Monday morning's crowds outside JavaOne, the Sun-sponsored conference for people who code in the cross-platform Java programming language, was probably one for the record books, even by San Francisco standards.

Big tech conferences are commonplace in SAN FRANCISCO, and it isn't unusual these days to see folks lining up outside the Moscone Convention Center for a chance to listen to some tech bigwig hold forth on an amazing new technology destined, he says, to change our world. But Monday morning's crowds outside JavaOne, the Sun-sponsored conference for people who code in the cross-platform Java programming language, was probably one for the record books, even by San Francisco standards. The line stretched around the block, more than 20,000 people thick -- bigger than the crowds at the Macworld shows, where Steve Jobs makes his famously flashy Apple announcements. Of course, Java can do a lot more than that, but Ed Zander, Sun's chief operating officer, said that the media isn't really telling that story. "I'm a little disappointed with the press," he said at a speech kicking off the conference, suggesting that nobody is saying how ubiquitous Java is these days. As Java continues to quietly gain devotees, the media have instead focused on still-in-development projects -- like Microsoft's "Dot-Net" strategy, he said. So Zander and other Sun execs pointed to the crowds as proof that Java has a sizable Web presence. There are more than two and a half million Java developers working in the world today, Zander said, and he predicted that the number would rise to four million by 2003. And these people are writing thousands of Java applications, he said -- all under the radar.