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Hey, everybody.
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How you doing?
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Welcome back.
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This is Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations, and we are at Duke’s Corner.
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And the special guest tonight with me here is Jonathan Vila from Barcelona, Spain.
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Jonathan, welcome.
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Welcome to Duke’s Corner.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for inviting me.
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And well, our conversation will be interesting for the audience.
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Good, good.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I was talking to some people on my team and I said, who can I interview?
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I’ve been running out of names.
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I need some people to talk to.
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And they said, oh, you ought to talk to Jonathan.
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I said, oh, okay, cool.
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And then I looked at your stuff and I said,
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oh,
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I’m sure we’ve crossed paths in various conferences and stuff.
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But recently I’ve been not going to conferences.
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So I’m meeting a lot of
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people for the first time here on this podcast.
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And for me,
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it’s great because I can reach out to the community and meet a lot of people that I
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wouldn’t have already met,
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right?
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So let’s just start off with, tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.
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yeah well i i’m based in barcelona in spain i’ve been working as developer for more
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than 30 years now i have to say that i’ve tried and used lots of languages um i
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hate some of them and i love the some of them um i have special memories you have a
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very clear definition there of love and hate that’s interesting oh yeah yeah
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definitely it’s uh well there are some that i love some that i hate and some in the
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middle
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But yeah,
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and currently I’m working as a developer advocate,
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following the advocacy role that I’ve been like doing in my spare time for 10 years.
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And now finally I have a job or they pay my mortgage for this.
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and yeah basically the last language that i’ve been using for more than 15 years
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now it’s java with a temporary hiccup uh with go but yeah i have a lot of passion
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with java and the community and yeah that’s that’s me basically
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Cool, cool.
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Let’s just start in with the love-hate bit there.
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I like that the best.
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How do you develop a love-hate relationship with the technology?
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Well, it’s a good question.
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Definitely, it’s something personal.
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I mean, it’s not that the language is good or bad.
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It’s how you use it.
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Well, I don’t know in the audience are for sure there are people that are from the 70s.
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It’s me.
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and when i was a kid there were lots of kung fu movies in in those times there were
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like the tiger style against the i don’t know snake style and those kind of movies
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but it always was exactly the same so it’s not about the tool per se but it’s how
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the tool interacts with you so in some cases for me having a language that is not
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forcing me to have pipes for instance
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well for me it’s not i i prefer the java way with types instead of other languages
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that they were not forcing me to use types has benefits and drawbacks obviously but
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in the end it’s about how do you feel with that technology and definitely there are
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some languages that i love like delphi i know the audience are coming from pascal
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and then delphi c at that at that time and also java
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In other languages, well, JavaScript is something that is above me.
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I don’t know.
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I’ve tried.
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Above you?
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You’re an expert in Java, but JavaScript is above you?
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Please explain that.
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Oh, I mean, above me, it’s like, well, probably I didn’t translate it from Spanish the right way.
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I mean, I cannot stand it.
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So I cannot fight with JavaScript.
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Okay.
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it’s uh yeah i can i cannot it’s um so i used it for three years but it’s been
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quite a while and i didn’t like it python was a language that i struggled with it
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too but well in the end it’s uh depending on
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time of your career that you’ve faced that language and it’s like I don’t know some
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things that I didn’t like when I was 30 probably now I like I like them now so it’s
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something everything changes that’s that’s basically the story about hate and love
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Okay, so you said something also that I found interesting.
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You’ve been in software for all those years,
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but just the last 10 years or so,
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I think you said 30 years,
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and just the last 10 with Java,
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that’s pretty recent in the sense of you had a lot of experience before you started
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using Java.
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Why was that?
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Well, probably I didn’t say it very well.
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It was 15.
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So, but yeah, I have to say that I jumped into Java, not would say it was like a lot.
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I mean,
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we were at that time in that company,
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they were building a lot of artifacts with Delphi and they had some issues in order
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to interact with external services regarding hospitality,
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sales and bookings and so on.
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And I started reading about other alternatives and I found Java as an interesting
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language with a lot of libraries and support.
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So I decided to try it and I loved it and it worked very well.
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And that was basically why I jumped into Java.
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And I have changed from language not because I wanted to.
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So I moved from C to Pascal to Visual Basic,
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JavaScript,
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Python,
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Go,
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just because the company was using that language.
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So it was only a tool.
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But definitely when I tried Java, I started loving it.
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And I tried to move to Go, but definitely it was not the right move.
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I wanted to also move back to Java.
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So that’s basically the reason why I started with Java.
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Well, basically with the other languages too.
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So what makes Java so special then?
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I mean,
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so,
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I mean,
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that’s a part of,
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that’s one of the languages that you love,
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but you know,
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talk a little bit about why.
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Is it some of the features?
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Does it help you save time?
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Is it, is it just how the, you know, how it affects you as a developer?
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Does it, does it allow you to do things that you can’t do in other languages?
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well definitely you can use several languages to do the same thing some of them are
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more optimal on some specific tasks but let’s be honest most of the developers are
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not in niche use cases broad use cases so rest apis or uh yeah
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backend services.
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So there’s a lot of people there.
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And in that space, you can find several languages.
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But for me, what I like a lot of Java is first the community that it is behind.
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So this is something that I love from Java.
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You find a community, one community behind Java.
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You don’t find different communities per library, per server.
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You have a huge
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unique community behind java so this is for me super interesting and also the
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language itself it’s it forces you in order to think the right approach for doing
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things it’s not that well i always say that some languages allow you to not specify
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types not specify functions methods anything
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But then they rely on the developer experience in order to have.
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In this case,
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the language itself is like forcing a good way of using it because it is forcing
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you to think about the different concepts.
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that you need to translate into classes, methods, variables.
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So you need to think.
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And that for me, it’s very interesting.
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I prefer that than other approaches where you are super free to do a lot of things.
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But then,
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as I said,
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it relies on the developer experience in order to have good code that can be easily read.
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So that’s also one of the important parts of Java.
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interesting so it actually what you’re describing enforces sort of a discipline or
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exactly at the very least it does change how you or i should say if that well i
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don’t know just affects how you write code yeah exactly definitely that’s that’s
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the enforces a discipline on the language itself for some people this is not a
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benefit but they prefer more freedom but for me i prefer this way
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I have to say that also the recent modifications or recent features in Java 21 at least,
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preview mode,
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if I’m not wrong,
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are allowing a more relaxed way of doing things with unnamed classes and so on.
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just because, but they are focused on people that are starting to learn Java.
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Also have to say that for me, Java had two drawbacks.
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I would say one was the learning curve at the beginning.
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Uh,
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in some cases it’s hard because you can not implement anything without knowing
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object oriented design and also
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Another point that I didn’t like is it needs the JVM running on each machine.
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Therefore,
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in some cases,
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definitely if you are comparing with native languages,
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the Java performance was not that good.
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But with recent changes and ahead of time compilation approaches that
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we have now different libraries, now performance is no longer an issue.
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And they are also modifying the language in order to allow smoother and easier learning curve.
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So definitely all the drawbacks are deleted, removed from the language as we speak.
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So that’s great.
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Preston Pyshkoff 1 So it’s nice to hear that the development of the language itself is evolving.
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Yeah, it’s in constant change.
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So we are having new features,
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new libraries,
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new API methods,
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but people behind the JDK are also evolving the language in order to fulfill the needs,
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in some cases,
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just comparing Java with other languages that already have that approach.
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And they realize that, yeah, definitely having unnamed classes may help, for instance, in this case,
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to use Java in order to find a faster approach to learn and do things with Java.
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Sometimes if the first steps on the language or on anything are hard,
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probably you do not progress and you change the tool at that point.
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So making easy the first steps definitely will impact on having more people using Java in the future.
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And do you see that happening?
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Because one of the things you mentioned is the community,
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you know,
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and I know you do sessions at conferences and things like that.
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And when you go to these events, you see a lot of young people.
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So there’s definitely a lot of young people learning Java in school or on their own.
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And they’re mixing quite nicely with the veterans, you know, who’ve been around for a while.
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So it seems that the, what’s the word I’m looking for?
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The on-ramp essentially to Java is much, much easier now than it was 15, 20 years ago.
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Well, that’s a good point.
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Also, because what we find in some cases, people use a language for a particular task.
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So nowadays,
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if we talk about AI or machine learning or big data,
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in most of the cases,
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people will answer Python.
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In other cases, people will answer JavaScript, not JS.
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And then some people just simply, oh, I’m going to do something in big data, therefore,
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I need to use Python,
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but slowly this is changing because you can now use Java in several projects that
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in the past were not like occupied by Java.
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But nowadays Java is also filling those gaps.
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For instance, I don’t know, we have AI.
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And there’s a project called Langchain.
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It has basically,
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I think the official implementation is Python and there’s another one in JavaScript
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or the other way around.
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I can’t remember.
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But we have also a Langchain for Java project.
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So also Java is in that space.
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We have also Jupyter Notebook with kernels that are using Java.
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So Java can be used in most of the use cases, and people are starting to use it also in those spaces.
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I have to say that for young people,
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we need to invest more time on,
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let’s say,
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publicity,
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because sometimes it’s like,
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oh,
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Java,
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yes,
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or old things or big backends.
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but not for big data.
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You are wrong.
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There are some things in that space too.
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So yeah, the community will help people that are coming to this area in order to use Java.
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You mentioned that one of the things you like about Java,
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aside from the specific features in the technology,
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is the community itself.
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So talk a little bit about how you work with the community.
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Okay, I can start talking about our story.
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I didn’t know anything about communities until 2012.
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I was, I would say, the regular developer working for big companies.
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You go, you start at nine, Spain more or less, you leave at seven, you go home, that’s it.
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Tomorrow, next day, nothing else.
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But then we had an issue in our company and decided to find people.
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I was thinking, for sure there is more people with the same issue.
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And definitely they have solved it before us.
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So I was searching on the internet and I found the Barcelona Java user.
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What is that?
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I don’t know.
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I pinged them.
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And you know, the story is I was not also a massive user of Twitter.
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But I pinged the guys in the Barcelona Java user group, and I asked them, okay, do you know Spring?
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Because we have this issue.
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Probably you can help us.
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And they said, okay, we can meet.
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We can meet in a bar, close by.
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Yeah, fine.
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On my way to the bar,
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I tweeted,
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we are going to meet a group of people with the Barcelona Java community in order
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to talk about Spring.
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So I went to the bar with some colleagues and we were talking.
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And at that moment, a person came with a laptop and said, this is the meeting about Spring.
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Yes.
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Who are you?
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He said, well, I’m a person that gives trainings about Spring.
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I saw your tweet and I came here to explain about Spring.
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And I have to say that at that moment, my mind
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So I thought, this is what a community is, right?
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And after that, we started also doing meetups.
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People came,
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asked for speakers in order to talk about one technology that I wanted to know that
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was called OSGI.
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Again,
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from my home to the bakery,
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I tweeted,
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is there someone in the world that wants to talk about OSGI?
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One week later, we had a person from Paris that came for two days and gave a presentation in a workshop.
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So it was like, well, insane.
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So yeah, I’ve been in love with community and the interactions that happened there.
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And I have to say that for me, at least.
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I have a professional life before and a completely different one after being
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involved with the community.
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Everything has changed dramatically in terms of salary,
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conditions,
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people that know me,
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people that I know,
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technologies that I’m in contact with.
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Yeah, definitely community changed my professional life completely.
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That’s awesome.
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That’s really, that’s really cool.
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I mean,
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it’s,
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it’s,
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I’ve often wondered,
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I’ve been,
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I’ve been building software communities for a long time for over 20 years,
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but I’ve often wondered,
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why,
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why is this field?
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Why is this discipline is particularly software developers?
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so community-oriented.
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Because in all human societies, there is this concept of communities.
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People come together and they share things.
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It’s a core part of our evolution and survival as a species.
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We can’t do a whole heck of a lot alone.
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But within the discipline,
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within the various professions,
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software developers seem to have a real core competency in this concept of
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community engagement.
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Well, yes.
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And I think the big difference for the good and for the bad,
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let me explain about this,
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is that in a lot of cases,
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our job is also our passion.
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This has benefits and drawbacks, I have to say.
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But the benefit is that you are working eight,
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nine hours developing,
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and after you work,
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you go to a meetup to attend a one-hour talk from one guy that is developing something.
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and you do it on your spare time to learn something that you could apply to your job or not.
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And I have to say that in some cases with friends that are not developers,
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when I try to explain this,
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they don’t understand that.
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So it’s like, so somebody is giving a talk for free.
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Yes.
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And you are attending that talk for free.
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Well,
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yes,
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they give you even brings some food and you do it on your spare time for something
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that is related to your job.
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yes this is not common and i think it it happens in very few professions i think
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i’ve been doing it for so long it just seems normal now you know it just seems
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normal you know i don’t uh it’s wild but yeah but ask that ask that to a lawyer oh
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my goodness
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Oh, to a doctor.
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I don’t, it’s not.
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Yeah,
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well,
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the scientific community is supposed to be based on community in terms of sharing,
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like when you do a study,
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you’re supposed to share your materials and methods and you want this concept of replication,
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you know,
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but I find that a lot of
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scientists are pretty darn close.
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They don’t publish all their data.
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They certainly don’t publish the raw data.
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And so a lot of science,
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I think it’s just,
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it’s in fact,
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I think there’s a lot of things that the software development community,
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the modern software development community can actually teach the scientific community.
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So they, you know, so they could be more open.
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Definitely.
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It’s not about only the community.
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It’s about also the open source.
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We are publishing a source code that anybody can take and do the same that we are doing.
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And we are invested a lot of time on that.
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Definitely there is
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is something different in our mindset.
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So I was going to ask you why you became a developer.
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And when I talk to people about why they became engineers,
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developers,
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many of them became developers for the community,
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because they were influenced by the community when they were young in school,
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maybe.
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But you only got involved in the community later.
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So why did you become an engineer?
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interesting question so i started to be interested in software computers when i was
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13 because going from school to my house was passing by company where i could see
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someone inside using a computer and i thought wow this can this should be awesome
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also at that time the movie war games uh
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was on fire um so i started reading i didn’t have a computer and what i was doing
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is ask my father to take me to the shopping center close to where i was living and
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there they were selling computers but they had like 10 or 12 like to demo the
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computers
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So I was taking all my magazines and my code written in paper there on Saturday
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afternoon just to code those things into those computers just to see what was
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happening with them.
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And finally, after one year and plus, I had my own computer.
(00:19:48):
I would say that the short answer why I was a developer, because it was hard to be a developer.
(00:19:53):
It was hard.
(00:19:54):
So it was not easy.
(00:19:55):
I didn’t have a computer.
(00:19:56):
In the university, you needed to submit your code and expect results.
(00:20:01):
So it was not as easy as it is now.
(00:20:04):
So my daughter has a computer from,
(00:20:06):
I don’t know,
(00:20:08):
the age of two or three,
(00:20:10):
tablets or mobile phones,
(00:20:12):
anything.
(00:20:13):
Definitely now it’s super easy to start coding.
(00:20:17):
At that time, it was super hard.
(00:20:18):
And a more important point, I was the nerd in the school.
(00:20:22):
So the rest of people didn’t understand this about coding, developing.
(00:20:28):
And they look at me at, wow, you’re a nerd.
(00:20:31):
the weird thing, the weirdo.
(00:20:33):
So it was not society at that time was not helping.
(00:20:38):
Did you enjoy that status?
(00:20:40):
So did you like the fact that you were sort of the nerdy guy?
(00:20:44):
I wouldn’t say that I like, but I didn’t dislike it too much.
(00:20:49):
But I would say that in order to have a very small thing,
(00:20:52):
the effort that I needed to put was a lot,
(00:20:55):
but then the reward was awesome.
(00:20:58):
Nowadays, if my daughter creates a mobile app, she was eight, she did a mobile app.
(00:21:04):
She did it in a weekend.
(00:21:07):
Okay, I have a mobile app.
(00:21:09):
That’s it.
(00:21:09):
What?
(00:21:09):
For me, having, I don’t know, a circle painted on the screen took me, I don’t know, one week of coding.
(00:21:17):
And yeah, definitely no stack overflow, no…
(00:21:23):
know anything at the time i didn’t have internet obviously so yeah probably i’m a
(00:21:28):
developer because i i love the technology and the computers and that you can ask
(00:21:33):
the computer to do something and you see the result i’m not very very good with
(00:21:38):
hands doing manual things so this this was perfect for me but at that time it was
(00:21:44):
hard to be a developer right now
(00:21:46):
Well,
(00:21:46):
it’s interesting that you’re very lucky then because you got involved with software
(00:21:51):
development when you were young because you liked the technology.
(00:21:54):
And then as you’re older now, you found or you sort of grew into the community dynamic as well.
(00:22:01):
Sometimes people,
(00:22:02):
you know,
(00:22:02):
they become a lawyer or whatever,
(00:22:04):
you know,
(00:22:05):
profession in marketing or something.
(00:22:07):
And it’s the same throughout the whole time period.
(00:22:10):
You know,
(00:22:11):
I mean,
(00:22:11):
you become more skilled,
(00:22:12):
but you also become a little bit jaded as you grow older,
(00:22:15):
you know,
(00:22:15):
but you’ve had this sort of,
(00:22:16):
you grew into this whole new phase where,
(00:22:19):
you know,
(00:22:19):
the community is able to,
(00:22:20):
you’re able to benefit your career in a really big way.
(00:22:23):
Yeah, definitely.
(00:22:24):
I’m super lucky.
(00:22:27):
In the end,
(00:22:28):
I think that what defines us in most of the cases is the context and the references
(00:22:33):
that we have near to us.
(00:22:35):
And in my case,
(00:22:37):
I didn’t have anyone involved in communities,
(00:22:39):
but by luck,
(00:22:40):
I was in contact with people in community.
(00:22:43):
And after that, I saw the potential start growing in that space.
(00:22:48):
And it’s sad,
(00:22:50):
at least from my perspective,
(00:22:51):
sometimes when I see people not taking benefit of communities or not being involved
(00:22:57):
in them,
(00:22:58):
because definitely there’s a lot of value in adding your time and creating network,
(00:23:05):
having knowledge and contact with other technologies.
(00:23:09):
Sometimes you use what you use because it’s what you know,
(00:23:13):
but being in contact with other people in the community can give you,
(00:23:17):
I don’t know,
(00:23:18):
a view on other things that probably they can open your mind.
(00:23:22):
You don’t take advantage of the huge community that we have now, thousands of meetups.
(00:23:27):
Nowadays, there’s, I don’t know, several meetups every day, at least in my area in Barcelona.
(00:23:32):
There are several meetups every day in different technologies, free.
(00:23:37):
So it’s sad people don’t use them.
(00:23:39):
yeah absolutely it’s a big benefit not only to the people but also you know to the
(00:23:44):
individual developers but also the companies that they work for because this is
(00:23:49):
sort of a self-motivated training program when you engage in the community and you
(00:23:54):
contribute you know a lot of these people are contributing things like
(00:23:58):
presentations or answering questions or you know bug fixes or they’re contributing
(00:24:03):
real code and real features you know if they’re more of a higher end developer the
(00:24:06):
bottom line is they understand the contribution process and that’s just a massive
(00:24:11):
way to grow and that that and that just creates value it creates value for
(00:24:16):
everything that that person touches their own career as well as their employers it
(00:24:21):
benefits everything it’s a very interesting concept now you’re also a java champion
(00:24:25):
right yes yes uh
(00:24:28):
community awarded me with the Java champion thing in 2020, 2022.
(00:24:36):
But yeah,
(00:24:37):
it’s a huge community of champions that in our case,
(00:24:41):
what it means is you are very involved in the community.
(00:24:44):
from different approaches,
(00:24:46):
either with code,
(00:24:48):
with local communities,
(00:24:50):
JAX,
(00:24:50):
creating conferences,
(00:24:52):
submitting code,
(00:24:53):
writing books.
(00:24:54):
So there are different, let’s say, areas that you can cover in order to be selected as Java Champion.
(00:24:59):
And I have to say that has been one of the most exciting points in my professional
(00:25:05):
career to be selected as Java Champion by the rest of the Java Champion community.
(00:25:11):
It was a very happy day, definitely.
(00:25:14):
quite an honor it’s a you know your peers selected you i mean it wasn’t the company
(00:25:19):
or or you know your fellow engineers selected you so sort of like a peer review
(00:25:23):
process yes exactly review process yeah yeah and it’s very i don’t know very
(00:25:30):
emotive very very interesting to be there
(00:25:32):
But yeah, it shouldn’t be a goal.
(00:25:35):
I mean, it’s not that you need to work for that.
(00:25:38):
It’s that you work, and after that, you can be awarded to say, okay, you are Java champion.
(00:25:44):
I always say to the ones that I have nominated that it’s not only an award for them individually.
(00:25:55):
but also for their communities.
(00:25:57):
So when you select the Java champion,
(00:26:02):
you are also giving more visibility to their community and you are helping the
(00:26:08):
community to grow too.
(00:26:09):
So it’s also a recognition that can help the whole community.
(00:26:13):
Well, do you have any events coming up soon that you’re going to be at?
(00:26:18):
Well, I will be in February.
(00:26:21):
Well, no, next week I will be in Madrid, in the Madrid Yard, Java User Group, also giving a talk.
(00:26:28):
And then we have a summit for the…
(00:26:31):
Several developer advocates in Spain also will be in DevWall in Amsterdam,
(00:26:36):
then Gcon in Germany and Gcon in Krakow in Poland.
(00:26:41):
So basically those are in DevNexus in April.
(00:26:44):
So these are at the moment, the events that I will be, but let’s see how the call for papers processes.
(00:26:51):
excellent well if i get to any of those i who knows but if i get to any of those i
(00:26:55):
may see you or if i get to spain someday i would love to sit down for some for some
(00:27:00):
authentic spanish food and uh definitely i have i have some some genes in me from
(00:27:06):
italy so that’s not too far away and uh so i’ve been wanting to visit the
(00:27:11):
mediterranean area for a long long time to get my daughter sort of exposed to that
(00:27:15):
part of the world and um you will like it you will you will love for sure
(00:27:19):
yeah yeah it’s it’s and it’s you know what’s really interesting is the java
(00:27:24):
community is really thriving in europe i mean it really there’s so many events
(00:27:28):
going on and the events are packed they’re full of people yeah sometimes sometimes
(00:27:35):
uh on in the same month so it’s hard to attend all of them from the developer
(00:27:40):
advocate perspective
(00:27:41):
But yeah, Europe is awesome with events.
(00:27:46):
You can find events in every country, lots of them.
(00:27:50):
The Java community is present in lots of events with thousands of people in
(00:27:59):
some of the events and hundreds in others,
(00:28:01):
but it’s always the community and the experience talking to them that it is.
(00:28:07):
I don’t know.
(00:28:08):
I don’t know if it’s unique because I have experience in this area,
(00:28:11):
but I’m super happy that you are in a conference.
(00:28:15):
You start talking to people.
(00:28:16):
People are super friendly.
(00:28:18):
They share their knowledge easily, even with big speakers.
(00:28:22):
Before I was years ago.
(00:28:25):
I thought,
(00:28:25):
wow,
(00:28:26):
if I ever meet that person,
(00:28:28):
that it is like the main committer for one technology,
(00:28:31):
but well,
(00:28:32):
he’s,
(00:28:33):
she is way above me.
(00:28:35):
So that person will not be interested in talking with me, but that’s not the case.
(00:28:39):
It was super easy to start talking with them, uh, sharing knowledge, never received that.
(00:28:46):
Wow.
(00:28:46):
That’s a stupid question.
(00:28:48):
Never, ever.
(00:28:49):
So it’s, it’s awesome.
(00:28:51):
It’s awesome.
(00:28:52):
The community.
(00:28:52):
Excellent.
(00:28:53):
Well, I’ll look forward to it.
(00:28:54):
Until then, do you have any last words to wrap us up here?
(00:28:57):
Yeah,
(00:28:59):
I would say that we can consider that Java is not dead again,
(00:29:03):
that Java is more exciting than ever with lots of new features allowing native compilation,
(00:29:13):
virtual threads,
(00:29:14):
lots of new features being in the AI space.
(00:29:18):
So it’s an amazing language and it’s always new with a lot of energy.
(00:29:23):
And that definitely,
(00:29:24):
no matter the language that you use,
(00:29:26):
please,
(00:29:26):
please,
(00:29:27):
please go to meetups,
(00:29:29):
go to conferences,
(00:29:30):
share with the community,
(00:29:32):
because I assume that in most of your cases,
(00:29:35):
your professional life will change.
(00:29:37):
I would definitely agree with that.
(00:29:39):
Absolutely.
(00:29:39):
Thanks a lot, Jonathan.
(00:29:40):
Talk to you soon.
(00:29:42):
It’s been a pleasure.
(00:29:42):
Thank you very much, Jim.