So I went to JCrete and had some really interesting discussions. Then I watched a bunch of the JVM Language Summit recordings. Then I looked at some of the frameworks that are alternatives for implementing concurrent applications. Then I looked through a bunch of libraries which provide new collection classes of all sorts. And after all that I realised that this is now the most dynamic, interesting, innovative time we’ve ever seen for Java! More than 20 years of ever improving Java and, instead of maturing and slowing down, we’re actually accelerating improvements in Java all the way from the very bottom of the stack (Java built in Java) on through every stage – new language features, new bytecodes, new JVM structures, new compiler capabilities, new hardware support, new monitoring and management, new data structures, new frameworks, even new manifestos! This is extraordinary and unexpected and delightful.