airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien

An airhacks.fm conversation with Holly Cummins (@holly_cummins) about: first computer experience with her dad's Kaypro CPM machine and ASCII platform games, learning Basic programming on an IBM PC clone to build a recipe management system, studying physics at university with a doctorate in quantum computing, self-teaching Java to create 3D visualizations of error correction on spheres during PhD research, joining IBM as a self-taught programmer without formal computer science education, working on Business Event Infrastructure (BDI) at IBM, brief unhappy experience porting JMS to .net with Linux and VNC, moving to IBM's JVM performance team working on garbage collection analysis, creating Health Center visualization tooling for J9 as an alternative to JDK Mission Control, innovative low-overhead always-on profiling by leveraging JIT compiler's existing method hotness data, transitioning to WebSphere Liberty team during its early development, Liberty's architectural advantage of OSGi-based modular core enabling small fast startup while maintaining application compatibility, working on Apache Aries enterprise OSGi project and writing a book about it, discussion of OSGi's strengths in protecting internal APIs versus complexity costs for application developers, the famous OSGi saying about making the impossible possible and the possible hard, microservices solving modularity problems through network barriers versus class loader barriers, five years as IBM consultant helping customers adopt cloud-native technologies, critique of cloud-native terminology becoming meaningless when everything required the native suffix, detailed analysis of 12-factor app principles and how most were already standard Java practices, stateless processes as the main paradigm shift from JavaServer Faces session-based applications, joining Red Hat's quarkus team three and a half years ago through Erin Schnabel's recommendation, working on Quarkiverse community aspects and ecosystem development, leading energy efficiency measurements confirming Quarkus's sustainability advantages, current role as cross-portfolio sustainability architect for Red Hat middleware, writing Pact contract testing extension for Quarkiverse to understand extension author experience, re-architecting Quarkus test framework class loading to enable deeper extension integration, recent work on Dev Services lazy initialization to prevent eager startup of multiple database instances across test profiles, fixing LGTM Dev Services port configuration bugs for multi-microservice observability setups, upcoming JPMS integration work by colleague David Lloyd requiring class loader simplification, the double win of saving money while also reducing environmental impact, comparison of sustainability benefits to accessibility benefits for power users, mystery solved about the blue-haired speaker at European Java User Groups years ago Holly Cummins on twitter: @holly_cummins

An airhacks.fm conversation with Christofer Dutz (christofer-dutz) about: first computer was a Commodore C64 from Hannover Messe, early programming in Basic, playing Wizards of War game on cassette tape, growing up in Melbourne Australia until age ten, visiting Ayers Rock and seeing prehistoric armored fish in puddles, learning C and C++ at Volkshochschule around 1992, memory management challenges with DOS gaming like X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Wing Commander, starting Java at Technical University of Darmstadt in 1998 with version 1.0.7, appreciating Java's simplicity compared to C++ and no system crashes from memory errors, early involvement with Apache Cocoon for XML and XSL transformations, contributing to eXist-db XML database as committer number two, working with XML XSL and XSLT for data transformation, frustrations with YAML compared to XML, transition from Cocoon to Adobe Flex after Cocoon switched to Spring and Maven, becoming co-maintainer of Flex Mojos Maven plugins, Adobe donating Flex to Apache Software Foundation, attending ApacheCon in Sinsheim and connecting with Apache committers, committer and PMC member of 12 active Apache projects, firefighting role fixing Maven builds for stuck projects, retiring Apache Cocoon project, strong focus on industrial IoT projects, Apache IoTDB as best time series database, Apache StreamPipes for cloud IoT orchestration, Apache Camel and Apache NiFi involvement, founding Apache PLC4X in 2017 at codecentric, Apache PLC4X as JDBC-like interface for industrial equipment communication, spending 80-90 hours per week on PLC4X for nine years, challenges with industrial automation industry not understanding open source, anecdote about steel melting plant operator expecting free enterprise support, Germany being a difficult market for industrial automation consulting, founding ToddySoft company end of last year, building installable products and plugins for industrial solutions, ethical approach to open source by only selling products from projects he contributes to, real-time definitions varying from tens of milliseconds in cloud to nanoseconds in industrial systems, ToddySoft named after PLC4X mascot Toddy the palm civet (toddy cat), plans for future episode discussing IoTDB StreamPipes PLC4X and NiFi use cases Christofer Dutz on LinkedIn: christofer-dutz

Thomas Wuerthinger, a Runtime and Compiler Engineer at Oracle, dives into GraalVM's intriguing developments. He clarifies the shift to focusing on LTS Java releases while expanding polyglot support, particularly for Python due to its AI rise. Wuerthinger discusses innovative ideas like serverless workloads directly in Oracle Database and user-space application snapshotting for faster restarts. He emphasizes memory savings and efficiency in deployment, touching on the future roadmap that blends database and serverless technologies seamlessly.

Alvaro Hernandez, a software engineer and creator of StackGres, dives into the fascinating world of Postgres on Kubernetes. He discusses how LLMs can generate efficient Java code and why Java outshines Python and TypeScript in this context. Alvaro introduces StackGres as a curated stack for PostgreSQL, highlights its powerful automation capabilities, and explores its supportive interfaces. The conversation also touches on the benefits of Quarkus and GraalVM for container efficiency, the challenges of infrastructure automation, and the evolution of Java's role in modern development.

Ales Justin, a dedicated Software Engineer and Quarkus contributor, dives into fascinating topics like Slovenia's Christmas traditions and his journey from Bitcoin to Quarkus development. He discusses the innovative shift from Google’s gRPC to Vert.x-based solutions, detailing the exciting plans for Vert.x 5. Ales also highlights OpenTelemetry integration for improved observability, and how using Grafana's LGTM image simplifies Dev Services. Finally, they tackle challenges in protocol versioning and the benefits of sharing protobuf definitions among projects.

Johan Haleby, a seasoned software engineer and open-source author, shares his journey from programming on a Commodore 64 to creating PowerMock. He discusses his early gaming experiments, reverse engineering techniques, and pivotal moments studying Java. Johan reflects on his early career, comparing Spring's lightweight framework to old EJB systems. He delves into the creation of PowerMock, bytecode manipulation, and integration challenges. The conversation wraps up with insights on modern testing philosophies and his ongoing work with the Occurrent event sourcing library.

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.

Stanislav Bashkyrtsev, a software developer and founder specializing in scientific software for chemistry and drug discovery, shares his insights on the challenges of automating lab processes. He discusses Pixel, a powerful tool for analyzing mass spectrometer data, and the intricacies of parsing large instrument files. Topics include the drug discovery workflow, molecular library enumeration, and the significance of 2D vs 3D visualizations. Stanislav also introduces innovative solutions like Molbrett for chemical drawing and Crystalline for protein crystallography documentation.

An airhacks.fm conversation with Ondrej Mihalyi (@OndroMih) about: OmniFish company founding with former Payara employees, Arjan Tijms as Jakarta EE Security lead and Jakarta EE 10 coordinator, David Matejczyk as Glassfish project lead and main contributor, OmniFish as the main maintainer and driver of GlassFish development, GlassFish optimization and bug fixes, embedded GlassFish improvements for command-line execution, comparison with Payara Micro, Slovak and Czech Christmas traditions including cemetery visits on Christmas Eve, traditional Christmas cookies like medovník (honey cookies) and perník, carp preparation for Christmas dinner with potato salad variations, fish scales tradition for wealth, Jakarta EE stability and backward compatibility over 15 years, migration from Java EE to Jakarta EE namespace changes, comparison between Jakarta EE and Spring regarding XML configuration history, Convention over Configuration in Java EE 5 and 6, WebSphere and WebLogic legacy issues, GlassFish as reference implementation advantages, runtime vs application server distinction, JSON-P usage for serverless lambda events, MicroProfile Health clean room implementation, Piranha experimental framework with new Servlet container implementation, AI and LLMs excellent knowledge of Jakarta EE specifications, no hallucinations when generating Jakarta EE code, separation of runtime and application deployment Ondrej Mihalyi on twitter: @OndroMih

An airhacks.fm conversation with Stanislav Bashkyrtsev (@sbashkirtsev) about: Early programming journey starting with Pascal in school and C# self-study in 2005, transition from C# to Java through local programming courses in 2007, first experiences with Java 6 and EJB2/EJB3, working with Delphi for lawyers' desktop software before finding Java opportunities, first Java project for Madison Square Garden and New York Knicks website, career progression through entertainment and banking sectors including work with Barclays Capital and UBS, transition to CI/CD engineering in 2012 with heavy Jenkins usage and source code patching, challenges of implementing trunk-based development practices, automated QA engineering experiences with selenium testing, problems with separate QA and development teams affecting code testability, self-study of biology and chemistry leading to scientific software development, founding elsci company focused on high-performance enterprise software for chemists and biotech companies, disconnect between software developers and scientists' needs in scientific software, advantages of quarkus framework for serverless deployments on AWS, Quarkus build-time deployment optimization versus traditional application servers, comparison with Spring Boot auto-configuration complexity, migration experiences from Java EE to Quarkus maintaining standards compliance, virtual threads support in modern Quarkus, preference for Java 7 simplicity over modern Java streams, importance of end-to-end testing over unit testing pyramid, challenges of running a software company versus being an independent consultant, Helsinki Java User Group presentation on operating system thread mechanics Stanislav Bashkyrtsev on twitter: @sbashkirtsev