I'll volunteer and I can recruit others. During normal office hours, I can be in your facility in Santa Clara Thursdays except 2 ~ 6 PM. I'll otherwise be busy with tasks related to computing education for the start of the new school year at both high schools and universities through the postgraduate level, in addition to commercial software efforts, all of the above ranging as far away as Monterey. I can also contribute during nights and weekends in remote mode.
The best things in life aren't things ... but, a Pi comes pretty darned close!
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- W.B. Yeats
In theory, theory & practice are the same - in practice, they aren't!!!
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