4/15/2002- JavaOne 2002 was a lot smaller in attendance than last year. But it still had the feel of a very crowded Moscone Center with Java lectures going non-stop. The backpacks they gave out this year had wheels and extendable handles and it was easy to trip over someone else's while walking around. The Pavillion where all the vendors are seemed to have less companies present with more than the usual amount of space taken up by Sun. This article from some other guys who attended JavaOne this year helps explain why that is.
J2ME was still big this year with lots more emphasis on wireless. Looks like Java is making its way into small wireless devices more than people thought it would. Soon there will be Java enabled cell phones on 2.5G networks all over the place. "Web Services" was the new buzzword for anything that had to do with Java and a browser. J2EE had its presence like usual. Lots of talk about Java 1.4 out there. Many of the new API extensions that were very rough last JavaOne are now matured into what looks like some pretty useful stuff. The logging API, and Servlet Filters look especially promising.a

I went to JavaOne 2001, and here are my impressions... First of all, this show had a very strong bent towards the new wave of Java on embedded devices. This was evident in the key note speeches, the number of sessions about J2ME (micro-edition), and in the JavaOne Pavillion where Nokia among other mobile phone companies displayed their wares. The Pavillion also had a lot of vendors showing developer tools for J2ME. IBM has even put out a specialized version of VisualAge for micro and embedded devices. Being a former set-top-box developer I find this stuff heartening, although I still haven't seen a decent presentation of JavaTV.
Another very prevalent aspect of Java at JavaOne was the strong support around J2EE (enterprise edition) and EJB - especially as a competitor to Microshaft's new .NET. In fact I went to a lecture comparing the two which was presented in a unbiased way, except for the part near the end where the lecturer said he preferred J2EE to much clapping.
The BOFS (Birds of a Feather Sessions) were in full swing this year. In '99 they were just starting out, but this year they had them running Monday through Thursday 7 to 12.
JavaOne is truly an international conference, judging by all the Australians I have worked with that I ran into, and also all the other foreigners I met.
Some of the lectures that I went to were about: the Java Logging API, Servlets 2.3 and an excellent Servlet Optimization lecture, the Java Imaging API, changes in the language for Java 1.4 (ie. assertions), JSP (Ultradev style) and XSL, and a whole lot more!

I'm a Java programmer, and proud of it. In fact now days I'm better with Java than C++. I see it as the future of programming for a number of reasons. First of all it is one of, if not the best portable, object-oriented language there is. This quality will be very important for the future of applications and the web. Java is the ideal solution for providing applications that are independent of their operating system. Java will be integrated in the smallest microchips to the largest mainframes.
Of course I've heard the other side claiming how slow, and non-compatible Java ends up in the real world. This is something to consider carefully when making the decision on the programming language of choice for producing mission-critical applications in a short amount of time. But obviously these problems are not stopping Java from becoming the language of choice now days for a company's most important systems. Java is evolving at an incredible pace, and getting better everyday. While it may not deliver everything promised now, neither did C when it was only 4 years old.

Now days I have mostly been working in three specialized areas of Java- Personal Java, Servlets, and Applets. This includes working with Set Top Boxes, digital signatures, OrbixWeb, web servers evaluation and configuration, web caching proxies, and many other topics.
The latest stuff now is JSP, Servlets, and a little of GUI again. Still looking for a good EJB project.

Applets
Digitally Signing and Deploying Applets
Netscape Signing Tool

Personal Java
JavaTV

General Java
Jars