airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien

An airhacks.fm conversation with Billy Korando (@BillyKorando) about: Apple IIe and Packard Bell in the late 80s/early 90s, playing games like Three Stooges and Wolfenstein 3D, taking a year off after high school to work at FedEx as a package handler which motivated him to pursue higher education, his first professional job working on insurance regulation software using Java 1.4 with Apache Struts and custom frameworks, transitioning to Spring 2.5 and experiencing the XML configuration challenges, experience with the microservices hype around 2015 and learning that organizations that couldn't build good monoliths wouldn't succeed with microservices either, automated testing and JUnit 5, meeting Pratik Patel at DevNexus which led to his first devrel position at IBM, traveling extensively for conferences including J-Fall in the Netherlands, being laid off from IBM in 2021 and joining Oracle's Java team, focusing on JDK technologies like JFR, garbage collection, and project leyden, helping organize the Kansas City Developers Conference, involvement in reviving JavaOne as a standalone conference, the importance of automated testing with tools like Test Containers versus older approaches with H2 databases, the challenges of maintaining code coverage as a metric, the evolution of Java, focus on Java observability tools and performance optimization Billy Korando on twitter: @BillyKorando

An airhacks.fm conversation with Maurice Naftalin (@mauricenaftalin) about: Shelton Signet CP/M machine costing £3000 in the 1980s, discussion about the CP/M operating system which started in 1972, Maurice's early career teaching programming at Wolverhampton Polytechnic (now University), teaching Pascal programming language, creating a membership system for a political campaign using his first computer, Maurice's background as a chemist studying nuclear magnetic resonance (which later became MRI), learning fortran to process data using Fast Fourier Transforms, discussion about the NAG Library and challenges with array indices between C and Fortran, programming in the early days using punch cards and waiting hours for compilation results, the evolution from punch cards to paper tape which was more fragile, the role of punch operators who would type programs onto cards, Maurice's experience programming in assembler after learning Fortran, working at British Steel on an eccentric project to create a new programming language, moving to ICL (International Computers Limited) to work on the VMEB operating system with 15-16 protection rings, using traffic lights mounted on walls to indicate system status (red for down, amber for booting, green for operational), Maurice's interest in formal methods and the Vienna Development Method (VDM), working at Sterling University on formal specification and stepwise refinement, programming in HyperTalk for HyperCard in the 1990s, the Post Office Horizon scandal where a flawed computer system led to false fraud accusations against hundreds of sub-postmasters, Maurice's early Java programming creating a local information service distributed on CDs in the mid-1990s, discussion about offline-first principles and caching data that are still relevant today, Maurice being a "singleton" as the only Maurice Naftalin on the internet Maurice Naftalin on twitter: @mauricenaftalin

An airhacks.fm conversation with David Kral (@VerdentDK) about: Helidon Declarative as a new feature set for Helidon SE, build-time dependency injection with zero reflection capability, code generation approach that creates actual Java source files instead of bytecode manipulation, Service Registry as an enhanced Java service loader with ordering capabilities, compatibility with GraalVM for native image compilation, JPMS (Java Platform Module System) compatibility, the Maven plugin that eliminates reflection completely, HTTP module for declarative REST endpoints, REST client generation, metrics and fault tolerance support, interceptors for modifying service creation behavior, annotation mapping to support standard JSR-330 annotations like @Inject, comparison of performance between Helidon SE and MP flavors, use cases for serverless and CLI applications, the incubating status of Helidon Declarative with full release planned for Helidon 5, the ability to see and modify generated code for better debugging and transparency, the possibility to copy generated code to take ownership and remove dependencies, the value of using standard annotations for better portability between frameworks David Kral on twitter: @VerdentDK

Join Volker Simonis, a key contributor to the Amazon Corretto team and OpenJDK, as he dives into the exciting world of Java enhancements. He explains Corretto's multi-platform support and the rigorous certification process it undergoes. Discover Amazon’s innovative features like async logging and Project Lilliput, which notably reduces memory usage. Volker also compares garbage collectors Shenandoah and ZGC, shares insights on the Graal compiler, and highlights Amazon’s pivotal role in the OpenJDK community, making waves in Java performance and security.

Richard Bair, a Hashgraph expert and former Oracle employee, shares his insights on innovative blockchain applications for enterprise. He discusses the potential of Hashgraph to create immutable release pipelines, enhancing software supply chain verification. The conversation also explores the dynamics of live demos at Java events, the benefits of using mirror nodes for data queries, and how decentralized systems can improve compliance through transparent auditing. Bair highlights the exciting future of Java and Hashgraph technologies in the software industry.

Juan Fumero, a Software Engineer and contributor to TornadoVM, dives into the world of GPU acceleration and Java. He shares his insights on how TornadoVM enables efficient data parallelization and optimizes large language models like Llama3. The discussion highlights innovative features such as dynamic hardware reconfiguration, tensor types for FP8 and FP16, and the potential for model quantization. Fumero also touches on the integration possibilities with Project Babylon, emphasizing Java's growing role in enterprise applications for LLMs.

In this discussion, Christian Humer from Oracle Labs shares insights on Java's potential as a systems programming language and his bachelor thesis on a Java bytecode interpreter. He explains the innovative C1X compiler, the de-optimization process in JIT compilation, and the fascinating concept of a domain-specific language for efficient bytecode generation. Christian also dives into GraalVM's security features, like sandboxing untrusted code, and highlights the power of TRegex for optimizing regex performance in Java applications. It's a deep dive into the future of Java technology!

An airhacks.fm conversation with Colt McNealy (@coltmcnealy) about: first computing experience with Sun workstations and network computing, background in hockey and other sports, using system76 Linux laptops for development, starting programming in high school with Java and later learning C, fortran, assembly, C++ and python, working at a real estate company with kubernetes and Kafka, the genesis of LittleHorse from experiencing challenges with distributed microservices and workflow management, LittleHorse as an open source workflow orchestration engine using Kafka as a commit log rather than a message queue, building a custom distributed database optimized for workflow orchestration, the recent move to fully open source licensing, comparison with AWS Step Functions but with more capabilities and open source benefits, using RocksDB and Kafka Streams for the underlying implementation, performance metrics of 12-40ms latency between tasks and hundreds of tasks per second, the multi-tenant architecture allowing for serverless offerings, integration with Kafka for event-driven architectures, the distinction between orchestration and choreography in distributed systems, using Java 21 with benefits from virtual threads and generational garbage collection, plans for Java 25 adoption, the naming story behind "Little Horse" and its competition with MuleSoft, the Sun Microsystems legacy and innovation culture, recent adoption of Quarkus for some components, the "Know Your Customer" flow as the Hello World example for Little Horse, the importance of observability and durability in workflow management, plans for serverless offerings and multi-tenant architecture, the balance between open source core and commercial offerings Colt McNealy on twitter: @coltmcnealy

An airhacks.fm conversation with Francesco Nigro (@forked_franz) about: JCTools as a Java concurrency utility library created by Nitsan Wakart, the history of JCTools and how Cliff Click donated his non-blocking HashMap algorithm to the project, contributions to JCTools including weight-free queue implementations, Apache Storm vs. Apache Kafka, explanation of how JCTools improves upon Java's standard concurrent queues by reducing garbage creation and optimizing memory layout, the difference between linked node implementations in standard Java collections versus array-based implementations in JCTools, detailed explanation of linearizability as a property of concurrent algorithms, the challenges of implementing concurrent data structures that maintain proper ordering guarantees, explanation of lock-free versus wait-free algorithms and their progress guarantees, discussion of the xadd instruction in x86 processors and how it's used in JCTools for atomic operations, the implementation of MessagePassingQueue API in JCTools that provides relaxed guarantees for better performance, comparison between JCTools and other solutions like Disruptor, explanation of how JCTools achieves 400 million operations per second in single-producer single-consumer scenarios, discussion of cooperative algorithms for multi-producer scenarios, the use of padding to avoid false sharing in concurrent data structures, the implementation of code generation in JCTools to create different flavors of queues, the use of Unsafe and AtomicLongFieldUpdater for low-level operations, real-world applications in high-frequency trading and medical data processing, integration of JCTools with quarkus and mutiny frameworks, the importance of proper memory layout for performance Francesco Nigro on twitter: @forked_franz

An airhacks.fm conversation with Volker Simonis (@volker_simonis) about: discussion about carnivorous plants, explanation of how different carnivorous plants capture prey through movement, glue, or digestive fluids, Utricularia uses vacuum to catch prey underwater, SAP's interest in developing their own JVM around Java 1.4/1.5 era, challenges with SAP's NetWeaver Java EE stack, difficulties maintaining Java across multiple Unix platforms (HP-UX, AIX, S390, Solaris) with different vendor JVMs, SAP's decision to license Sun's HotSpot source code, porting Hotspot to PA-RISC architecture on HP-UX, explanation of C++ interpreter versus Template interpreter in Hotspot, challenges with platform-specific C++ compilers and assembler code, detailed explanation of JVM internals including deoptimization, inlining, and safe points, SAP's contributions to openJDK including PowerPC port, challenges getting SAP to embrace open source, delays caused by Oracle's acquisition of Sun, SAP's extensive JVM porting work across multiple platforms, development of SAP JVM with additional features like profiling safe points, creation of SAP Machine as an open-source OpenJDK distribution, explanation of Java certification and trademark restrictions, Hotspot Express model allowing newer VM components in older Java versions, Volker's move to Amazon Corretto team after 15 years at SAP, brief discussion of ABAP versus Java at SAP, Volker's recent interest in GraalVM and native image technologies Volker Simonis on twitter: @volker_simonis