Quest for Java
Student programmers use Java to do more than spice up Web pages. ore than 100 ACM student members from around the world participated in the first " Quest for Java " contest sponsored by ACM and IBM, concluding last fall. Judged on their ability to develop real-world applications and applets in the Java programming language , their entries covered a range of software categories, including education, programming tools, email clients, groupware, and graphics. But what the judges found most remarkable among the winners was not necessarily the function of the application or applet or their great originality but their developers' sense of pleasure and creativity in exploring Java. The 10 first-place winners were awarded IBM ThinkPads; the 20 second-place winners $1,000 soft-ware/hardware gift certificates; the 30 third-place winners bomber jackets; and the five honorable mentions sets of Addison-Wesley's Java Book Series. Although these things were an incentive, contestants were inspired by deeper personal motives (see the sidebar " Top 10 Winners "). " I didn't do this to win a computer , " says Craig Navin, a first-place winner from McGill University, " but to prove I could be tops in the field. " Some students were already using Java for dis-sertation and thesis work; others found the contest a welcome opportunity to move into new territory. " For almost all participants, " says judge Manfred Tscheligi, head of the Center for Usability Research and Engineering, Java Competence Center at the University of Vienna, " the contest was a new playground where they could express some of their programming and applications creatively. " The other judges were Eli Charne, a software developer at Reuters and the pan-el's leader; Jeff Dinkins, software engineer, AWT Participants also ran into problems; some had trouble developing graphical interfaces and some reported inconsistencies in AWT across multiple platforms. However, praise for Java outweighed negative comments. " I highly value the language's power and simplicity, " says Roberto Flores-Mendez, a first-place winner with a client/server mapping system, " particularly its simple interface for networking , lightweight multithreading, and comprehensive error recovery. " For participants, the contest also meant open platforms and network-centric architectures, as well as a sense of unparalleled freedom, particularly for those who had tried developing multiuser applications before discovering Java. Donghui Yuan, a second-place winner, who produced a knowledge-based system , recalls his frustration developing a tool for a multiuser application on a …