Growing Quarkus in a Spring Boot World – Kevin Dubois (IBM)

Kevin Dubois (IBM Developer Advocate, Quarkus Team) joins Marco to explore how Quarkus is reinventing Java for the modern cloud era, and why it’s not about killing Spring Boot. From startup times to developer experience, microservices, AI, and GraalVM, this episode dives into where Java is heading in 2025 and beyond.

💡 Topics in this episode:

• The origins of Quarkus and why it exists

• Spring Boot dominance and migration trends

• Hot reload, Dev UI, and developer experience

• Cloud-native Java, containers, and serverless

• GraalVM and the future of native Java

• Java’s role in the age of AI

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🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IRqTbgC2JLU

⏱️ Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:12) Why Quarkus was created (it’s not about killing Spring)

(04:45) How Quarkus compares to Spring Boot today

(08:30) Developer experience: hot reloads, Dev UI, and that “aha” moment

(13:05) Quarkus in the cloud: Kubernetes, containers, and serverless

(18:20) Native compilation vs JVM: when (and when not) to use it

(24:00) MicroProfile, Jakarta EE, and open specs

(28:35) The future of Java: monoliths, microservices, and AI

(33:10) How IBM is investing in Quarkus and the Java ecosystem

(37:25) Agentic AI, LangChain4J, and practical use cases

(42:10) Rapid-fire questions

(46:15) Giveaway question + closing thoughts