Ceylon at JAX

My last conference presentation on the subject of Ceylon was well-received at the conference itself, but not when subsequently published online, leaving we with the impression that it wasn't very effective.

Don't listen to the haters. I think it's great that you (and JBoss) decided to work on Java's potential successor. There is an opportunity right there, and there are definite pain points with Java that need to be addressed (some due to the language's history / retro-compatibility). Some might say we already have Scala and there is no need for Ceylon, but I disagree. I think language competition is healthy, and I'm definitely keeping an eye out for Ceylon, and I'm interested in seeing where you go with it.

Will the presentation be recorded? Maybe on InfoQ or Parleys?

- Etienne

We're currently having a debate over whether the new presentation is a good approach or not. It's way less superficial than the last one, but the question is does it:

• effectively demonstrate that what we're doing isn't just a bunch of superficial adhoc changes to the syntax of Java, while giving a decent sampling of the syntax and basic types, or
• just go much to fast, confusing and scaring off folks who don't know anything about the language, and are looking to see how it might make it easier to write programs, while still missing the kind of theoretical discussion that people who spend their lives thinking about higher kinds and generic algebraic datatypes and Hindley–Milner type inference think are important.

The problem is that it's impossible to really do something that works for both audiences in a one hour presentation. And I might be overcompensating for last time, where I felt like I had too much detail about superficial syntax, and not enough about the underlying type system.

I think the material in the new presentation is pretty interesting, but I'm not sure what % of the audience will actually be able to follow it.

Will the presentation be recorded? Maybe on InfoQ or Parleys?

The truth is I need more practice at presenting Ceylon. It's a much harder thing to explain in one hour than, say, CDI, for example.

Please vote for Kotlin and Ceylon merging in Kotlin bug tracker. Vote