Written by: Dan HinojosaFri, 29 Dec 2006 02:10 PM PST .
Filed Under: SeamGroovyRuby2007EJB3JavaGrailsRailsJBoss

Predictions for 2007:

Just a minute while I take out my crystal ball. It is currently sitting in my garage, caked over with dust. There! All dusted off and just like new.
Here are my predictions for the year 2007. Take note, because all of these will come true. Eat your heart out Nostradamus.

• Groovy will enjoy great success. People will love the idea of having a powerful scripting language that uses the well known Java API at their disposal. Groovy will bring about the repatriation of several Ruby users that defected from Java.
  
• Grails will see some success, but that success won't come 'til late 2007. This is because people need time to learn Groovy first, and the Grails developers will probably be working diligently towards version 1.0 throughout 2007.
• Developers will realize that SOA has nothing to do with Web Services. The SOA community will also gain a general understanding of what SOA really is, hopefully before SOA 2.0 comes out. ;)
• The Java community will continue to seek clarity on the future of Java and whether or not Java is meant to be an easy language to learn. Such ruminations will lead to more great debates on generics, in-line XML, the arrow operator, and whether it is Java's manifest destiny to include features from other languages in the JDK in order for Java to remain on top.
• EJB3 will finally be released by major vendors and will gain acceptance by developers.
  
• JBoss Seam will gain acceptance by many web developers, but will continue to have problems selling its idea because those same web developers will have difficulty wrapping their heads around what stateful development is and how it's useful to them.
  
• Legions of well-known web and desktop Java developers will be bored with web and desktop development and will start to get creative with Java on other devices.
• JUnit dominance will be relinquished to TestNG.
• Ant will be demoted by the masses as merely a vehicle for scripting to get builds done.
• Dependency Injection and Interface Oriented Design will continue to be accepted by Java Developers.
• The Google Web Toolkit will be the most talked about Java based product in 2007. It will bring non-Java developers to the Java language, eager to do outstanding things with AJAX without the need to code in JavaScript.
  
• With systems like Subversion/CVS, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Feature/Bug Tracking software, Gmail, Blogs and Wikis. Developer machines will be and should be relegated to being hard drives dedicated to holding only the JDK, version controlled source code and libraries, and music files that developers listen to while coding. 
  

Now, go in peace, and spread the good words of what I have foreseen and given to you. ;)
Happy New Year!
Danno!