Duke's Corner Podcast

Duke's Corner Podcast with Tom Cools, an engineer from Belgium, a conference speaker, a Java Champion, and the leader of the Belgian Java User Group. "I make it my mission to spread Java all over Belgium," says Tom as he describes how he runs the BeJUG as an Open Source project that takes contributions from the community. Here in this conversation Tom also talks about how the recent evolution of Java with rapid release cycles and new innovations attracted him to the language he loves. Tom is also a certified teacher so we discussed learning strategies, stress management, social media, managing change, AI, burnout, and other life experiences developers must deal with as they navigate through their careers in software development.

Interview Archive

Transcript

Tom, Tom Cools, welcome to Duke's Corner for the first time.

0:03

Thank you. Thank you. So great to be here. Finally. It took a while. It took a while, but we're here.

0:07

It did. It took almost a year, I think, Tom.

0:12

Yeah, well, I was doubting to switch companies and maybe doing a podcast while just switching companies isn't the best, if you want to talk a bit about your career and such. So it took a while, but now I'm settled into the new company. So time to have a chat. Yeah, it's great. Great. Excellent.

0:27

So yeah, no, you've been on my list for a while. I just kept you there. And so we finally hook up and it's really cool. So you are in Belgium, right?

0:34

Yeah, I'm correct. I've never lived anywhere else. So it's the land of fries and chocolate and all the good stuff. Actually, I'm lying because I did live for one year in the Netherlands, but there's this rivalry between the Netherlands and Belgium. So I don't always confirm that I lived in the Netherlands, but... Yeah, I love Belgium.

0:53

Belgium is like the great place to be. And I'm very happy that I was able to push my beloved programming language here a bit because I'm also, for people that don't know, I'm also the organizer of the Belgian Java user group. I make it my mission to spread Java all over Belgium.

1:09

Excellent. Well, it's a small place, so you should be able to reach every corner, right?

1:13

I was only there once. That's actually the amazing part of living in Belgium. It's a two-hour train drive and I'm in Amsterdam. It's two and a half hours and I'm under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It's two hours and I'm in London by train. So if you want to explore Europe,

1:30

then Belgium is a great place to hang out for a couple of months and just travel from point to point.

1:35

Yeah, Europe, I mean, physically Europe is very big. It's like the United States, but it's so tiny once you get in. It's very, very different. you know for americans to understand i mean i go for two hours and i'm still in

1:46

osaka and i live in osaka you know so this is still the same city so okay yeah so so you're also a java champion and you lead a java user group you speak at conferences and stuff like that and stuff you love to you know talk about java why why do you love to talk about java

2:03

I need to wind back a bit because my start with Java was a bit weird. 11 years ago, 11 and a half years ago, I joined a consultancy company and a consultancy company did two programming languages. Either you became a Java consultant or a .NET consultant. And at the start of my career,

2:18

I basically got asked the question, what do you want to do, Java or .NET? And my honest answer was, I don't care, you pick for me. So I told my manager, you know what, whatever you need at this company, I'm just starting out, you pick for me. And when I left a couple of months ago,

2:34

I actually told this story again to my manager and I was reminiscing like, what if he had said .net? I wouldn't be talking to you today. I wouldn't be a Java champion. I wouldn't be hosting the Belgian Java user group. So it was basically pure luck that I ended up with Java.

2:48

It took me a good year to really fall in love with the programming language because I did my internship in .NET, then switched to Java, and it took a while because it felt a bit more, at least at that time, that's 11 years ago, it felt a bit more rigid. The release cycles weren't what they are today,

3:03

so it was a release every three years or something, not every six months, like a nice cadence. But gradually, all these things started to improve and improve and newer things came out. I remember Spring Boot coming out like, oh, we don't need these servers anymore. We can just have this jar that runs everything. And it started evolving.

3:22

Then Grawl came with native images. And then, yeah, I've been in love probably for 10 years now. So it took about a year to get used to the changes. And then once I rolled in, I just wanted to go.

3:35

So there seems to be a difference between before the release cycle and now. Because everybody brings that up in one way or another.

3:43

Yeah, it just felt, you know, all these stereotypes we're still trying to get rid of. Java is this old enterprise-y language, and it's slow when it doesn't evolve. Yeah. We're still carrying that legacy along with us, but if you look close enough, that's not what it is at all. Things like Project Loom, the virtual threats,

4:02

it's bloody amazing that they got that in there after so many years. Never really breaking backwards compatibility with previous programming language versions. Well, there's always a few breakages, but mostly... You can still run the same Java as you did that many years ago, but you have a bunch of cool new features. So this evolution, I think,

4:22

was the biggest trigger to bring my enthusiasm and also the enthusiasm of other people. Like, oh, look, it's evolving. Every six months we have something cool. Sometimes it's not finished with these preview features, but we can already see. What I really like is that collaboration that it also brings. Because before,

4:38

it used to be you have a team of Java engineers that go away for a couple of years, or at least that's what it looked like from the outside. They go away for a couple of years, they've come with a new Java version. Now it's Java engineers post a Java enhancement proposal.

4:51

Everyone on the internet can see it. Everyone can comment on it. You can try out early builds of the OpenJDK. You can do a bunch of stuff to really contribute to Java, the programming language itself. And I think we really needed those shorter release cycles to enable these preview features.

5:07

And these preview features are the ones that really enable people to contribute. Because before it was like, we made a spec, we built it, good luck with it. Now it's, we build a spec, everyone please look at it. We're not sure, here's a preview feature. And then we can iterate. But before there was no iteration,

5:21

it was basically, we wait until all the features are done and then we just dump it on. Dump it sounds a bit aggressive, but it felt a bit like throwing it over the fence. Like, okay, we're done with this version, let's go.

5:32

Well, it's interesting you mentioned that iteration. I mean, I've been working in open source communities for a long time since Sun, Sun Microsystems. And I learned a lot about that very simple concept of iteration. Working at Sun on the Open Solaris project, I used to watch the engineers do code reviews and do architectural reviews.

5:55

You would start this long thread, multi-hundred email thread on a mailing list, and you would start at one – essentially, you would start at one place and you would end up someplace very different. But then you have all that consensus building. And also, you had this education process that took place.

6:11

And I can imagine it's the same when you're releasing, when you're doing early release builds and things like that and publishing code and specifications and things like that. It gives people a chance to educate themselves as development is taking place. So just like you mentioned, it's not just dumped and there it is,

6:30

a couple of million lines of fresh new code fo…

Duke’s Corner Podcast with François Martin, a full stack developer from Switzerland who loves teaching Java to students and contributing to the Java community. This conversation ranges from teaching students Java from scratch, the value of test driven development, the lessons from NASA's Apollo project, the benefits — and surprises — of contributing to open source projects, and so much more. Even open source marketing and The Cluetrain Manifesto came up! François is passionate about coding in Java and sharing his experiences with other developers at JUG meetings and conferences. Java was the first language he learned and that seems to made all the difference in the world.

Interview Archive

Transcript

Francois, Francois Martin, welcome. Welcome to Duke's Corner. Yeah, welcome, Jim. Thanks a lot for having me here. It's great to meet you. We're actually meeting here for the second time. You and I met virtually, let's see, when was like, I guess it was about a month ago on a community call with Bruno Souza's community in Brazil.

0:18

Exactly, I think one or two months ago, yeah.

0:21

Yeah, I really enjoyed that. That was like almost three hours. I think I wrapped up at three o'clock in the morning my time. But it was great. We had a lot of conversations with the community down there. And you were there, but you're in Switzerland, right? So what's up with that? You joined Bruno's...

0:37

Brazilian call, but you're in Switzerland.

0:40

Well, actually, he has two different calls. And, you know, I joined the one that is in the European time zone and there is another one that is in the Brazilian time zone. So another one in the Brazilian time zone is at 2 a.m. in the morning. So I'm not sure if you participated in both or.

0:54

No, I just did one.

0:55

I just did one.

0:56

Ah, then it was in the European time zone. But there were a lot of Brazilian people as well because, you know, they're really eager to see you. Oh, cool. Yeah, it was great. This was kind of a compliment for you.

1:05

Oh, well, that's very kind. Thank you very much. I mean, I think it was about 20 or so people and I was really happy with it. I was a little nervous, but I'm not used to being asked questions, to be honest, right? So usually I'm on this side. I can present simple things, community things.

1:22

I can present and I can do interviews, but being interviewed is a totally different skill. True.

1:30

I have to say, you didn't seem nervous at all. I have to say, I know what you mean. I've been starting to interview other people as well a little bit, and I know what you mean. I was kind of surprised.

1:40

I was really flattered as I got a lot of compliments by others at how good I was at interviewing others, which I really enjoyed, of course. Good.

1:48

Good, excellent. So you're a full stack developer and you're in Switzerland. So yeah, let's talk about what you do. What's up with full stack development these days in Switzerland?

1:59

I have to say it depends on, you know, I feel like in full stack software engineering, there are quite a lot of different kinds of people. There are those people who... They just do strictly the front-end and the back-end. This is kind of like, I think, what the traditional meaning of it is.

2:13

But in my case, I kind of expanded a little bit further. And to me, it goes towards being interested in a lot of topics that a lot of people may not be as interested in, like testing, performance, security. deployment, monitoring operations, you know, things like this. So in this regard,

2:32

I kind of consider myself to be a full stack dev, you know, really from all kinds of corners, I would say. I don't meet that many people that go that as far as I do, but I would say, you know, it doesn't really matter.

2:45

It's just that I have a lot of interests and this just happens to be why I have so many things that interest me. I kind of like to do a lot of different things and this makes it even more enjoyable for me.

2:56

Cool. Interesting. Well, on that call, on that Brazilian community call, one of the things you said that is that you were a teacher or at least had taught at a certain period of time than university students. And I'm really interested in this. So let's talk for a few minutes about your teaching experience because – I mean,

3:15

I talked to a lot of advanced developers now who might be, say, in their 40s and 50s, and they learned a certain way versus how you would be teaching a 20-year-old today. It's a totally different world. I mean, that's like 40-year difference, right? So talk to me a little bit about teaching Java or teaching computer science or

3:34

whatever it is that you taught, right? What was that experience like?

3:37

Sure. Yeah. So yes, that's correct. So I was teaching university students. I was doing two courses. One of them was I was teaching specifically university students that just started out and we had two variations of the same course. We had one variation where it was for the more advanced students, which I didn't teach, you know,

3:57

for the ones that already programmed before and for the ones that have next to none or no programming experience. Those were the ones that I was teaching. And I have to say it was really, you know, a cool experience. It was the first time I was teaching people from scratch to be able to code.

4:12

And we were also using Java, by the way. So we were teaching them in Java. You know, me having worked with Java almost my entire life or, you know, really for most of it, Java itself wasn't a problem. It was more like getting to know how to teach in the most effective way.

4:29

I feel like I had maybe less of a hard time with that because I was already giving talks at conferences. So this kind of helped me because I had this experience. But still, what it really helped me with as well was, you know, I had a little bit of this stage fright, which probably most of us have,

4:45

I think. But it kind of helped me get rid of that in a way, which was like a nice secondary benefit, I would say, because I was in front of students every week. But it was really interesting and I loved doing it. You know, I feel like as well,

4:59

that's from my perspective and also from what my students told me. I was able to teach Java quite well to people that never coded before, especially because I remember when I was learning to code in the beginning, I was in the same place. I was studying and that is how I learned Java through those courses.

5:19

And I know how it felt to never have programmed before. This was kind of something that I always got told by my students. They were telling me, oh, you know, it's so great that you still have somewhat of an understanding of how it feels to not understand everything instantly. And also I have to say,

5:35

I wasn't the best student back then, especially in the beginning, because I was really struggling. It was very hard for me. And I remember I was, especially in the beginning, I didn't have that good grades. And I always told my students, you know, when they were feeling really let down, I told them,

5:51

you have to realize I back then was just as you. I never coded a single line of code. And I also really struggled, but I persevered through it to see where I am now. And I'm also not shameful for telling them that I really had bad grades. You know, I told them, you know,

6:07

in my first programming course, the one that I'm teaching to you now, I just had a barely passing grade. which kind of is insane to believe if you're looking at it now. But I feel like this kind of really motivated a lot of students to see that, you know,

6:21

even if you are struggling and if you are not the best student, you can still make it through it. And I was especially glad to see that there were students that started out really struggling, but to see how much they worked for it and how much they improved and seeing, you know, I mean,

6:35

there are always those students that are great from the beginning. But I find it even more interesting when I have a stud…

Duke’s Corner Podcast with Marit van Dijk, a Java Champion and also a Java Developer Advocate at JetBrains. Marit will present on developer productivity with IntelliJ IDEA at JavaOne March 18-20 in California. Go to javaone.com!

Interview Archive

Transcript

Marit, Marit van Dijk from the Netherlands. Welcome to Duke's Corner. Hi, Jim.

0:04

Good to see you.

0:05

It's great to see you too. Listen, hey, Java 1 is coming up real quick, March 18th to 20th in Silicon Valley. So I understand you're a speaker. So let's pitch your session here a little bit. What are you talking about?

0:18

So I'm talking about developer productivity in IntelliJ IDEA, my favorite IDE, and we'll look at some of the features that can help you read and write code more quickly, make you a more productive and happy developer. And it's going to be a 100% live coding session.

0:34

Good. No slides. I love it. I'll be there. I love productivity issues, and that'll be really cool. And by the way, lots of other developers are doing all coding sessions as well. So that's great. Hey, listen, is this your first Java 1?

0:49

It is, actually. I'm really excited. Yeah.

0:52

Yeah. So what are you looking forward to? What have you heard about Java 1?

0:55

Well, there's going to be, of course, lots of people who actually work on the Java language, which is amazing. Lots of Java champions like myself. And I always enjoy meeting people from the Java community and exchanging our experiences in the hallway track.

1:11

Yeah, excellent. That hallway track is really important because there's a lot of people hanging around. It's going to be a lot of people there, very important people, and a lot of people from the community as well. I've been to about 10 Java 1s, and they don't disappoint.

1:23

So for everybody out there, March 18th through 20th in Silicon Valley, just go to java1.com. Everything's there. And thanks a lot, Marit. We'll see you soon. See you there.

Duke's Corner Podcast with Venkat Subramaniam, who is a Java Champion, professor, programmer, and a conference organizer. The conversation ranges from the upcoming JavaOne conference in California in March 2025 to building the Java community, engaging the next generation of Java developers, the importance of going to Java user groups, career building, the evolution of Java technology, agile development, release models, and his upcoming book — Cruising Along with Java. This is a jam packed episode that has something for everyone. Here's quick bit from the interview from Venkat: "One of the biggest contributions Java has made is to truly show to us the developers what agile development really should be!" I like it.

Interview Archive

Transcript

Venkat, Venkat Subramaniam welcome, welcome back to Duke's Corner!

0:05

hey, thanks, Jim, for having me here it's a great pleasure always to talk to you and and i i can't believe it's a new year and i'm gonna see in a few months actually so excited to talk to you now and again in a few months

0:16

Yeah, it's great. It is. I cannot believe it's 2025. That's shocking to me, actually. And yeah, you mentioned a few months. We're going to actually see each other in California. Java 1 is right around the corner, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to chat with you here today.

0:31

And I saw your name on the schedule. Of course, I expected that. So tell me a little bit. Let's just start off with Java 1 since we're going to actually since that's in March, March 18th through 20th. What are you looking forward to with Java 1 this year?

0:45

Oh, I'm super excited. I'm definitely very thankful for getting the opportunity to speak there as well. And one of the reasons I'm excited about being in Java 1 is, A, it's in California. So I have to say that being on Oracle campus absolutely excites me. Don't get me wrong.

1:04

I've been to a few different Java 1s over the years, back in time when it was in California, again in Vegas. But for some reason, I'm truly excited about being on the Oracle campus this time. To be at the home of where a lot of these things happen means a lot more than being

1:24

in a huge conference venue out in Vegas. So that's part of the excitement, not the only, though.

1:29

And it's a short flight from where you are. It really is.

1:33

It's like an hour or so, right?

1:37

Totally. How many Java 1s have you been to?

1:39

Oh, I can't remember. I'm going to say definitely quite a number.

1:45

So you've really seen sort of the evolution, not only of the conference itself, but of obviously the people, but of the technology as well. So actually, let's just stick with the conference for a second. What are you going to be talking about there?

1:56

Yeah, I'm going to be talking about really a talk focused on knowing your Java. And it's funny, you know, you may ask, well, wait a minute, Java is starting 30 years. We got a lot of people with a lot of experience now. Do you really need to talk about Know Your Java? And exactly my point. So essentially,

2:17

what I'm going to be talking about is, I favorably call it as, tuck your toes moment. I have seen a lot of developers in my consulting work. And to be very honest, myself, stub my toes and say, ouch, when I implement a certain feature and then begin to realize that the code is

2:38

behaving very differently than I expected it to be. Sometimes out of my ignorance or out of the ignorance of people who are using it, sometimes it's just not thinking through the consequences of what the code may do. And I often say, you don't want to get the call at 2 a.m.

2:57

on that Wednesday saying that your code has failed in production. So what I'm going to talk about are things I've seen in production that have led to problems because developers either have not fully understood a certain idea or it comes back to bite them in the back, me included.

3:16

And I've decided to take a very interactive approach towards this rather than, you know, just pressing slides and talk about stuff. What I do is obviously no slides in my talks, but I show them a piece of code and then interactively they tend to figure out what the code is doing.

3:36

And this counts really well for a larger audience because I use an interactive tool to pull their response. And then I show them the poll of the response. And I've given this talk a couple of times. And it's really fascinating to see how many developers figure out what the code actually does.

3:56

Then we dive in and talk about the actual behavior of the code and then extend it to things we need to pay attention to become really good developers with it. And in fact, what's fascinating about this is even AI tools quite often don't get these things right. That's what is the scary part.

4:19

People often jump in and say, oh, I don't need to do this right because I can use AI to do this. Well, I've actually seen AI tools fall into the same trap that programmers fall into. Well, guess what? Because AI has been trained on the two code that a lot of us have written over the time,

4:37

and if we have collectively made that mistake, it's no surprise that AI is going to make that mistake as well. So that's kind of essentially what I focus on in the talk, is the things that can bite you in the back, things that you need to know.

4:51

And then it's a very example-driven presentation where we look at a code, take a poll of the behavior, reflect on what we collectively identify, and then analyze the code, and then draw some conclusions on how to become better at dealing with similar code as we move forward. And to just emphasize things you need to know from this,

5:14

this is one of the things I often emphasize is you look at the syntax, but you should really see the semantics. That, to me, is the essence of programming. Syntax is what we look at all the time. But as developers, We need to really take the time to see through the semantics.

5:34

And this talk is really focused on the semantics. You know, I'm a huge fan of testament development. I like to write test cases. And every single example I show in the talk, compilers don't catch the problem. Any serious effort with unit testing often will not catch these problems. That's the scary part.

5:58

You can't delegate this to the tools and say or the techniques and say, gosh, I do all these. I don't have to worry about it. No, you do, because with all respect, we want to rely on compilers because they allow us to get early feedback on certain problems in the code.

6:16

And if a code passes through compiler, we can be confident to a certain level. Similarly, I'm a big fan of automated testing. That gives us confidence. So I'm not rejecting those tools and techniques, but those are necessary but not sufficient. Your knowledge of semantics still is relevant and important in spite of compilers

6:39

and test-driven development and AI tools, and that's kind of the emphasis of the talk.

6:44

This is fascinating to me. I'll tell you a little story. I'm going to comment on a few things you've said, but in this framework here. When I first met you, it was 2017 to 2018, and you were doing a keynote, and it was a coding session. sort of thing, obviously,

7:01

and I'm sitting there because I didn't know you at the time and I had to sort of get to know you really quickly because I was going to do an interview with you, a streaming interview right after your keynote, and I had to go up and introduce myself and then drag you off to the corner to do

7:14

this interview. So, I'm watching this keynote, and you're talking about, obviously, technical things, about software and stuff, but I was following it because I was getting this message from you. You were really looking at things from not only a micro level, but a macro level.

7:30

And I was seeing how I can apply that level of thinking to writing, you know, English, and... project management, because it was a way of thinking. And it sounds like everything you just said now, it sounds like a perspective you're taking in terms of writ…

Duke's Corner Java Podcast with Richard Fichtner as he previews his upcoming session at JavaOne in March and offers his perspective on what makes JavaOne special! Go to javaone.com and register and we'll see you there!

Interview Archive

Transcript

0:00

Richard, Richard Fischner from Germany. How are you doing, man? Welcome to Duke's Corner.

0:03

Hey, Jim, how are you doing?

0:05

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Hey, listen, Java 1 is coming up in Silicon Valley in March, March 18th through 20th, and I see you on the schedule, so obviously you're going to be there. What are you talking about?

0:15

I'm going to be talking about Apache Maven. That's the build system basically everybody uses in the Java space, and there's a lot of quirks around Maven. and there's a best practice talk so uh if you're using maven check it out there is

0:28

a lot of things to learn that that we come across the last 15 years so uh yeah something you can take home and use in your day-to-day life excellent excellent

0:37

well i'll look forward to that and i'll be there i'm gonna be the photographer at the conference so I'll shoot your session and we'll hang out a little bit. So, Richard, I got one final question for you before we go. I'm just talking to developers asking about Java 1, like the culture of Java 1, so why?

0:54

Why should a developer go to Java 1? What makes Java 1 special?

0:58

So JAW1 is very special for me and I think for a lot of other people because I didn't miss a JAW1 since 2012. So every JAW1 there was, I was there. And I kept coming back because I love the spirit there, sucking up some of this Silicon Valley vibe and talking to all the great people

1:16

behind this great technology that makes a living for me and a lot of people. And so, yeah. This is just the way to connect with tech and also with the people behind the tech. So this really speaks to me.

1:29

Excellent. Excellent. Well, I look forward to seeing you there. And anything, any final words before we go?

1:34

Yeah. Come to Java 1. Join us in the Silicon Valley and have some fun. Let's talk. Let's hang and talk some sweet Java tech.

Duke’s Corner Podcast with Venkat Subramaniam as he previews his upcoming session at JavaOne in March and offers his perspective on what makes JavaOne special! Go to javaone.com and register and we'll see you there! This is just a short JavaOne preview with Venkat. Later this week we'll release the full podcast where we cover many topics about software development — and more JavaOne too!

Interview Archive

Transcript

0:00

Venkat, Venkat Subramaniam, and welcome to Deuce Corner. Thank you, Jim. It's a great pleasure talking to you. Yeah, it's great to see you. Great to see you again. And looking forward to seeing you in a couple of months at Java 1. Java 1 is in California this year, and it's March 18th through the 20th in Redwood Shores.

0:18

So I saw you on the schedule. What are you going to be talking about?

0:21

I'm super excited for two reasons. One is I'm going to give a talk on Know Your Java, where I really get into the semantics that can be very problematic if we don't really understand really well. So in addition to giving the talk, which is extremely interactive, I am really looking forward to interacting with some amazing developers.

0:45

Java 1 fascinates me for two reasons. Not only do I get to see the core developers of the language, but I'm also going to be able to interact with Java champions, the other luminaries of Java language and practitioners of Java out in the field. So you got this three interesting groups of people merged together,

1:09

the creators of the language, the people who are experts and pushing and promoting the language, and the practitioners who are using the language as well. So you get to learn from three different perspectives, and I'm there to learn. And that's why I'm excited to be at Java 1.

1:27

I'm honestly looking forward to it in the middle of the March.

1:32

Excellent. Excellent. I'll definitely go to your session. I'm the photographer for the event. So I got to shoot your session. So if I'm a developer and I'm in Silicon Valley, why, why should I go to Java one? You've been to many Java ones. What's special about Java one?

1:44

You get to really not only learn about the evolution of Java, but to be able to sit down and ask the questions to people who are the developers buying the language. One of the questions I often have is, why is it this way? Or what are the consequences of using this?

2:03

And again, what are the performance implications, for example? So rather than passively hearing a talk on YouTube or elsewhere, you get to not only learn, but to ask bad questions, to bring your problems, to interact. I've got a set of things I want to talk about to people and I'm going to bring them

2:25

and I hope others bring their questions and and topics they want to discuss as well. So so it's a two way communication that excites me and not just a two way communication with anybody, but two way communication with relevant people who can actually give you sensible things you can actually use. That's why I'm going to be there.

2:44

Excellent. Well, early registration is till February 10th. So that's just right around the corner. And again, the March, March 18th through 20th. I'll see you there. Good forward.

Duke’s Corner Podcast with Sharat Chander, Senior Director, Java Product Management and Community Engagement. Shar and Jim summarized some community development achievements for 2024 and gave a peek into what's coming for 2025 — JavaOne! That's right, JavaOne 2025 will be held in March 18-20 in California and you can register right now at javaone.com.

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Duke’s Corner Podcast with Ted M. Young from the San Francisco Bay Area about all things Java and test driven development. Ted streams his coding sessions and builds community around his passion for excellence in software development. His first JavaOne was the first JavaOne! And he's been coding in Java ever since. His mantra is to "reduce the suffering and increase the joy of software development" and he's made Java his career. Ted also deeply appreciates the JVM: "It's one of the wonders of the software world." Can't beat that.

Interview Archive

Duke’s Corner Podcast with Donald Raab, a Java Champion, the founder of the Eclipse Collections project, and a perfectionist who always seeks the best quality code. The conversation ran wild around all things Java and Donald's experiences with the technology for decades. He spoke in detail about the twenty year history of the Eclipse Collections project, his interactions with engineers on OpenJDK, the OpenJDK Quality Outreach Project, and the benefits for everyone being involved with not only Java but the greater FOSS community. In fact, when talking about the community, Donald said that working with the community is like engaging "unlimited, untapped resources ... you said community, well, it's real." Donald's book on Eclipse Collections comes out soon too!

Interview Archive

Duke’s Corner Podcast with Piotr Przybyl, a Java Champion and developer advocate in Poland who realized at a young age that “given enough time I could write literally everything! The creativity is amazing! I love it!” Piotr is hard core about coding and his passion for technology comes thorough in this conversation, which ranges from how Piotr embraced Java in school, how he learned more Java on his own, and how he always gives back to the Java community around the world. 

Interview Archive