What do future generations think about the state of Java and its relevance to their research? The answer may surprise you, and Sun.At this year's JavaOne, James Gosling, the "father of Java," helped show a group of technology college and high school students the highlights from this year's exhibits and provided an overview of the newest Java technology applications.

What was really interesting to hear was the level of engagement that each of the students showed in their grasp of Java and its components. Those polled by InformationWeek said they were excited about the possibilities that all the flavors of Java provided. Java SE and Java ME (the old guys in the programming bunch) were the staples of most students' computer science departments. JavaFX, Sun Spots, and Sun's xVM VirtualBox were pegged as the "way cool" projects.

Many of the students also were pleased that Sun had opened Java to the GNU GPL, which allowed them to see more possibilities in the face of other programming software like .Net, Ruby on Rails, and PHP.

Here are four interviews with the students: Sweta Vajnala from Georgia Tech; Johann Leung from the University of San Francisco; Candis Phan from Georgia Tech; and Rob Dull from Santa Clara University.

Below that is a compilation of some of the technology shown, including Tommy Jr., a tricked out robotic Scion xB equipped with $50,000 worth of sensor equipment running MAX-standard on Java SE technology. The vehicle competed in the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge.

It also shows the Pulse "smartpen" made by LiveScribe, which has two microphones to record sound, a speaker for playback, a small OLED display, and a hidden computer chip that captures handwritten notes and drawings.