The session looks at the fundamentals of Scala with examples to highlight its unique features like case classes and pattern matching, for comprehensions, traits, functions as values and others. It also looks at Scala’s support for writing internal as well as external DSLs.

ScalaTest is an open-source testing framework that aims to speed up tests by leveraging the Scala programming language.  ScalaTest 1.0, released today claims to reduce the amount of test code lines required in testing. This reduction in code lines is a product of Scala, an object-oriented language that compiles to Java bytecode and runs on the Java Virtual Machine.

Azul Systems has released Azul Systems Java Virtual Machine 2.5 (AVM 2.5), which claims to be the industry’s only virtualized JVM. The AVM 2.5 release includes several new features, including support for the Windows platform, improved diagnostics and profiling functionality, and enhanced performance capabilities.

Microsoft has removed 10 security patch downloads, all associated with Microsoft Java Virtual Machine (JVM) technology. Microsoft originally licensed its JVM technology from Sun Microsystems. The support ended as of June 30, 2009, according to the security bulletins and a Microsoft support page. However this move isn’t much of a concern for users as most Java users use the Sun JVM and not the one licensed by Microsoft.

James Gosling talks of how Java the language isn’t that important but the  Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is what matters. He also takes an open approach to dynamic languages but thinks they are at times too slow for use.

Troubleshooting production Java applications is a challenging task. Madhav Sathe presents a new approach to diagnose production applications by peeking into memory structures of the Java Virtual Machine.