The AI revolution isn't replacing Java developers. No, it's forcing us to think harder.

Welcome to another episode of the Foojay Podcast! Today, we're talking about AI and Java, how it's changing the way we work, what we need to watch out for, and why understanding what's really happening matters more than ever.

I recorded interviews at Devoxx and JFall and spoke with people who build and use this technology every day.

Marianne Hoornenborg opened my eyes to something important: every time an AI generates a token, there's a massive amount of computation happening behind the scenes.

Viktor Gamov and Baruch Sadogursky did something really cool: they tested six different AI coding tools live on stage with the same task. The results were all over the place! But they found that the tools with access to good documentation performed much better.

Stephen Chin showed me how graph databases can make AI responses more reliable by providing a solid source of truth rather than relying on vector search.

Mario Fusco works on LangChain4J, a leading Java framework for AI. He explained that breaking down large tasks into smaller ones and using specialized agents can help reduce errors—hallucinations, as they're called.

Jeroen Benckhuijsen and Martijn Dashorst shared their experiences working with enterprise Java. Even as frameworks are becoming lighter and we're running everything in containers, there are still complex problems that require real developer expertise.

Maarten Mulders reminds us that AI is a tool, not a replacement—especially when you're solving problems no one has tackled before. You still need to know what you're doing.

And finally, Simon Maple from Tessel discussed moving beyond vibe coding towards a more reliable, production-ready approach, using specifications to guide AI tools.

00:00 Introduction of topics and guests

02:12 Marianne Hoornenborg

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mhoornenborg/
• The Simple Math behind AI
• The cost of tokens when using LLMs

06:54 Viktor Gamov and Baruch Sadogursky

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikgamov/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbaruch/
• Robocoders, about the many agentic tools that can be used for vibe coding
• https://context7.com/

16:24 Stephen Chin

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveonjava/
• Graph versus relational databases
• Explaining MCP and Agents

23:09 Mario Fusco

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-fusco-3467213/
• AI and LangChain4j in Quarkus
• Coding tools with AI

35:43 Jeroen Benckhuijsen

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroenbenckhuijsen/
• Java in business, Evolutions in Java
• Making use of containers and Kubernetes
• Learning from the community

41:44 Martijn Dashorst

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dashorst/
• Investigating an OOM-killer in Kubernetes with the help of AI

49:37 Maarten Mulders

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mthmulders/
• How AI may impact our jobs
• How to improve your Maven builds

56:13 Simon Maple

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonmaple/
• AI developer tool Tessl
• Spec-driven vibe coding
• Secure AI development

01:02:12 Conclusion

Episode 85 of the Foojay Podcast. All info, show notes, and links are available at https://foojay.io/today/category/podcast/.

What if the future of Java depends on who we invite to learn it today?

In this Foojay Podcast, we're diving into something that affects all of us in the Java community: How can we inspire the next generation of developers, and how do we make the developer world more inclusive?

You'll hear four incredible guests who are actively working to make tech more accessible and inclusive. First, Daniel De Luca talks about Devoxx for Kids and how they support underprivileged students in IT education. Then Kenny Schwegler shares his insights on how we can actively promote diversity and inclusion in tech. Cassandra Chin, the youngest Java Champion and author, talks about inspiring young coders through hands-on projects and making technology fun. And finally, Igor De Souza discusses his mission to bring Java into Raspberry Pi education and bring more Java into coding clubs worldwide.

These conversations share one message: Talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn't. And we have the power to change that!

01:19 Daniel De Luca

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldeluca/
• Founder Devoxx4Kids
• Activities of Devoxx4Kids
• How to inspire children of all ages to get interested in technology

14:24 Kenny Schwegler

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenny-baas/
• How to build inclusive, diverse teams
• How the IT industry became male-focused because of IBM marketing
• Books:
• https://www.manning.com/books/collaborative-software-design
• https://learningsystemsthinking.com/

26:07 Cassandra Chin

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-chin-developer/
• Inspiring children and parents into technology
• Fun projects to introduce engineering to children
• Book:
• https://www.amazon.nl/Raising-Young-Coders-Teaching-Programming/dp/B0DVBQZ483
• 20% Discount code on the Springer website "APAUT"
• https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/979-8-8688-1393-1

32:45 Igor De Souza

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/igfasouza/
• Java in code clubs like CoderDojo
• Java in space
• Collecting Java tutorials and courses for children
• Java Catalog on Foojay GitHub
• https://github.com/foojayio/java-education-catalog
• Pi4J library
• https://www.pi4j.com/
• HelloWorld magazine:
• https://downloads.ctfassets.net/oshmmv7kdjgm/6jGvFLH86Ems5AJR84Krsk/3888c571ddc1543c9cdb01ce5eff616d/HelloWorld28.pdf

55:27 Conclusions

In this Foojay Podcast, we're exploring a critical topic that's becoming increasingly important in our industry: developing sustainable software that is both performant and environmentally friendly.

At the Devoxx and JFall conferences, I had fascinating conversations about how we as Java developers can make a real impact on both our cloud costs and our carbon footprint. And it's interesting to learn how these two goals are often perfectly aligned: what's good for your budget is usually good for the planet too.

We start with Daniel Witkowski. He published an article on Foojay that takes us on a deep dive into performance tuning. He explains why optimizing your code can have a thousand times more impact than saving 30% on cloud costs, and walks us through his journey of turning a simple integer validation challenge into a masterclass on Java performance optimization.

Next, I caught up with Ko Turk, who shares his passion for sustainable engineering and space exploration. He introduces us to Kepler, a tool for monitoring the energy consumption of your applications, and explains how performance optimization naturally leads to sustainability improvements.

Then Ronald Dehuysser, founder of JobRunr, reveals how his open-source job-scheduling library now enables carbon-aware job processing. He explains how JobRunr can automatically schedule non-time-critical jobs to run when renewable energy is most available.

And finally, Jan Ouwens joins us to discuss practical strategies for reducing both costs and CO2 emissions in your applications. He explains why cloud spending is actually a good proxy for your carbon footprint.

00:00 Introduction of topic and guests

02:07 Daniel Witkowski

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwitkowski
• https://foojay.io/today/the-art-of-performance-tuning-why-saving-30-in-the-cloud-means-nothing-if-your-code-wastes-1000x-more/
• https://foojay.io/today/foojay-podcast-83/
• Why Saving 30% in the Cloud Means Nothing if Your Code Wastes 1000× More
• Performance tuning is less about syntax and more about craftsmanship.

29:46 Ko Turk

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ko-turk-b271b929/
• https://github.com/sustainable-computing-io/kepler
• Sustainable engineering
• Kubernetes Efficient Power Level Exporter (Kepler)

32:46 Ronald Dehuysser

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronalddehuysser/
• https://www.jobrunr.io/en/
• Carbon-aware job processing with JobRunr
• Growing from an open-source project to a company

37:36 Jan Ouwens

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/janouwens/
• https://jqno.nl/
• Reducing the cost and CO2-emissions of your application
• Private cloud versus cloud providers

45:14 Outro

Welcome to another episode of the Foojay Podcast! Just like in the previous episode, I bring you conversations from two of Europe's premier Java conferences - Devoxx in Belgium and JFall in the Netherlands.

At these conferences, I had the opportunity to speak with members of the Java community about topics ranging from the evolution of Java itself to mobile development, performance optimization, and even automotive security.

My first guest is Johan Vos, a Java Champion who takes us on a journey through Java's history - from porting Java to Linux in 1995 to his current work on bringing Java and JavaFX to mobile and embedded devices through the Java On Mobile project.

Then we'll hear from Stephen Chin, author of "The Definitive Guide to Modern Java Clients with JavaFX," who shares insights on building cross-platform client applications and reflects on how his daughter has followed in his footsteps to become a published author and technology educator.

From JFall, Joseph Phillips joins us to discuss Java's evolution, the differences between REST and gRPC, and whether virtual threads have replaced the need for async implementations in modern Java applications.

Next, François Martin walks us through the world of Java performance benchmarking with JMH - the Java Microbenchmark Harness - and explains why it's so valuable for comparing different implementations and optimizing code.

Wouter De Geus shares his inspiring journey from finance and mathematics into Java development, and how his employer, the Dutch Tax Authority, supports open-source contributions and the Java community.

And finally, Roald Nefs demonstrates something truly unique - using Java and the Foreign Function & Memory API to hack into automotive systems, revealing important security considerations for both hardware and software.

Content

00:00 Introduction of topics and guests

02:11 Johan Vos

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanvos/
• History of Java on Linux
• How the Java language and runtime are stable and evolving at the same time
• Looking at the future of Write-Once-Run-Everywhere with Java(FX) on Mobile
• https://openjdk-mobile.github.io/

19:04 Stephen Chin

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveonjava/
• Author of "The Definitive Guide to Modern Java Clients with JavaFX"
• Cassandra Chin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-chin-developer/
• Her book: https://www.amazon.nl/Raising-Young-Coders-Teaching-Programming/dp/B0DVBQZ483

23:22 Joseph Phillips

• https://foojay.social/deck/@infosec812
• Java evolutions, community
• REST versus gRPC
• Do we still need async or are virtual threads a better solution?

27:49 François Martin

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/fran%C3%A7oismartin
• Java performance micro benchmarks with jmh
• https://github.com/openjdk/jmh

33:30 Wouter De Geus

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadegeus/
• Moved from finance to software development
• Contributing back to the open-source community

39:33 Roald Nefs

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/roaldnefs/
• Hacking cars with the FFM API
• Hardware and software security concerns
• What you can learn from the Java community

46:29 Outro

In this Foojay Podcast, we're diving deep into some of the most exciting developments happening within the OpenJDK and TornadoVM projects.

At the Devoxx and JFall conferences, we spoke with several speakers and visitors about some of the major themes that are shaping the future of Java development. The first guest is Moritz Halbritter from the Spring Engineering team. He provides us with more insights into Project Leyden and how it's improving Java startup times through ahead-of-time compilation and profiling. We'll learn how Spring Boot developers can already take advantage of these improvements today.

Next, we'll hear from John Cecerralli at Azul about performance optimizations, the evolution from x86 to ARM64 architectures, and how OpenJDK Projects bring improvements to the JVM itself at levels we couldn't achieve before.

Then, Balkrishna Rawool will guide us through the world of vector databases and explain how Java's Vector API from Project Panama is perfectly positioned for AI use cases, despite its development beginning years before the current AI boom.

And finally, we'll meet some of the team members behind TornadoVM - Christos Kotselidis and Michalis Papadimitriou from the University of Manchester - who will explain to us how Java developers can now harness the power of GPUs for AI workloads, running large language models in pure Java without leaving the Java ecosystem. They also explain the connection between TornadoVM and the OpenJDK Project Babylon.

00:00 Introduction of topics and guests

01:58 Moritz Halbritter

* https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-halbritter-9301a1b1/

* Project Leyden and how it can already be used with Spring

* Difference between the approach of Project Leyden and CRaC

11:02 John Cecerralli

* https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-ceccarelli-95b7041/

* OpenJDK evolutions in Project Leyden

* Startup time improvements in Azul Prime

* Java performance

* ARM Graviton

17:08 Balkrishna Rawool

* https://www.linkedin.com/in/balkrishnarawool/

* Vector API, project Panama

22:44 Christos Kotselidis, Michalis Papadimitriou

* https://www.linkedin.com/in/michalis-papadimitriou/

* https://www.linkedin.com/in/kotselidis/

* https://www.tornadovm.org/

* https://www.tornadovm.org/gpullama3

* https://github.com/beehive-lab/TornadoVM

* TornadoVM status update, Java on GPU

* How TornadoVM relates to Project Babylon and Project Panama

33:42 Outro

Maven 4 is approaching its release, bringing many improvements to the build tool powering millions of Java projects.

In this Foojay Podcast episode, we talk about Apache Maven 4, a significant milestone that has been years in the making. Maven has been the backbone of Java dependency management and build automation since the early 2000s; however, the road to version 4 has been a long and deliberate one. With significant performance improvements, a modernized API for plugin developers, and changes that affect how we think about project structure, Maven 4 represents both an evolution and a revolution. What does this mean for the millions of developers who depend on Maven daily? How should teams prepare for the transition? And what's the story behind the Maven Central Repository changes that have been making headlines? To answer these questions and more, we're joined by a few of the many contributors who are actually building Maven 4 and stewarding its ecosystem.

Guests
   Hervé Boutemy
      https://www.linkedin.com/in/hboutemy/ 
   Guillaume Nodet
      https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumenodet/ 
   Maarten Mulders
      https://www.linkedin.com/in/mthmulders/ 

Content

00:00 Introduction of the topic and guests
04:23 Status of Maven 4 release
   https://maven.apache.org/whatsnewinmaven4.html 
   https://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-migration-to-mvn4.html 
07:57 Why we needed a new Maven version
   https://maarten.mulders.it/2020/11/whats-new-in-maven-4/ 
   https://maarten.mulders.it/2021/03/introduction-to-maven-toolchains/ 
   https://www.javaadvent.com/2021/12/from-maven-3-to-maven-5.html 
12:37 You can already start using Maven 4
14:35 Some benefits of switching to Maven 4
18:52 Changes in the pom file, and yes, still XML
20:30 Changes for Maven plugin developers and integrators
22:24 Changes for Maven users, for instance, the need for Java 17
28:34 Maven The Tool versus Maven The Repository
34:51 Reasons for the change in authentication for uploads to Maven Central
36:01 The one and only Maven Central URL to use
   https://central.sonatype.com/ 
38:04 About the very first "server" hosting the Maven repository
40:32 The importance of setting up your own caching repository
   https://www.sonatype.com/blog/maven-central-and-the-tragedy-of-the-commons 
   https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-not-free-a-joint-statement-on-sustainable-stewardship/ 
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t74ClffSUW0 
44:04 The relationship between POM, BOM, BOM-POM , and SBOM
49:43 Gradle versus Maven
57:54 How to contribute to Maven or any other open-source project, and how to get the support of your company to do so
01:05:23 How to upgrade your projects from Maven 3 to 4
   https://maven.apache.org/tools/mvnup.html 

This is part 2 of the interviews recorded on September 19th, 2025, at the first AI4Devs Conference (https://amsterdam.ai4devs.io/) in Amsterdam. In Part 1, we explored many AI-related topics as libraries, security, infrastructure, use cases, and more. In this second part, we'll dive into data science, tools for better AI development, Java in the cloud, and get a behind-the-scenes look at how the conference came together. 

I also asked these guests the same opening question: 'What's your name, and what brings you to this conference?'

00:00 Introduction

00:43 Eileen Kapel
   Data Scientist, building an evaluating a model, taking the enduser into account
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileenkapel/ 

06:13 Jonathan Ellis and Ryan Svihla
   Coding with AI with Brokk, AI-native code platform, Java language improvements while keeping stability
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbellis/ 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-svihla-096752182/ 
   https://brokk.ai/ 
   https://foojay.io/today/indexing-all-of-wikipedia-on-a-laptop/ 

16:24 David Parry
   Qodo, AI developer tools, empowering engineering teams to standardize code quality and move fast with AI
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/daviddryparry/ 
   https://www.qodo.ai/ 

28:46 Alessandro Stefouli-Vozza
   Java in the cloud, Impact of our job on the environment and our future, Green Software Foundation, Dutch Cloud Native meetup and conference
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandrovozza/ 
   https://cloudnative.amsterdam/ 
   https://greensoftware.foundation/ 
   Article by Miro about energy usage: https://foojay.io/today/research-measuring-energy-consumption-in-programming-languages-for-ai-applications/ 

35:02 Sushant Shekhar
   Using Java and AI, Moved from Java to other languages and back, Building your own models versus tweaking
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/sushant-shekhar-2b43ba17/ 

39:09 Arno Koehler
   Organisator, Ai code experiments versus production use, Schiphol POC, Kotlin versus Java versus Scala, The power of the JVM
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnokoehler/ 

45:37 Joost Kaan
   About organizing the conference, Python and Java driving AI forward
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/joost-kaan/ 

50:45  Coen de Waal, Samantha Burattini, and Luis San Martin
   Conference sponsor, Use of AI in a banking environment
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/coen-de-waal/ 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-burattini/ 

54:51 Nahir Vila
   Student, How the youth is using AI 

57:33 Jonathan Vila
   AI4Devs Organizer, How the conference started and a lookback at the end of the day, How AI can be used when writing articles
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanvila/ 

01:05:58 Outro

On September 19th, 2025, the first AI4Devs conference (https://amsterdam.ai4devs.io/) took place in Amsterdam. I grabbed my camera and microphone to talk with speakers and attendees about the revolution in AI-powered coding and application development. In this first part, we'll explore Spring libraries, security, infrastructure and scaling, real-world use cases, event streaming, JetBrains tools, and more...

I asked all my guests the same opening question: 'What's your name, and what brings you to this conference?' Let's get started!

00:00 Introduction

00:44 Christian Tzolov and Josh Long
   Spring AI, Spring MCP, Spring Security
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlong/ 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzolov/ 

17:07 Brian Vermeer
   AI and security and the responsibility of the developer
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianvermeer/ 

27:57 Camille Nigon and Maarten Vandeperre
   Quarkus, Scaling AI applications, the cost of using LLMs
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/camille-nigon/ 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/maarten-vandeperre/ 

36:15 Luca Berton
   Infrastructure for AI  applications 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaberton/ 
   https://www.youtube.com/@BertonLuca 

41:15 Soham Dasgupta
   Real life AI use cases 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/dasguptasoham/ 
   https://github.com/marketplace?type=models 

48:03 Mary Grygleski
   Event driven agents to handle complex flows
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-grygleski/ 

55:04 Anton Arhipov
   Java and Kotlin at JetBrains, Junie AI
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonarhipov/ 

01:06:07 Outro

Episode 78 of the Foojay Podcast. All info, show notes, and links are available at https://foojay.io/today/category/podcast/.

We're excited to present the first episode of the Foojay Podcast's fifth season, marking the release of OpenJDK 25!

For the first time, an OpenJDK release is aligned with the year, and we can welcome release 25 in 2025. As usual in the release podcast, I have my regular guest, Simon Ritter. And in this episode, we are joined by Balkrishna Rawool to talk about all the new features in this new OpenJDK version.

Guests

   Simon Ritter
      https://www.linkedin.com/in/siritter/ 
   Balkrishna Rawool
      https://www.linkedin.com/in/balkrishnarawool/

Content

00:00 Introduction of topic and guests
01:21 How important is release 25 and upgrading your runtimes?
   https://jdk.java.net/25/
06:00 Process of releasing a new OpenJDK version and looking forward to version 26
08:16 What are JEPs and OpenJDK projects
09:20 Project Leyden
   https://openjdk.org/projects/leyden/
   JEP 514: Ahead-of-Time Command-Line Ergonomics
      https://openjdk.org/jeps/514
   JEP 515: Ahead-of-Time Method Profiling
      https://openjdk.org/jeps/515
11:28 Leyden compared to other solutions
16:21 Project Valhalla
   https://openjdk.org/projects/valhalla/
17:06 JEP 519: Compact Object Headers
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/519
17:40 JEP 508: Vector API (Tenth Incubator)
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/508
18:58 Why Vector API is taking a long time to get finalized
21:04 JEP 502: Stable (Immutable) Values
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/502
23:17 Project Loom
   https://openjdk.org/projects/loom/
23:30 JEP 506: Scoped Values
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/506
24:13 JEP 505: Structured Concurrency (Fifth Preview)
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/505
29:22 How Java evolved over 30 years
33:34 Project Amber
   https://openjdk.org/projects/amber/
34:28 JEP 507: Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Third Preview)
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/507
35:59 JEP 512: Compact Source Files and Instance Main Methods
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/512
37:36 JEP 511: Module Import Declarations
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/511
38:36 JEP 513: Flexible Constructor Bodies
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/513
39:12 What's next in Project Amber
43:25 What you can learn from JEPs, OpenJDK projects, and mailing lists
44:21 JEP 521: Generational Shenandoah
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/521
   Trash Talk by Gerrit Grunwald
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlwDe-hlSdI
48:16 JEP 510: Key Derivation Function API
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/510
49:30  JEP 470: PEM Encodings of Cryptographic Objects (Preview)
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/470
51:28 About Java Flight Recorder
52:27 JEP 509: JFR CPU-Time Profiling (Experimental)
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/509
52:44 JEP 518: JFR Cooperative Sampling
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/518
53:15 JEP 520: JFR Method Timing & Tracing
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/520
53:38 More about JFR and comparing with GC logs
57:04 JEP 503: Remove the 32-bit x86 Port
   https://openjdk.org/jeps/503
58:54 Looking forward to the following versions
01:00:58 Conclusion

This is the first Foojay podcast in Spanish. It's also the shortest one and the final of season 4 ;-) Jonathan Vila "highjacked" the microphone from Geertjan Wielenga (See episode 76, https://foojay.io/today/foojay-podcast-76-devbcn-report-part-1-learn-from-the-community/) during the DevBcn conference in Barcelona and interviewed a few of the participants for this first Spanish-only edition of the podcast.

Stay tuned and subscribe to the podcast in your favorite app or on YouTube. We're taking a short break and will be back in September with the launch of Java 25!

00:00 Introduction
00:39 Marlene Maldonado, DevBcn Organization
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlene-maldonado-de-s%C3%A1 
02:10 Barbara Teruggi, Speaker, Threat Modelling
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-teruggi/ 
05:04 Santiago Rincon, CFP Member and Attendee
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/santiago-rincon-martinez 
07:56 Marlene Maldonado, Vicente Soriano,  Volunteers
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/visomar 
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlene-maldonado-de-s%C3%A1 
10:25 Alvaro Navarro, Speaker, API Design
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/anavarro 
12:37 Vicente Cabanes, Sponsor, Grupo Castilla
   https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicente-cabanes/