Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day to all

James Gosling cannot be subclassed

Photo from JavaOne 2009

(Yeah, techie humour can be a sad thing)

We are the fastest ! (and probably the best looking too)

Lots of excitement around Intel's Nehalem launch yesterday. It's one fast chip and if you keep track of these things, you will notice lots of benchmarking activity with press and blogs from the various benchmark leaders boasting about their superiority.

Of course, everyone and their dog (ok, just the people I know) has sent me a note asking about my next bragging post - they just assume - no post, no lead but they would be wrong - we are the fastest still. I just continue to prefer the "humble" is the new "proud" approach to benchmark superiority, but since I'm easily swayed, I will succumb to peer pressure and indulge in some bragging.

Yep... IBM J9 is the fastest Java VM you can get.

Derek sums it up again with a concise chart comparing IBM J9, Hotspot and JRockit and while our friends posted some nice improvements (good work guys), we maintain an impressive lead.

What can you conclude here ? The IBM J9 team is an impressive engineering team, and they have done excellent work - congratulations to the J9 and IBM Testarossa teams and my personal thanks to all for your hard work.

What else might you conclude here ? Any team that posts such good looking numbers is likely a really good looking team, likely the best looking team by about 8-10% :)

Of course, verifing the good looking aspects will be tricky since we keep the Canadian engineering teams locked indoors buried under 2 metres of permafrost. So, you'll have to trust me on this one - in addition to the good looking JVM benchmarks, we are one good looking team.

The score

washing machine 1, 16Gb flash drive 0

'nuff said.

We're with you Ken

My friend and co-worker Ken Walker is going through some tough times this year. His wife is fighting cancer and has begun chemo sessions, with associated hair loss effects. Ken has of course decided to join the club and shave his head down to the shiny base which he showcased at the office today. Very slick.

So, on the way home tonight, I stopped in for a number one, all around - very quick and easy - not much styling going on. Now, I don't have much hair in the first place but the hair I do have, I give up, in support, in friendship and in hope.

When Ken did this, his daughter said he looks like an Elf, but when I got home today, my daughter said I look like I just got out of prison. She should have picked Elf, cause last I heard, ex-cons don't hand out Christmas presents.

Ken, Kelly - in solidarity, thinking about you.

It ain't bragging when it's true

Well, it's finally happened, bursting pride in our accomplishments has exceeded our shyness and Derek Inglis has posted some `braggin` about IBM's J9 performance results.

It's simple - IBM J9 is the fastest Java VM you can get. 

Now, you don't see alot of performance chest thumping on my blog, despite the fact that we are frequently in the leadership position. The reason ?  Performance is just one factor in our  business. It's a lesson learned in many face to face interactions with customers. Surprisingly, not one of these customers run any of the industry standard benchmarks as their key application (ok, not surprising) and bragging about a particular benchmark to them,  often results in a "that's nice, how does *my* application run?" followed by "How easy is it to service ? How easy to install, tune and manage ?" and those details matter.  It's easy to lose focus when you're winning, so a little humbleness goes along way in keeping your attention on the right things. 

So, despite benchmarks being benchmarks, I'd like to do some braggin of my own ... not about the numbers, but about my world class team who delivered these results. Thanks to the Toronto, Ottawa, Hursley, Bangalore and Shanghai teams, way to go!

Of course, being humble is one thing, but we're human and it's been a long year, so I say let's brag a little lot. 

... and besides ... 

It ain't bragging when it's true, and it's true right now. 

You can read the nitty gritty details here. 

Thanks Bangalore

It's been a long week, met lots of great people, tried some wonderful food while visiting the Java team here in Bangalore but it's time to go so I spent my last day touristing.

Here's me flying high, in front of the Bangalore Palace, one of our stops in todays touristing slam.

I haven't been blogging much but I did promise the team an entry about Bangalore, so here it is. It's a wild city, full of contrasts - you can find Silicon Valley type compounds (with matching technical people) in the same block as cows and temples. Traffic is crazy but flows forward regardless, almost magically at times and surprisingly no accidents were witnessed despite the constant near misses.

For the record, I did not try an auto-rickshaw despite the obvious fun in trying a death defying vehicle. Save that for next time.

For now, all I can say is Thanks Bangalore.