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Hey, everybody.
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Welcome back.
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This is Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations.
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And my special guest tonight here for this conversation is Bert Jan Schrijver from the Netherlands.
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Bert, welcome.
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Welcome to Duke’s Corner for the first time.
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Thank you.
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It’s nice to be here.
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Yeah, it’s good.
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It’s great to meet you here.
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Sometimes I meet people here for the first time.
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Actually,
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most of the people I talked to recently is the first time since I’m not getting out
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to conferences these days.
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But some people I actually have actually met.
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But with you, it’s the first time.
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So I’m starting with a clean slate here.
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I just want to talk to you about what you do, a little bit about Java, a little bit about the community.
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And I was looking at some of your videos a little bit earlier today.
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And you generate a lot of views.
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So you must be pretty popular.
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And that’s really cool.
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So yeah, so give me a little bit of background.
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What do you do?
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What do you do out there in the community?
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Yeah,
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well,
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if we start a bit at the beginning,
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I started my career as a Java developer around 2006,
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worked in a product development company for a while,
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then went into consulting.
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So lots of different companies inside the Netherlands.
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And during that time,
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I also started speaking at events,
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started basically sharing my experiences at projects.
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So stuff about Java, microservices, DevOps, cloud.
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And through speaking at those events, I got quite connected inside the Java community.
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Around 2014, I joined the board of the NLJUG, the Netherlands Java User Group.
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And the NLJUG organizes a couple of conferences.
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So JFL is one of the biggest conferences in Europe, about 1,800 people.
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And the NLJUG also publishes a magazine, printed magazine, four times a year.
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So also from that aspect, I’m quite connected to the community there.
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And in 2017, I started a company, Open Value, together with Roy, who I knew from the Analjug board.
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And since then,
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we’ve been,
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well,
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at Open Value,
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we’ve been helping clients deliver better software faster.
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We’re doing this with about 160 people with offices in four countries.
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That’s a lot there to unpack.
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I mean, and you’re an entrepreneur as well.
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So I’m really excited.
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This is really cool.
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And I didn’t know Analjug produced a print magazine.
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Is that what you said?
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A print magazine?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, so it’s actually paper you can hold, page through.
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That’s really cool.
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That’s really cool.
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Yeah,
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one of the things about these jugs that is so amazing to me is,
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you know,
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especially when you talk to the leaders,
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the jug starts out maybe in a coffee shop 15 years ago,
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and now they’re holding conferences with thousands of people.
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That is a normal story.
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I mean, it’s pretty interesting.
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All right, so why did you become a developer?
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I mean, it seems very posh these days.
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It’s the coolest thing to do.
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Everyone’s trying to do it, but you didn’t get started yesterday.
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So go back to when you were a kid.
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Is that something that you just wanted to do when you were a little kid?
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Pretty much.
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Really?
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I’m 44 now, so I’ve been touching computers for close to 40 years.
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I guess it all started when I was about, I don’t know, six or eight.
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We had a Commodore 64 at home.
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Seriously, that young?
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Just like you, right?
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Wow.
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The original one, and obviously I started out with playing games.
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And there you already see the first kind of community aspect rise because,
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well,
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we didn’t have like internet connections and modems at the time,
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right?
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And we’re talking around like, I don’t know, 86, 88.
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And…
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I needed to go to friends to copy games to other disks.
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I need to find out which friends I had that had Commodores and which ones had the
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biggest library of games.
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Obviously, those became better friends because I was there more often to copy games.
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Then I got bored of games and I found out that you could also program Commodore.
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And we had one or two books because, well, that’s how you did this at the time, right?
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You didn’t go on the internet because it wasn’t there.
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You got books.
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And through those books, I learned programming a little.
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And then it was like this cycle of there was 10, 20 pages of code in a book that you didn’t understand.
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So you would type it into the Commodore and then run it.
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Then it didn’t work.
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And then, well, the book didn’t say what to do now, right?
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So also the first kind of frustrations of life as a developer emerged there, right?
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And then sometimes I was typing for hours and then my brother came by and hit the
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computer by accident and turned it off.
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I need to start over again.
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So this is kind of how I got started.
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And then after Commodore,
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I think I programmed a little bit in probably in basic on like a PC 286 or something.
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And then around, I don’t know, probably around when I was
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12 or 13, I started programming in Pascal on a PC.
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And well,
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that was my first encounter with actually writing software that all people could
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maybe use on a PC,
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right?
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So I remember writing some stuff and sharing with my friends and we made like a
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joke operating system that was basically just
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giving commands and passing it through to the wins command line and adding some extra stuff there.
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So we put this on a floppy disk.
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We gave it to our chemistry teacher at school.
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He put us in his PC there.
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It worked fine.
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Then we had class and then fire emerged from the PC room.
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I didn’t have anything to do with it,
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but I wasn’t allowed to touch computers at school for a while after that.
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You burned the chemistry lab down.
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Yeah, so probably there was something wrong with the PC because the software I wrote was trivial.
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But well, how are you going to explain to the principal what the software you wrote did, right?
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And then when I was, I think, about 16 or something, my dad got a modem for our PC.
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So now I could, well, use the modem to connect to other computers.
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And one of my friends,
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which was one of my better friends because he had lots of Commodore 64 games,
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he explained me about a whole world of bulletin boards.
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So basically…
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Some terminal servers you could call in with your computer and there was a message
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board there you could upload and download files.
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This was like a local predecessor for the internet, you could say.
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After the first month I did this,
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my dad sold the phone bill and I wasn’t allowed to use the computer for three more
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months because it was huge,
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like a couple of hundred euros.
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Then I found out there was also lots of local bulletin boards within the same area code where I was.
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So I could like cheaply call those.
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And then I found out there was a whole subculture called the demo scene.
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So the demo scene is like a computer art subculture where people work on
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programming challenges,
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but also make like demos with visual effects.
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They make music, they make graphics.
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And these people, they organized back then in demo parties.
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And a demo party is basically, I don’t know, a sports hall with lots of tables.
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Everybody comes in, brings their computers, and then there are competitions.
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So competition is like who can make the visually most interesting demo in four
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kilobytes of code,
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or who can make the nicest music,
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et cetera,
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et cetera,
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et cetera.
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And obviously this was not only about those demos,
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but also about meeting those people that you only knew online and having a couple
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of beer with those guys.
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And this was like teenagers, right?
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So,
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well,
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fast forward a couple of years later,
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when I first started going to conferences,
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there was something like,
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strangely familiar to me about those conference because you would get together with
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people who are like-minded,
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you share stuff,
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you have a beer together.
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And it took me two or three years to figure out that conferences are just like the
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demo parties that I did when I was a kid,
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right?
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Only now it’s maybe a bit more professionally focused.
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But still,
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this is kind of like how I got enthusiastic both in software development,
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but also into communities and sharing stuff with each other.
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Wow, that’s really cool.
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That’s really cool.
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So, okay, you sound like a really curious guy.
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I mean,
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when you were a kid,
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you started out with gaming,
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but you must have somehow naturally seen the potential.
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I mean,
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just naturally working with the game,
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working with the computer,
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because you made the shift from just playing around,
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that’s one level of curiosity,
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over to actually programming the darn thing,
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which is that empowers you as a person.
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So that seemed like you were really innovative at a really young age.
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Yeah, I guess for that time, it was, well, a bit more than most people were doing with computers, right?
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For me, what really clicked was when I found out that I could create stuff, right?
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So by writing code,
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and it was at that point,
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not just a lot more than reading some input,
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doing with it,
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printing some outputs.
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Like, I don’t know, what’s your name?
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My name is Bert.
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And then it would print Bert is awesome for a hundred times.
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But still, you had instructed the machine to do something, right?
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So that was super interesting for me.
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But there’s also a competition element.
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So who can show the coolest cube that’s rotating around in 3D with all kind of
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textures in there in just 4,096 bytes of code?
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Also, I have quite a competitive nature.
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So this all worked together quite well for me.
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And obviously, if you’re in my class in secondary school,
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I was probably one of the only one or two guys who knew how to program.
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So you’re also looking for more like-minded people to share those experience because in school was fine.
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I could play soccer and have drinks with friends,
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but they didn’t find it really interesting that I would sit behind the computer for
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hours making stuff,
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right?
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Well, but that’s where you hone those skills.
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I mean, that’s really incredible.
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So when you were learning, this is years ago, you know, when it was sort of greenfield.
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What about now when people learn now?
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I mean, do they have those same opportunities?
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Because the tools are different.
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I mean, you know, so the market is different, but the tools are different.
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The tools are much more powerful now than obviously they were when you were a kid.
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It’s a lot to start now, I would say.
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So I typically say I know a little about a lot of things, right?
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So I find everything interesting.
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So I dive in it just enough to know how something works, put it in my toolbox.
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Maybe I could use it later.
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Well, when I started in software development, well, this was before the internet, right?
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So you were making like internet-based stuff,
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just,
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I don’t know,
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a program that runs locally on the machine.
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And then when I went to university around 98,
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then the internet came and then Java was already there,
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but there was websites and applets and stuff.
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And now it was about connecting stuff together.
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So now you need to know about networks and TCP and HTTP.
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Sure.
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And then I did a little bit of like a CGI and PHP to make dynamic websites.
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And then my first serious job, I was building software for insurance companies.
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And then learn about Java Enterprise Edition.
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And I needed to, I don’t know, run stuff on an application server.
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So I learned how an application server works.
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We need to connect to a database.
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I learned how a database works.
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But this was all over the course of a couple of years.
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And then, I don’t know, dynamic HTML became a thing with AJAX and jQuery and stuff.
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And then, okay, I learned to learn how this works.
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Okay, you have some JavaScript and it makes a request to a server.
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It fetches some data.
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It updates parts of the page.
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Fine.
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And then stuff like Angular came and React and more web-based frameworks.
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So I had some time to learn those.
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And cloud came.
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So for me, I learned all of this over a trajectory of, let’s say, around 20 to 25 years.
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And now there’s a lot around, right?
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If you start now,
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it’s holy crap,
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it’s internet and cloud and front-end and back-end databases and NoSQL and AI.
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And so I think I was fortunate enough to start actually at the basics and learn the basic stuff.
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and also understand the stuff like,
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well,
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if you take a framework like Spring,
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there’s a lot of,
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well,
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people say a lot of magic going on.
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But my answer typically is magic is just a term for something non-trivial that you
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don’t fully understand,
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right?
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But if you’ve been in the days before Spring and you were just processing HTTP
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requests and building serverless by hand,
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then those things become fairly understandable.
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But if you would get into software development now,
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There’s loads of abstractions that you can build on,
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but it takes a huge amount of time and effort to understand the stuff that’s under
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the hood there,
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basically.
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So for me,
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because I was actually able to ease into all those things over a period of 20 years,
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it was relatively easy to do.
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If it would start now, I would be in a maze of different technologies, like where do I start?
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Front-end, back-end, do I become a cloud engineer, a machine learning engineer, a prompt engineer?
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I don’t know.
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There’s so much to choose now.
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Yeah, it is overwhelming.
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It is amazing.
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You sound like someone who is like a self-taught.
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You can teach yourself.
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Yeah, I learn mostly by doing.
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So poking and prodding in things,
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figuring out what happens until the power cuts down,
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turn the power on,
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and go back.
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So I had a formal education, so I went to university to learn computer science.
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I wouldn’t say that that’s been, I don’t know…
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A pivotal moment in my career, the university study.
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So I learned loads of things there, had lots of fun.
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But most of the things that I’m using in my job now,
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I learned in,
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let’s say,
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the past 10 years during a career,
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right?
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Obviously,
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having a university degree helps,
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but there was also loads of mathematics and stuff in the first couple of years that
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I found super boring,
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but I still needed to do it.
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And not until the later years when I did some courses on psychology and telemedics and,
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well,
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basically the early forms of artificial intelligence,
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language technology.
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That’s where I found it becoming interesting.
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But all the basics, like the most horrible course I did, it was called software engineering.
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Because in software engineering,
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you learn to make a design and a plan and to build something and test it and review
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it and write documentation.
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I was like, what is all this crap?
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Just let me code.
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And I don’t care about planning and testing and stuff.
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And then, well, after I passed my university, I started working.
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And my first job, it was called software engineer.
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So I was then in a software engineering role and,
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well,
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learning all those things again,
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planning,
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designing,
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testing.
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But then I actually found out it made sense, right?
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Interesting.
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Wow.
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So it seems like you combined your own driven self-initiative with school then, right?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I’m pretty happy that for me it all clicked.
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When I was just starting in secondary school, it was already pretty clear I wanted to do something in IT.
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At that point,
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I had the idea that it would probably be like a fairly job-safe profession for the future,
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which turned out to be true,
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and also something that I found fun to do.
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So I didn’t have to think much about this.
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You’re lucky.
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I mean, a lot of people struggle.
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A lot of people struggle with, you know, having a direction.
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I shouldn’t say you’re lucky because, I mean, that’s just like sort of make your own luck.
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I mean, you’re driven to do something and then, you know, things happen.
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But nevertheless, all right, let’s switch gears here.
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You mentioned that you found sort of this concept of the community very, very early.
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You know,
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when you were a kid playing with the games and there was like a gaming community
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there and,
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you know,
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people that you can tap into and collaborate with.
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And that seems to have continued for your whole career until even now when you have
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this huge Java community that you’re involved with.
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Yeah.
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Exactly.
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The first time I…
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So funny thing is when I started working after my studies,
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the company where I’d worked for like five,
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six,
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seven years,
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they didn’t do much with communities.
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Basically, it was mostly aimed inside.
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Like how do we stuff here?
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That’s how we do it, which was fine for me because I could learn loads of things.
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And then I switched to another company.
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And well, I was working there for two months or something.
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And then I went to J-Fall.
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So probably like J-Fall 2011 or something.
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And I was there like…
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Holy crap, what is this?
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There’s like a thousand people here sharing about the latest and greatest stuff
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that’s new in software engineering and changing experiences,
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meeting new people.
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This sounds awesome.
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Why haven’t I done this for the past six or seven years, right?
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So for me, this was the way to learn what’s new in my profession.
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but also experiences on how do different companies solve comparable problems and
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meet people and exchange experiences with them.
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And this became even amplified when I started speaking myself and started traveling
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to conferences abroad and meeting new people there.
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And for me,
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it really was pretty cool to see that the people that I worked with,
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the stuff that they had built,
(00:15:51):
like,
(00:15:52):
I don’t know,
(00:15:53):
people from the Spring team on the Java team,
(00:15:55):
that I was now meeting them in person and having a chat with them.
(00:15:58):
I remember that at this company where I worked, they didn’t do much with the Java community.
(00:16:03):
At one time, we wanted to research doing a new front-end technology.
(00:16:09):
And then a colleague pointed me out to some blog on the internet about a guy
(00:16:13):
comparing different front-end technology frameworks that would work well with Java.
(00:16:18):
I remember that this was Matt Rabel.
(00:16:20):
So this was already like in somewhere, I don’t know, 2028 or something.
(00:16:25):
And then about 10 years later,
(00:16:27):
I was just chatting to Matt Rabel because I met him at a conference and telling
(00:16:31):
stories from way back.
(00:16:32):
He said, oh, yeah, that was me.
(00:16:33):
I was the guy who made that comparison blog post.
(00:16:37):
So that was fun to see.
(00:16:39):
Wow, that’s really cool too.
(00:16:41):
Yeah, the Java community is pretty wild.
(00:16:43):
I mean,
(00:16:44):
there’s just so many groups,
(00:16:45):
there’s hundreds and hundreds of user groups and lots of really interesting conferences.
(00:16:50):
And what I noticed about the conferences is they all have their own personality.
(00:16:53):
I mean, these are conferences that have been around for years and years now, even just visually.
(00:16:58):
They have their own graphic.
(00:17:00):
They have their own sort of look and feel.
(00:17:02):
And I’m really excited to be able to, if I can get to some of these conferences in Europe.
(00:17:06):
I’ve been to JFocus.
(00:17:07):
I’ve been to DevNexus.
(00:17:09):
So looking forward to getting to some more events in Europe because they have this
(00:17:15):
just really interesting diversity there.
(00:17:17):
And the community is thriving because some of these conferences are thousands, 2,000 people, right?
(00:17:22):
And it sells out in a long weekend.
(00:17:24):
I’m also fascinated with this concept of all you developers go there and you’re all
(00:17:29):
talking and you’re all having these technical conversations and personal conversations.
(00:17:33):
It just mixes and new things come of it.
(00:17:36):
I always hear stories about people like you who go to conferences and you get an
(00:17:40):
idea from just a conversation,
(00:17:42):
a coffee shop or something like that.
(00:17:44):
And somewhere along the line, a new technology, a new feature comes as a result of it.
(00:17:49):
And then people end up learning about contributing.
(00:17:52):
And that’s how the community grows is when people actually contribute,
(00:17:56):
not just show up and take away,
(00:17:58):
but show up and participate and then contribute to the community.
(00:18:03):
So most interested about this concept of contributing.
(00:18:06):
So can you talk a little bit about your experiences,
(00:18:08):
either yourself or just what you’ve observed about people contributing to FOSS communities?
(00:18:14):
Yeah,
(00:18:15):
I think for me,
(00:18:16):
everything around,
(00:18:17):
you know,
(00:18:17):
if we’re talking about sharing knowledge has mostly been about introducing and inspiring.
(00:18:23):
So when I go to a conference and somebody tells something about a new framework or something,
(00:18:28):
I don’t expect to become an expert in the framework in a one hour talk.
(00:18:31):
I expect them to introduce me to the topic to inspire me to start looking in it
(00:18:36):
myself when I’m when I’m at home.
(00:18:38):
And also maybe to share some of their learnings from the past year,
(00:18:41):
compress it into 15 minutes and make sure that I don’t make the same mistakes again.
(00:18:46):
So this is also what I try to do when I share knowledge to introduce and inspire
(00:18:50):
and share experiences there.
(00:18:53):
I initially, in my career, was mostly a consumer of knowledge that was shared.
(00:18:58):
And then I found out that it was interesting to go to meetups,
(00:19:02):
learn stuff there,
(00:19:02):
and start sharing stuff myself.
(00:19:05):
Started writing a bit for the Dutch Apple Magazine, starting speaking a bit.
(00:19:09):
And then at one point in around 2014,
(00:19:13):
I was doing a consulting project for a publisher in the Netherlands.
(00:19:17):
And we were working with Vertex there.
(00:19:19):
So Vertex is a reactive toolkit for the JVM.
(00:19:22):
It’s fairly,
(00:19:24):
maybe a bit niche,
(00:19:25):
super high performance,
(00:19:26):
but also because of the reactive nature,
(00:19:28):
a bit harder to develop it.
(00:19:30):
And we were one of the first companies in the Netherlands building stuff with this.
(00:19:33):
So there was kind of like a, a knowledge gap around us.
(00:19:36):
So I well, I went to Java one and then we’re probably talking 2015 or something.
(00:19:42):
And there I went to a talk by Tim Fox, the creator of Vertex about Vertex.
(00:19:46):
And afterwards I met up with him and we shared some ideas and experiences.
(00:19:49):
And from then either direct line to the lead developer of the framework that we
(00:19:53):
were using that I got in touch with some of the people at Reddit who are also
(00:19:56):
working on this framework.
(00:19:59):
And this helped me contribute back to the community because we were also building
(00:20:02):
stuff that was fairly new,
(00:20:03):
but also constantly learning about something where there was not that much
(00:20:07):
documentation about.
(00:20:08):
And even a couple of years later,
(00:20:10):
I had like a short consulting gig for,
(00:20:12):
I think,
(00:20:13):
like a governmental organization in Brussels or something.
(00:20:15):
They were also using Vertex and they had a…
(00:20:18):
like a weird performance issue there.
(00:20:20):
So I went in there,
(00:20:22):
I sat there for the whole day,
(00:20:24):
looked with them at the problem,
(00:20:25):
got an idea of where the problem was,
(00:20:27):
but couldn’t really pinpoint what the problem was.
(00:20:29):
Went back home, frustrated because I hadn’t been able to solve the problem.
(00:20:33):
went my road like a short reproducer for the problem,
(00:20:37):
went on the Vertex mailing list,
(00:20:39):
emptied my frustration there in a nice way,
(00:20:41):
obviously,
(00:20:42):
I’ve had this problem,
(00:20:42):
wasn’t able to solve it,
(00:20:43):
went to sleep,
(00:20:44):
next morning wake up,
(00:20:45):
open my laptop,
(00:20:46):
10,
(00:20:46):
12 replies from community contributors from the Vertex core team,
(00:20:52):
well, it’s probably here and here and here.
(00:20:53):
Okay, send it to my client.
(00:20:55):
Hour later, he emails me, thank you, it’s fixed.
(00:20:57):
So this happened literally when I was asleep, right?
(00:21:00):
So I guess that’s the power of building meaningful relationships in a community
(00:21:05):
because then you also get like meaningful input back.
(00:21:08):
That’s really cool.
(00:21:09):
I’ve collected a whole bunch of stories like that in terms of,
(00:21:12):
you know,
(00:21:13):
you’re working on something that you send some messages out,
(00:21:15):
close the laptop and you wake up the next morning and it’s a different world.
(00:21:18):
You know, what’s interesting to me is I’ve worked in multiple industries.
(00:21:22):
Software is just one of the five or six industries I’ve worked in over the years.
(00:21:27):
And this concept of this sharing,
(00:21:29):
this collaboration,
(00:21:30):
this working together,
(00:21:32):
a lot of teamwork,
(00:21:34):
a lot of contributions,
(00:21:35):
not all industries do this.
(00:21:37):
No, I am pretty aware of this, that it’s special that we do it like this, right?
(00:21:42):
Yeah, it is really incredible.
(00:21:44):
And I was talking to some people privately, sort of explaining this, and I’m speaking normally.
(00:21:51):
Like,
(00:21:51):
this is like a normal day,
(00:21:52):
you know,
(00:21:52):
in terms of describing what I do,
(00:21:54):
you know,
(00:21:54):
if I go to an event or just managing projects.
(00:21:57):
I’ve been doing software community management for a long time, for over 20 years.
(00:22:02):
I joined Sun in 2000.
(00:22:04):
So it was the OpenSolaris community manager at Sun.
(00:22:06):
So,
(00:22:07):
you know,
(00:22:07):
we had a,
(00:22:07):
you know,
(00:22:08):
we built a community from scratch and then,
(00:22:10):
you know,
(00:22:10):
that sort of,
(00:22:11):
it didn’t end well,
(00:22:12):
but I mean,
(00:22:12):
we,
(00:22:12):
you know,
(00:22:13):
we at least did it right.
(00:22:14):
And Sun at that time was opening tens of millions of lines of code,
(00:22:18):
you know,
(00:22:18):
in various projects,
(00:22:19):
Java being one of them.
(00:22:20):
And I was sort of describing how engineers work and how software developers work
(00:22:24):
and how all this just functions.
(00:22:25):
He had no idea.
(00:22:26):
He just had,
(00:22:27):
he was just like,
(00:22:28):
had no idea that that large number of people gather and do this and do this level
(00:22:33):
of sharing.
(00:22:34):
And then I have spoken to people on this podcast who have described similar things.
(00:22:38):
where they have spoken to people outside of the industry and they’ve described similar things.
(00:22:43):
And it’s just incredible to me because I think that software engineering,
(00:22:48):
software development,
(00:22:48):
and open source communities specifically can teach a lot of other industries about
(00:22:55):
this concept.
(00:22:55):
Because,
(00:22:56):
I mean,
(00:22:56):
just imagine how much more progress we could make in other industries if they would
(00:23:00):
learn some of these basics of just…
(00:23:03):
Obviously, software as a topic is something that makes it relatively easy to do this, right?
(00:23:09):
Because it’s like if you have a piece of software,
(00:23:11):
well,
(00:23:11):
you can copy it and give it to somebody else and they can work on it.
(00:23:14):
We often compare building software with building buildings, right?
(00:23:18):
But I haven’t seen much people who will be able to copy-paste a building and give
(00:23:21):
it to someone else,
(00:23:21):
right?
(00:23:22):
So I guess it’s also the nature of what we do that makes it easy to share those kind of things.
(00:23:28):
Right.
(00:23:28):
In academic research, the thing is the same, right?
(00:23:31):
You research something, you share your results with others.
(00:23:33):
But obviously,
(00:23:34):
there are loads of other…
(00:23:35):
Well,
(00:23:35):
if you work in,
(00:23:35):
I don’t know,
(00:23:37):
defense or something,
(00:23:38):
you’re not going to share the recipes for how you make your weapons,
(00:23:41):
right?
(00:23:41):
And the same thing with…
(00:23:42):
Well,
(00:23:43):
I was going to make the same point for cars,
(00:23:44):
but that’s not entirely true because Tesla is open sourcing some of their car designs,
(00:23:49):
right?
(00:23:49):
Because they’re way ahead anyway, so it wouldn’t give them any competitive problem.
(00:23:53):
But they also are, I guess, on a mission to…
(00:23:57):
generally improve sustainability in cars.
(00:24:01):
So therefore, they’re also sharing some of their designs there as well.
(00:24:03):
But in most like building industries, it’s definitely not common.
(00:24:07):
Right.
(00:24:07):
Well,
(00:24:08):
I mean,
(00:24:08):
even in software,
(00:24:09):
though,
(00:24:09):
I mean,
(00:24:09):
you know,
(00:24:10):
companies that are built around open source code,
(00:24:12):
they have open code and they have closed code.
(00:24:13):
They have a business model that’s wrapped around their development model.
(00:24:16):
Yeah.
(00:24:17):
So there are ways to do it.
(00:24:19):
And a lot of companies wrestle with this and where the line is basically.
(00:24:22):
Where does your business model need to be as opposed to your engineering
(00:24:27):
development model in terms of your open source projects?
(00:24:29):
So let’s talk about Java a little bit here.
(00:24:31):
I mean, you’ve been working with Java for a long time.
(00:24:33):
You’re a Java champion.
(00:24:35):
And I also saw you won a Duke’s Choice Award, Duke’s Award in 2018.
(00:24:40):
I remember that conference that was in San Francisco.
(00:24:43):
In fact,
(00:24:44):
you guys got your award on my streaming stage because we were streaming interviews
(00:24:48):
all day there.
(00:24:48):
We let the Java team take over for an hour to do their awards.
(00:24:52):
So talk a little bit about Java.
(00:24:54):
Why Java?
(00:24:55):
Why Java is so good?
(00:24:56):
Yeah.
(00:24:57):
Yeah.
(00:24:58):
So why I started with Java is a bit underwhelming because I was taught Java at university.
(00:25:05):
And then I landed my first job.
(00:25:08):
That’s also kind of a funny story.
(00:25:10):
I lived in like a student dorm on the campus of the University of Twente.
(00:25:15):
And one of my housemates, he was done with his studies like a couple of months before me.
(00:25:20):
So he started working for a company.
(00:25:22):
And then he came back to visit us.
(00:25:25):
He was already working there and said, yeah, I’m working at this company.
(00:25:27):
We’re building like custom software based on seven components with Java, et cetera, et cetera.
(00:25:32):
Do you think it’s interesting?
(00:25:33):
I can introduce you there.
(00:25:34):
Later, I learned that because he would get like a bonus if he would bring in new colleagues, right?
(00:25:39):
I can introduce you there.
(00:25:40):
And then I said, ah, I don’t know, maybe, and I’ll get back to you in touch.
(00:25:44):
So I went back to my room and like,
(00:25:45):
I don’t know,
(00:25:46):
one hour later,
(00:25:47):
I had a mail from the HR department,
(00:25:49):
like,
(00:25:49):
oh,
(00:25:49):
I heard you were interesting.
(00:25:50):
Would you like to apply and just send me a resume motivation?
(00:25:53):
I said, okay, well, if you’re at it like this, I’ll just, I’ll just send it and I’ll see.
(00:25:57):
And then I got the job and started working as a, as a Java developer.
(00:26:00):
So why Java?
(00:26:01):
I think because, because of two things, because Java is, well, more than two things.
(00:26:05):
Java is relatively easy to learn, uh, I think for, for developers,
(00:26:08):
It’s like a Swiss army knife to build any type of software that you want, right?
(00:26:12):
So Java runs on stuff in space, but also e-commerce.
(00:26:16):
You can run AI stuff on Java.
(00:26:19):
Banks run on Java.
(00:26:21):
There’s a huge ecosystem.
(00:26:22):
So if I compare like Java to,
(00:26:24):
I don’t know,
(00:26:25):
.NET or something,
(00:26:26):
the Java ecosystem is a magnitude larger,
(00:26:29):
right?
(00:26:29):
All those open source projects, it’s all fairly well integrated, right?
(00:26:33):
It’s easy to…
(00:26:34):
to download your dependencies, to have their standardized build systems.
(00:26:37):
So even though it’s not like a regulated industry,
(00:26:41):
sure,
(00:26:42):
there’s stewardship for development of Java,
(00:26:44):
the language,
(00:26:45):
but then like there’s Maven,
(00:26:46):
which is the de facto build tool,
(00:26:48):
which is an open source project.
(00:26:49):
Spring, which is obviously sponsored by a company, but it’s an open source project.
(00:26:53):
And in some way,
(00:26:54):
all those pieces fall together and there’s like a really nice integrated
(00:26:58):
development experience.
(00:26:59):
So Java is,
(00:27:01):
well,
(00:27:01):
you can easily make a statement that Java is old and that Java is boring,
(00:27:06):
but from a business perspective,
(00:27:07):
that’s great,
(00:27:09):
right?
(00:27:09):
Because boring software makes stable applications.
(00:27:14):
And this is also,
(00:27:14):
if you look at,
(00:27:15):
well,
(00:27:15):
some of the bigger startups that we have seen grow over the past 10 years,
(00:27:21):
most of them either started with Java or they switched to Java because,
(00:27:25):
I don’t know,
(00:27:25):
they needed performance or something,
(00:27:26):
right?
(00:27:27):
So Twitter is a Java shop.
(00:27:28):
Amazon is a Java shop.
(00:27:30):
Netflix is a Java shop.
(00:27:31):
So it’s also,
(00:27:33):
I think,
(00:27:33):
a language that maps really well to running on cloud infrastructure,
(00:27:37):
running in dock containers,
(00:27:39):
running in serverless even.
(00:27:41):
So I guess it’s super versatile.
(00:27:43):
There’s a huge ecosystem.
(00:27:45):
It’s easy to learn.
(00:27:46):
And it’s trustworthy, I would say.
(00:27:49):
And also relatively energy efficient.
(00:27:51):
So I recently read a research about energy efficientness,
(00:27:56):
where basically the researchers had programmed some kind of algorithm in like 20,
(00:28:01):
30,
(00:28:01):
40 languages.
(00:28:02):
And I guess Java was like the top five there of most energy efficient languages, close to like C and C++.
(00:28:08):
By energy, you mean in terms of the use of the processor?
(00:28:11):
The use of power.
(00:28:13):
So electrical current that’s used,
(00:28:15):
and you can obviously,
(00:28:16):
well,
(00:28:16):
it’s not trivial to measure this,
(00:28:18):
but let’s say you have a standard test setup,
(00:28:20):
you have an energy meter there,
(00:28:21):
there’s a computer that does not do anything else,
(00:28:24):
doesn’t need to charge a battery,
(00:28:25):
well,
(00:28:26):
then you can run the program like 10 times in Java,
(00:28:28):
10 times in Python,
(00:28:30):
et cetera,
(00:28:30):
and then measure through your energy consumption meter the amount of energy that it uses.
(00:28:35):
And this obviously is pretty much linear to the amount of CPU it uses.
(00:28:40):
Yeah.
(00:28:40):
So, I mean, just things like that, that you just described, I mean, that’s modern, that’s new.
(00:28:45):
I mean, energy uses obviously now is certainly a thing.
(00:28:49):
And people describe Java as old,
(00:28:51):
but I’ve also heard people describe it as very new for these reasons in terms of
(00:28:55):
the development is very,
(00:28:56):
very active.
(00:28:58):
It’s very active.
(00:29:00):
I think it’s one of the only languages I know that has been active and relevant and current for so long.
(00:29:05):
I think one of the keys there is that stuff that most people don’t even think about at Java.
(00:29:11):
That’s the marvel of engineering of the Java virtual machine, right?
(00:29:15):
All the difficult stuff that’s going on there makes your life easier as a Java developer.
(00:29:19):
I’ve never had to worry about memory management or anything, right?
(00:29:22):
That’s just JVM takes care of that for me.
(00:29:25):
And that makes my life easier.
(00:29:27):
And also the code I write better than what I need to write.
(00:29:30):
I don’t know,
(00:29:31):
C++ code,
(00:29:31):
I need to worry about pointers and releasing memories and creating memory leaks,
(00:29:35):
et cetera.
(00:29:36):
So I think it’s also because of this is also super robust.
(00:29:39):
And that’s typically what,
(00:29:41):
you know,
(00:29:42):
high performance or high risk organizations love,
(00:29:45):
robust stuff that just works.
(00:29:48):
So I said old and boring.
(00:29:50):
Obviously, that’s a good thing point of view, right?
(00:29:53):
So I don’t need to jump on the latest new language or the latest new Java framework
(00:29:57):
that’s come out because there’s always like the first,
(00:30:00):
well,
(00:30:00):
the first kinks you have in the first year or something that’s new.
(00:30:03):
And I’d rather have other people run into that and then maybe have a look.
(00:30:07):
With Java, I know that these kinks have been out there removed, I don’t know, 15 or 20 years ago.
(00:30:14):
So when you were a kid,
(00:30:15):
you told me that you were sort of self-motivated to play around with the computers.
(00:30:20):
And then you got into programming and you got into the community and you went to
(00:30:24):
school for computer science and you did all these things.
(00:30:27):
There’s a lot of self-motivation there.
(00:30:29):
And then I noticed when you introduced yourself that you have your own business.
(00:30:33):
So you’re an entrepreneur.
(00:30:34):
Yeah.
(00:30:34):
So I’m fascinated by entrepreneurs as well.
(00:30:37):
I mean,
(00:30:37):
I love all things community because this dynamic of the community constructing and
(00:30:42):
managing itself over time is really interesting to me.
(00:30:45):
But entrepreneurs, that’s another level.
(00:30:47):
I mean, that’s risky.
(00:30:49):
And that’s just really interesting how people see opportunities where other people
(00:30:53):
don’t necessarily see the opportunities.
(00:30:55):
And then you have to actually implement it to make it all work.
(00:30:58):
So tell me what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in this business.
(00:31:01):
Yeah, our business plan was actually relatively easy, I would say.
(00:31:05):
So we’re a consultancy, so we’re in a people business, right?
(00:31:09):
The Netherlands are quite suitable to run a consultancy business because there’s
(00:31:13):
like a high contractor hiring market here.
(00:31:16):
When we sat down to start, well, we basically got with a really simple idea.
(00:31:21):
We get the best developers in the country on board,
(00:31:24):
and we use our network in the Java community to get them the most amazing projects
(00:31:28):
so they can learn,
(00:31:29):
become better.
(00:31:30):
And hopefully we get them so enthusiastic that they share their knowledge with
(00:31:33):
others on conferences,
(00:31:35):
meetings,
(00:31:35):
et cetera.
(00:31:35):
This is a simple plan.
(00:31:37):
And obviously it’s not simple to execute it,
(00:31:39):
but if you execute it really carefully and you can find those people and you can
(00:31:44):
convince them to work with you and you can actually find them those products.
(00:31:47):
Well, then if you have amazing people work in amazing projects, you get amazing results, right?
(00:31:52):
So I…
(00:31:53):
About one year ago,
(00:31:54):
I had a candidate who I was talking to,
(00:31:56):
and he said,
(00:31:57):
like,
(00:31:57):
so what’s the mission and the vision of Open Value?
(00:32:00):
And he had a booklet with it that had, I don’t know, 50 pages describing this for another company.
(00:32:06):
And I didn’t need to think for a while and said,
(00:32:07):
well,
(00:32:08):
our mission and vision is to do fun things with amazing people,
(00:32:13):
right?
(00:32:13):
And I said, yeah, but that’s really a bit flat and reasoned from inside out.
(00:32:17):
So can you give a bit more detailed view?
(00:32:20):
I said, well, I need to think about it.
(00:32:21):
So I’ll call you tomorrow.
(00:32:23):
So I called him the next day and said,
(00:32:24):
I’ve been thinking about this all night and I have an answer for you.
(00:32:27):
Yes, let me know.
(00:32:29):
So how we work is we find amazing people and we do fun work with them, right?
(00:32:35):
Because that’s in the end the core.
(00:32:37):
And it’s not hard, not easy to find those amazing people.
(00:32:41):
You need to be able to find them
(00:32:42):
convince them to work with you,
(00:32:43):
and also need to say no a lot of times when you think,
(00:32:45):
okay,
(00:32:45):
these people do not fit in our consultancy idea.
(00:32:49):
But then in the end, we managed to build a team of people who, well, exclusively fit in those criteria.
(00:32:56):
And we also turned out to have a network that was good enough in the Dutch Java
(00:32:59):
community to also have projects for them.
(00:33:02):
And from then on, people start building on their own experience, sharing knowledge together.
(00:33:07):
So that’s basically the story of how we did this, putting people first,
(00:33:12):
Really great developers and super fun projects.
(00:33:15):
So if you had to think about your career personally,
(00:33:19):
as well as building a business and also interacting with all these different
(00:33:23):
developers over the years,
(00:33:24):
tell me a little bit about what’s the most important thing in order to be a really
(00:33:28):
good developer.
(00:33:29):
I think being open and being good, being open to and being good at learning.
(00:33:34):
Because in the end,
(00:33:35):
at any point,
(00:33:36):
any time of knowledge you have at some point of time,
(00:33:38):
lots of it will be irrelevant in two,
(00:33:41):
three,
(00:33:41):
four or five years.
(00:33:42):
So in order to quickly provide value for a new project,
(00:33:46):
a new team,
(00:33:46):
you need to be able to learn your environment quickly,
(00:33:49):
learn the tools and the way of working quickly.
(00:33:51):
So I guess learning…
(00:33:53):
uh,
(00:33:53):
is one,
(00:33:54):
one big thing,
(00:33:54):
uh,
(00:33:55):
obviously having a broad foundation of knowledge,
(00:33:58):
like how does basing stuff work,
(00:34:00):
like networks and the internet and,
(00:34:02):
uh,
(00:34:03):
In general, how does a JVM work or how does a browser work?
(00:34:09):
There’s basic bits of knowledge because having this foundational knowledge also
(00:34:14):
helps you to understand bigger problems faster.
(00:34:18):
If I would look back at my career,
(00:34:20):
I worked at one company where I learned loads of things about the use case for this
(00:34:24):
company and how this company worked.
(00:34:26):
But my career really started taking off when I started going into consulting and
(00:34:31):
started visiting community events.
(00:34:33):
Because in consulting,
(00:34:34):
if you do a new project like every one or two years,
(00:34:38):
then your experience really stacks up quickly,
(00:34:40):
right?
(00:34:41):
You do see lots of different organizations,
(00:34:43):
lots of different technologies,
(00:34:45):
what works here,
(00:34:45):
what works there.
(00:34:46):
If you combine this with visiting events and learning stuff there,
(00:34:50):
then,
(00:34:50):
well,
(00:34:50):
I’ve learned probably more in my first two years of consulting than the seven years
(00:34:54):
before there when I was in one company.
(00:34:56):
So I’m not saying that everyone should switch companies every one or two years,
(00:35:00):
but preferably do lots of different projects in the shortest amount of time as you can.
(00:35:05):
Really interesting.
(00:35:06):
I’m glad you said that because I’ve heard other people say similar things,
(00:35:09):
but you said it very precisely.
(00:35:11):
I ask a lot of these questions for me, by the way.
(00:35:15):
I’ve changed careers multiple times and I’m always sort of looking around to see what could I do?
(00:35:20):
I mean, I’m doing this now, which is fine, but what’s the opportunity cost that I’m missing here?
(00:35:26):
What else is out there, right?
(00:35:28):
And I also like to read about particularly older people, since I am one, doing really interesting things.
(00:35:35):
essentially starting over keep in mind mick jagger is still out there rocking and
(00:35:39):
he’s like 80 okay granted he had a big base underneath him for 40 years but still
(00:35:44):
the point is he still has to perform he still has to do it and that concept of
(00:35:51):
having multiple projects as quickly as possible that that’s very very important and
(00:35:56):
so i’m glad you said that okay bert well is there anything that i haven’t asked you
(00:36:00):
that i should have is there anything that uh we left out that you’re just dying to
(00:36:04):
tell me
(00:36:05):
Well, one interesting question that you should ask me is how do you get into contributing at events?
(00:36:13):
I run a couple of speaker mentoring programs through the NLJUG.
(00:36:16):
So as a part of,
(00:36:18):
you know,
(00:36:19):
we like to have at our events a mix of local speakers and international speakers,
(00:36:24):
but also a mix of experienced speakers and aspiring or new speakers.
(00:36:28):
And to help those aspiring new speakers,
(00:36:31):
well,
(00:36:31):
make it to the stage,
(00:36:33):
we coach them in how to get active in sharing knowledge.
(00:36:36):
So we explain, like, how do you come up with topics for a talk?
(00:36:40):
How do you write an abstract to submit it to a meetup or a conference?
(00:36:45):
How do you prepare for a talk?
(00:36:46):
And also, how do you practice, et cetera?
(00:36:49):
So in the end, this is all not rocket science, right?
(00:36:54):
But finding a group of people who can help you with getting active and sharing back
(00:36:58):
in communities,
(00:36:59):
I think this is what really can propel people forward into starting sharing themselves.
(00:37:04):
In the end, there’s just a couple of tricks you need to know, like what do I put in abstract?
(00:37:08):
How do we get topics, et cetera, et cetera.
(00:37:10):
And this will help you getting active in these areas.
(00:37:13):
And loads of people who we’ve helped from the anal junkie in the past are now
(00:37:16):
speaking at big international conferences.
(00:37:19):
But before they participated in our mentoring program, they were like, I’m not sure I can do this.
(00:37:23):
I’m not sure if it’s interesting.
(00:37:24):
I’m not sure if I have topics.
(00:37:26):
Loads of these things are not your problem as a speaker.
(00:37:30):
So in those mentoring programs,
(00:37:32):
people often say,
(00:37:32):
I have no idea if this is interesting for this conference.
(00:37:36):
I have no idea if this is interesting for the audience.
(00:37:38):
This is not your problem as speaker.
(00:37:40):
This is a problem for the program committee and for the attendees.
(00:37:44):
So you submit something, program committee reviews it,
(00:37:47):
They know their audience.
(00:37:48):
They say it’s good for a conference or not.
(00:37:50):
They think it’s good, put you in a program.
(00:37:52):
You’re in a program, there’s four or six or eight other talks.
(00:37:56):
Attendees decide whether they go to your talk or not.
(00:37:58):
So all the people in your room,
(00:38:00):
they are there because a program committee thought that your talk was interesting
(00:38:03):
for the conference,
(00:38:04):
and the attendees thought that your talk was the most interesting talk of all those
(00:38:08):
eight tracks that are there.
(00:38:09):
So all the people that are there are probably going to hear an interesting story.
(00:38:13):
So this is like a mind trick you can apply.
(00:38:16):
Just write something down and submit it.
(00:38:18):
It’s not your problem whether it’s interesting.
(00:38:20):
The people running the event and visiting the event will decide whether they find it interesting.
(00:38:24):
And whether it’s interesting or not differs a lot per person, per background, per level, per experience.
(00:38:30):
That’s gold.
(00:38:31):
That is really gold.
(00:38:32):
I’m so glad you said that because that is not the perspective that I take when I submit to a conference.
(00:38:37):
Wow.
(00:38:38):
I’m going to have to, I’m going to have to, I’m glad we’re recording.
(00:38:40):
Okay.
(00:38:41):
That’s really great.
(00:38:42):
And that’s really interesting because I mean,
(00:38:44):
I’ve submitted to conferences and I get rejected and I get so depressed.
(00:38:48):
Why was I rejected and stuff?
(00:38:50):
And then I was successful, but I was always disappointed.
(00:38:53):
I was successful at other conferences and I go and do my talk,
(00:38:56):
but I never really considered the program committee or the audience.
(00:38:59):
I was always a little bit more self-centered on me, my delivery, and just doing the best that I could.
(00:39:05):
That’s really interesting.
(00:39:06):
Where did you learn that?
(00:39:06):
I fairly recently learned that I got this question, like, is this interesting or not?
(00:39:11):
I got it wrong quite often.
(00:39:13):
So I’ve submitted,
(00:39:15):
I don’t know,
(00:39:16):
hundreds of proposals to,
(00:39:17):
I don’t know,
(00:39:18):
hundreds of conferences probably in the past,
(00:39:19):
I don’t know,
(00:39:20):
10 years or something.
(00:39:21):
And once you presented something somewhere and it went well,
(00:39:24):
then okay,
(00:39:25):
there’s chances that you presented at one of the next events,
(00:39:27):
right?
(00:39:27):
But I’ve also had occasions where I had something that I thought, this is amazing.
(00:39:31):
This is the missing link.
(00:39:33):
People should learn this.
(00:39:34):
I’m super enthusiastic about this.
(00:39:35):
Submitted it to 10 events.
(00:39:37):
Nobody wanted to see it.
(00:39:38):
Okay, weird.
(00:39:39):
And then I had once like prepared a talk about continuous delivery and DevOps for a
(00:39:43):
group of managers that was not so technical at all.
(00:39:47):
And then, well, I had this laying around and I had a slot left at a conference to submit.
(00:39:51):
So I submitted it and it got accepted.
(00:39:53):
And I was like, that’s weird.
(00:39:54):
This is like basic knowledge that everybody knows, right?
(00:39:57):
And then it became the most favorite talk of the track that I was in.
(00:40:00):
And then I was in the biggest room and then the room was full and people loved it.
(00:40:04):
I was like, how is this possible?
(00:40:06):
This is elementary knowledge.
(00:40:08):
But it’s elementary knowledge for me because I’ve been doing continuous delivery for five or 10 years.
(00:40:12):
But there were loads of people who were in their career for two or three years who
(00:40:16):
hadn’t done any of this.
(00:40:17):
And for them, it was amazing.
(00:40:18):
So from then on, I also started focusing more on explaining fundamental topics, right?
(00:40:24):
So a recent talk I did was,
(00:40:26):
well,
(00:40:26):
the title is Debug and Distributed Systems,
(00:40:28):
but it’s basically how does the internet work?
(00:40:30):
So there’s TCP and DNS and firewalls and routings and proxies and HTTP and TLS and
(00:40:38):
all those things that happen between two pieces of,
(00:40:41):
I don’t know,
(00:40:41):
Java code that talk together over network,
(00:40:43):
right?
(00:40:43):
And I had the same experience here.
(00:40:45):
Submitted it, got approved, biggest room, room was full, people found it amazing.
(00:40:50):
I was like,
(00:40:50):
Oh, wow.
(00:40:51):
So there’s definitely a market at conferences for explaining like elemental computer science concepts.
(00:40:57):
And I guess then we’re circling back all the way to the beginning.
(00:41:00):
Why it was relatively easy for me, because I learned all those things like year over year.
(00:41:05):
And I was also lucky to have like a formal education in computer science with
(00:41:08):
everything regarding networks.
(00:41:09):
I learned this by tinkering with Linux machines.
(00:41:11):
But now if you,
(00:41:12):
you know,
(00:41:13):
get started as a developer now,
(00:41:14):
then you also need to learn about bringing Quarkus and Angular and React and cloud
(00:41:18):
data and stuff.
(00:41:19):
I don’t know what.
(00:41:20):
So I guess there’s also people who didn’t have a formal education in computer
(00:41:24):
science and just started,
(00:41:25):
you know,
(00:41:26):
a career as a developer because they love doing this.
(00:41:28):
And this group is becoming bigger and bigger.
(00:41:31):
So I think I found out also for this group,
(00:41:33):
teaching not like the latest and greatest news framework,
(00:41:37):
look how amazing this is and the things we did,
(00:41:39):
but also just basic good content to help people progress in their careers.
(00:41:44):
That was kind of like an eye-opener for me in the past couple of years, I should say.
(00:41:48):
So the moral of the story is submit, right?
(00:41:51):
Yes.
(00:41:51):
And you often get it wrong, whether you think that something is interesting or not.
(00:41:54):
So do not make this your own problem.
(00:41:56):
The Prone Committee will find it out.
(00:41:58):
And I also, I get rejected all the time.
(00:42:01):
Most of my proposals get rejected.
(00:42:03):
I’m really happy you said that.
(00:42:04):
I’m really happy you said that.
(00:42:06):
Yeah.
(00:42:07):
So typically in conference, I see how many slots are there to submit.
(00:42:10):
It’s simply three or five.
(00:42:12):
I submit five, four or five get rejected and maybe I get one accepted.
(00:42:16):
Well, then I’m happy.
(00:42:17):
I also see these rejections as a piece of feedback, like, okay, it wasn’t the best fit for our audience.
(00:42:23):
Or if I look at J4, where we have, I don’t know, 50 slots and get a thousand proposals.
(00:42:28):
Just statistically, the chance of getting on stage is super small, right?
(00:42:32):
And we need to reject loads and loads of proposals that would be great to have on stage.
(00:42:36):
We had others that were even better.
(00:42:38):
So,
(00:42:39):
you know,
(00:42:39):
knowing how a program committee and a conference works also helps me in
(00:42:42):
understanding and not worrying too much about getting rejected.
(00:42:45):
I’m actually nowadays also happy if I get rejected.
(00:42:48):
Oh, I got rejected for this event.
(00:42:50):
That means that I save two or three days on traveling and going to an event and can
(00:42:53):
spend on other things,
(00:42:54):
right?
(00:42:55):
So this is also like another way to see this.
(00:42:57):
Are all of your talks different or do you have basically a core set that you sort
(00:43:02):
of customize for the event?
(00:43:04):
No,
(00:43:04):
I guess I typically try to every year look back at what of the stuff that I did may
(00:43:10):
be interesting for an audience at a conference.
(00:43:12):
And then I brainstorm about topics a bit and I’ll pick some and write like an
(00:43:17):
abstract really quickly and then stop preparing those talks.
(00:43:20):
I start submitting them and not until they get approved,
(00:43:23):
I start preparing them because I typically have like a couple of months to prepare.
(00:43:27):
Typically, they’re all new and revolve around a certain idea.
(00:43:31):
I have two types of talks.
(00:43:33):
One is a bit more about methodology,
(00:43:35):
and those are talks about software architecture or DevOps or contingency delivery,
(00:43:38):
and then basically sharing experiences and guidelines.
(00:43:42):
The other
(00:43:42):
ones I have are more like demo-based and sharing experiences.
(00:43:46):
So the build there is typically, this was a situation where it worked.
(00:43:50):
This was the challenge we had.
(00:43:51):
These are these alternatives we thought about.
(00:43:55):
This is the one we picked.
(00:43:56):
This is a demo.
(00:43:57):
This is how it works.
(00:43:58):
This is experiences of using this tool in production for two years or something.
(00:44:01):
That’s typically like the build-up I like to use because then you’re not only
(00:44:04):
giving people an intro in a tool or a framework or a language.
(00:44:08):
because they can get this online in a blog post or whatever.
(00:44:11):
But you’re also setting the stage on what was the environment and what did we learn
(00:44:15):
and how did we apply it?
(00:44:16):
And this helps people to place it in their toolbox to see whether they can apply it
(00:44:21):
in the next project or not.
(00:44:22):
I think this is, for me, the most value that I get out of conference talks for others.
(00:44:27):
This was the scenario.
(00:44:28):
This was the problem.
(00:44:29):
This is how we solve this.
(00:44:30):
This is whether it worked or not.
(00:44:32):
Really great advice.
(00:44:33):
Gold, pure gold.
(00:44:34):
I should say pure Bitcoin these days, right?
(00:44:36):
All right, Bert, it’s great talking to you.
(00:44:40):
Glad that we ended on conferences.
(00:44:42):
Hopefully I can get to some events where you’re there so we can sit down and have a
(00:44:46):
cup of coffee or a beer.
(00:44:47):
I’d love to continue these conversations.
(00:44:50):
And I’ve learned a lot.
(00:44:51):
I learned a lot from everybody I talked to.
(00:44:53):
That’s the reason why I do this, but I’ve certainly learned a lot here.
(00:44:56):
So yeah, that’s it.
(00:44:58):
We’ll talk to you soon, Bert.
(00:45:00):
Thanks a lot.
(00:45:00):
Thanks a lot for having me.
(00:45:01):
That was fun.
(00:45:02):
And I hope to see you around.
(00:45:03):
Cool.
(00:45:03):
Thanks, man.
(00:45:04):
Bye.