airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien From Energy Sector to Cape Dwarf
Dec 14, 2025
Ales Justin is a software engineer and open-source contributor renowned for his work on Java runtime systems and cloud-native technologies, including CapeDwarf and Quarkus. He shares fascinating anecdotes from his early computing days and transition from gaming to programming. Ales discusses his journey from a large IT company to a startup focused on energy software, integration with JBoss, and tackling concurrency bugs in high-stakes applications. He also highlights his pivot to cloud technologies and the evolving landscape from monolithic applications to microservices.
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Early Home Programming And Game Sales
- Aleš Justin learned programming on a Spectrum 48ZX, progressed from BASIC to Pascal, and built simple games and calculators.
- His brothers sold games on cassettes in Yugoslavia, exposing him early to software distribution and experimentation.
Building Energy Consumption SaaS
- Aleš joined a small startup after university that built energy consumption analysis software for large Slovenian consumers.
- They ingested Excel data, modeled consumption, and charged clients a share of the savings they delivered.
Frameworks Replace Reinvented Wheel
- Spring simplified many integrations that the startup originally handcrafted, like transactions and JDBC templates.
- Adopting Hibernate later reduced custom entity work and improved design clarity.