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Elias, Elias Nogueira from the Netherlands.
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Welcome to Duke’s Corner.
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Thank you so much.
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Thank you for having me.
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Yeah, it’s great to meet you.
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We are meeting here for the first time,
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and I always usually start these podcasts off recently by saying hello.
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Welcome to the program.
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We’re meeting here for the first time.
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Because I’m not getting out to events these days, but hopefully that will change sometime in the future.
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But you were recommended to me to have a conversation.
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And I love having these conversations,
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talking to developers,
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meeting new Java engineers from around the world.
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Tell me a little bit about yourself,
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where you come from,
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what you do,
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and how you got involved with Java.
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Sure.
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I’m Elias.
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I’m originally from Brazil,
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and I moved to the Netherlands five years ago to have new challenges in my life,
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actually,
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like living in a different country,
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living in a different culture,
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basically,
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and have more opportunities to grow in my career.
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It’s really good so far.
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There’s a lot of challenges,
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of course,
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because of the language,
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culture,
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but all those things are a learning process,
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and they are really nice because they open our minds.
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I can tell you when I started with Java,
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actually,
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and I don’t know how many,
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but I was the one starting learning about Java in university.
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It was a long time ago, it was 2006.
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After four years, I was in university studying there.
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I had my first contact with Java through a class specifically about Java.
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And I remember that time was Java 1.3, 1.4, if I’m not mistaken.
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So there’s a lot of progress compared to that year.
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And it was really interesting because during the graduation, we were learning a lot of program languages.
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Java wasn’t that time the training one.
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I remember, at least back in Brazil where I live, was Delphi.
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But it was really interesting because it kind of was teaching a new paradigm, of course.
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Because normally when we are a computer scientist graduation,
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we learn a lot of different languages with a lot of different approaches.
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Java was a totally different one, interesting one.
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And back in that time, that was 2006, the teacher actually said,
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She started an extra work group because she saw that a lot of people were a little
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bit more interested in Java.
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That was really nice.
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And then we started discussing how we can learn this a little bit more because we
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had only one class about Java in the whole graduation.
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So she started this working group where every two weeks on Saturday,
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we were going to university in the morning.
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And what we were doing there,
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every member had the task to learn some new feature about Java,
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some feature about Java and teach others about that feature.
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And then after presentation,
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we started a live coding or coding session to just understand a little bit more all
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together how it works.
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It was really fun because it was an extension of that, let’s say, the class.
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That was also my first contact, let’s say, more or less with public speaking.
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Because you learn something, you need to learn something, and you are telling a story to others.
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That is a totally different thing.
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When you are learning by yourself and try to apply those stuff.
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And it was really nice because after we were more or less one year doing this,
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and the local jerk started to notice that we were doing a lot of things with Java.
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And they offered help, which was really nice.
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So they were doing that time like one to two conferences per year in that location.
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It was the RSJerk.
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They said to us that there was an initiative on Java.
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that called it the Global Education Learning Community,
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that was helping a lot of different entities like Jugs and small communities to
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learn about Java,
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to grow more the Java ecosystem.
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And we joined that program in 2007.
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And actually what we did with the help of the Jugs and with the help of this
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community in Java,
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we started being a kind of example for universities for them to apply these small
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workgroups
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to influence the students to learn a little bit more about Java at that time.
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And we know that the research about Java,
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the internet,
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and everything wasn’t in the state that we are nowadays.
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Nowadays it’s really easy to go to YouTube, see some videos, talk synchronously.
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But at that time it was a little bit hard, so that community was really good.
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And it was a really central and good point to know more people and to learn from different people.
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And after that, I did a lot of things.
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Since back then, since 2006, I learned Java, and I’m basically only working with Java since nowadays.
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Wow, that’s really interesting.
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It’s a great story.
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So a couple of things that you said there, I want to tease out a little bit.
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This whole concept of,
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you know,
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when you were in school,
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you know,
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if you knew something,
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you had to teach it to others.
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That’s a really innovative learning technique is the concept of teaching to somebody else.
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It’s really, really interesting because, you know, I’m really into this sort of skepticism.
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you know,
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self-help and things like that and how to learn really complex subjects and how
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other people learn.
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And one of the things I’ve discovered is that true learning is not the ability to take information in.
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True learning happens when you get the information out again,
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you know,
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and it’s a little bit anti-intuitive.
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I remember when I was a kid, I did not understand that at all.
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And the second thing that struck me was that it seems like early on you were really
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exposed to the community in terms of the Java user groups.
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Yes.
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And it is really interesting because it’s true.
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It’s really hard when you learn to teach others.
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So instead of learning or reading a book or spending one hour trying to get information,
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if you get information,
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you need to translate this to a certain language that back in the time my
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colleagues didn’t understand.
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It was taking hours and days, actually, to build that mafios.
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But it was nice that…
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Everyone could give feedback and we could learn from each other in every interaction.
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So it was really good.
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Actually, this helped me in my whole career, actually.
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This basically is really beneficial.
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And if I can give a tip here, like we must do this more, right?
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As public speakers,
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we do this,
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of course,
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but everyone that is aspiring to be a public speaker or just like try to teach
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others in different way,
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this is an excellent way to do it.
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Now, when you first started to learn Java, what about it struck you?
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In other words, when you were first learning Java, what was important?
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What stood out to you as, oh, wow, this is really powerful.
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This is really interesting.
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I could do something with this tool.
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Yeah, I remember there that we could do two different things, actually.
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We could do desktop and web with the same tool.
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It was really,
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really nice because back in the days when we were programming,
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basically everything was desktop.
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Let’s talk like GUI, graphical user interface, like we have for everything.
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And there was almost no web.
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And Java was in the state, okay, now we have something for web as well.
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And it had a lot of possibilities because it could do anything.
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only an executable to run standalone to do something graphical user interface web
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user interface and the paradigm of object oriented was pretty nice back in the days
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because i was learning only like like normal like normal c i learned even pascal uh
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learned language for back in the days ai
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I remember this language, a lot of different languages that could be applicable for specific solutions.
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But when I learned Java,
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we could see,
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okay,
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I can apply this for basically everything that I need to build.
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And that was the interesting part.
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The not interesting part,
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when I was starting to learn a little bit more after this class, after this class finished.
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And I remember I bought the detail, the Java how-to program from detail, for detail, sorry.
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And this book was like kind of a Bible.
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It was super giant.
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And back in the days, my English was non-existent.
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And I remember I was trying to read the book with a dictionary,
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a translation dictionary on my side and trying to understand all those things.
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It was hard,
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but it was fascinating at some point because I could learn a lot of different
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things that I didn’t know that existed before.
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And I could see even more that kind of possibility.
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I can do basically whatever I want with one programming language only.
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Interesting.
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So it seems like the language itself was really innovative from the beginning,
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but also you are very motivated from the beginning.
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Yeah, because like that time I was trying to focus in one thing because it’s good, right?
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Like in university,
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we were learning about a lot of different things,
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but it was more or less the time that,
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OK,
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I need to focus and get some specialization in one or two things,
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not trying to learn everything,
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because if I learn everything,
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it’s good.
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But when I go to the market, starting working a job, I need to know something specific.
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And my target at that time was, OK, I want to work with Java.
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So I will learn more Java.
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I will try to learn as much as possible.
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And I will try to apply any kind of open position for this to elevate these skills.
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So you learned Java way back a long time ago when Java itself was very young and
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then you’re still using it now all these years later.
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So it’s like you have like a 20 year career or so in working with this technology.
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So talk a little bit about the evolution of Java as a technology.
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It was really impressive.
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And was one thing that I can remember that now we say a lot of open source and open source community.
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I remember back the days the Java normal features from Sun and after Oracle was
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really well written,
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was solving the problems.
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And I could remember the evolution from desktop to web,
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the JSF doing a lot of things with that and all the improvements they were doing
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with Java Enterprise ecosystem.
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But I also remember that as Java was progressing in this way,
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like removing,
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not removing,
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but not focusing on desktop anymore because it was a normal need for everyone even
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that time.
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New frameworks are also starting popping up.
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Like, I remember one of the first versions of Hibernate back in the time.
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I remember the first versions of Spring.
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And back in the days,
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it was really small projects trying to solve specific problems that,
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OK,
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in Java,
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we have the JDBC.
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OK, we know how to do that, et cetera.
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But how we can make it more Java-oriented, not that SQL-oriented, but SQL-oriented.
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So that’s why like we had like,
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and I even remember frameworks like I bet that was trying to solve this kind of
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problems we were using and a lot of like different projects was popping up.
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And one good thing is that since back then Java was actually from,
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at least from my perspective,
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those frameworks or libraries was taking some place for being used.
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But Java was actually learning, from my perspective, Java was learning from those frameworks as well.
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Okay,
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now the guys are trying to do this with,
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I don’t know,
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Hibernate or a different Spring,
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how we can make in our side,
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in the Java side,
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JVM a little bit better as well.
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Not to,
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let’s say,
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kill the competition,
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but okay,
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how we can learn from each other and how we can coexist and we can go together.
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It’s almost like a teacher learning from students.
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In other words,
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both sides are benefiting and then you create this community where this like
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reciprocal relationships where all sides benefit.
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Interesting.
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So you talk about the community, you got involved early in the community.
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And I would imagine since you’re focusing very heavily on Java,
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Java has been a huge benefit to your career and in terms of you learning the technology,
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but also
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working within the community.
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I mean,
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you know,
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when people contribute to a community,
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they are,
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by definition,
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they’re helping their career because they’re exposing themselves to more opportunities.
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They’re benefiting the community and things like that.
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So talk a little bit about contributing.
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What do you, how do you, I mean, it seems like you’ve been contributing for a long time.
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How do you feel about contributing?
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How do you feel about contributing to a community and what you can get out of a community today?
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For me, it was one of the most important things, my career.
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Because back in the days of university,
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it was a little bit more difficult than nowadays,
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like I said before,
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to get information.
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And back in the days as well, I didn’t have money to go to the conferences, et cetera.
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So I was trying to learn from any kind of open content, like blog posts, few ones, forums.
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When we did have three conferences, I was going there to just learn a little bit.
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And this is really important because I was getting a lot of content from the
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community to learn a little bit more about Java.
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And after a few years, I was okay.
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I’m just consuming that much,
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but I should also be contributing back because that helped me a lot in my career.
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So how I started actually as well,
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I started like everything that I was learning,
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I created a blog post and I was almost daily blogging.
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And okay, today I learned this, I’m trying to do this, this and that, this worked for me.
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And I was constantly blogging like a diary, like I was writing it.
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And when I had a few opportunities to try to talk in the conferences,
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and I believe my first conference was 2008,
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I was trying to share content as well in a free format.
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And back in the days,
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we started a few communities there in Brazil as well to try to have the sense of,
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okay,
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everyone’s here to learn.
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And we need to contribute to everyone in a free format.
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So instead of,
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of course,
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it’s beneficial to have conferences that are paid because we know the whole structure,
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et cetera.
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But we weren’t like kind of doing like what we know about nowadays about meetups.
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We are doing small meetups.
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To learn from others in the free content, teaching others, giving feedback to others.
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But my two main things was I was blogging a lot since 2007.
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And I was trying to like as much as possible contributing and be present in small
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meetups to learn from others as well.
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And that’s why I’m trying to since nowadays giving back everything that I learned it.
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since the beginning, because for me, it was a struggle to try to learn more or try to find information.
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And I saw the benefits of doing it.
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That’s really great.
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And when you’re contributing, are you finding that others are responding to that?
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In other words,
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when you contribute something,
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when you do a session and you talk about contributing,
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do you find that people say,
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oh,
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yeah,
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that’s something that I should try?
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For sure.
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For sure.
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And since that time that I’m actually starting with blogging,
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all the time that I’m giving a talk or blogging about something,
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I really need to be hands-on.
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I want to be hands-on to show, okay, I have this problem and how we can solve this problem technically.
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And then I deep dive on that technically.
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What I don’t like to do,
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that’s why I like that much this technical stuff,
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giving presentations or talks that there’s no code or no problem to solve.
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just inspirational or just saying something it’s important as well but i don’t have
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this gift and my gift is basically okay i have a problem that i face it that i’m
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still have or etc how i can solve how i did solve that problem
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It’s really interesting because whenever I give a talk, there’s no code in my talks.
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It’s all about community building.
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But I don’t think anybody would want me near a computer coding.
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But this is good, right?
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Because you like it, you master this.
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Yes, yes, yes.
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If you put me in a spotlight to give a talk about community in general, it won’t be good.
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No.
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Yeah,
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I like talking about community because,
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well,
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obviously it’s my job to build community,
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but I’m fascinated by how particularly engineers in this field come together and
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contribute and build communities.
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There’s a dynamic there.
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There’s a human element there that doesn’t necessarily exist in all professions.
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And in fact, when I have conversations with friends, I have at least 20 stories like this.
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I can have a conversation with a friend who’s in a different field,
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and I can sort of describe in a very normal way what my life is like.
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If I go to a conference, I have these types of conversations.
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Or…
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When I talk to people like you on this podcast,
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these stories that we tell back and forth are all normal.
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And many times my friends respond, I’ve never heard of this.
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I’ve never heard of just so many people in a field just so willing to help and
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contribute to the larger community.
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And so over the years, I’ve just, you know, it’s all normal to me.
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I’ve been doing this work since 2000.
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That’s a long time.
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You know, when I joined Sun, it’s normal to me.
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And so sometimes I get a little surprised by people who don’t see this as normal.
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But there’s a lot of them.
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And one of the things is some engineers aren’t aware of this,
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you know,
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that in other professions just doesn’t work that way.
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yeah maybe maybe they do have like less scale but i guess that we are learning a
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lot in our field where our fields are so dynamic that every week we have a new
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thing and we’re really open to learn those new things right exactly that’s why i
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believe in more or less in it it’s a little bit like bigger and everyone is eager
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to learn something new to contribute right to the community in this way
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right i also i also look at it as a concept of i mean you’re competing and
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cooperating all day we as humans in a biological sense we have to compete and
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cooperate in order to survive that’s just everywhere you look you see those two
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dynamics and i see the whole community dynamic is simply that we’re competing with
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people there’s companies that are contributing to communities but they’re also
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competing with each other
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We compete for jobs and things like that,
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but we’re contributing because we’re helping other people find jobs.
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We’re educating people, like you mentioned.
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We’re contributing presentations and videos and podcasts and blogs and code.
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People contribute source code.
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All these things are quite normal.
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And so those are the things that I talk about in my presentations.
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There’s no code.
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There’s usually only photographs of people.
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Yeah.
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And a funny thing about Java,
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of course,
(00:19:06):
because I love Java,
(00:19:07):
I will say this,
(00:19:08):
but so far it’s one of the best communities I have seen.
(00:19:12):
Why is that?
(00:19:14):
Back in the days, I was still living in Brazil.
(00:19:17):
We do have a super big conference there called the Developers Conference, TDC.
(00:19:21):
There are multi-tracks, so it’s not only about Java.
(00:19:25):
They have Java plugins.
(00:19:26):
Python, all the program language, they have like parallel sessions and that the communities are there.
(00:19:31):
But we could see that the most communities that get together,
(00:19:34):
try to talk all the time,
(00:19:36):
try to get each other,
(00:19:39):
try to get to know each other,
(00:19:40):
try to contribute in general was the Java community.
(00:19:43):
I couldn’t see that much in other communities.
(00:19:46):
I’m not saying that they don’t do this,
(00:19:48):
but the Java community,
(00:19:49):
even like seven,
(00:19:51):
ten years ago,
(00:19:52):
was really strong and still is really strong and still has this mindset of,
(00:19:57):
okay,
(00:19:58):
we will help everyone.
(00:20:00):
And this is one of the most beautiful things about Java and Java communities that
(00:20:04):
I’m seeing that makes me still working with Java and progress on that.
(00:20:10):
Yeah, I think a lot of that comes from the leadership.
(00:20:12):
You know,
(00:20:12):
when you look at how Java started,
(00:20:14):
the specific engineers involved,
(00:20:16):
the companies involved,
(00:20:18):
obviously open source,
(00:20:19):
the whole culture of open source,
(00:20:21):
because not all open source projects develop a big community around them with a
(00:20:26):
bunch of contributions.
(00:20:27):
Some code is just open.
(00:20:29):
That’s it.
(00:20:29):
There’s not a lot of
(00:20:31):
you know, dynamic development around it.
(00:20:33):
But job is different because I think of the leaders.
(00:20:35):
The leaders have instilled a culture of contributing.
(00:20:39):
I mean, there’s an interesting concept with leadership.
(00:20:41):
Leadership comes from the bottom in terms of people able to, I mean, you’re free to contribute.
(00:20:48):
Right.
(00:20:49):
That is in and of itself a form of leadership.
(00:20:51):
You’re doing something.
(00:20:53):
But leadership also comes from the top when people who have a lot of authority and
(00:20:58):
branding that just,
(00:20:59):
you know,
(00:20:59):
very,
(00:20:59):
very well known or very famous.
(00:21:01):
And they behave that way.
(00:21:03):
Other people follow that behavior.
(00:21:06):
So, yeah, it’s just I think Java is filled with people like that on the top, you know, just on the top.
(00:21:12):
I don’t know if that’s the best way to describe it.
(00:21:13):
Just people who are very well known.
(00:21:16):
Let’s say exactly, exactly.
(00:21:18):
Versus people who just are anonymous,
(00:21:20):
but they go to conferences and they might know a lot of people and they’re also contributing.
(00:21:25):
So you get both dynamics.
(00:21:27):
And I’ve been involved with multiple communities over a dozen actually over the years.
(00:21:33):
And each one is slightly different, you know, so they’re not all the same.
(00:21:37):
Okay, let’s switch gears a little bit here.
(00:21:39):
You’re also a member of the,
(00:21:42):
so you’re a Java champion,
(00:21:44):
and you’re also a member of the Oracle ACE program.
(00:21:47):
And so let’s talk about these two groups of people, because I’ve worked with both of them, actually.
(00:21:53):
And I’ve been around for so long, I’ve worked with everybody in one capacity or another.
(00:21:58):
So let’s talk about Java champions.
(00:22:00):
What is the Java champions group?
(00:22:02):
Java Champions Group is a group of people more community-driven.
(00:22:06):
We were talking about, until now, what are contributions to the community.
(00:22:12):
So Java Champions,
(00:22:14):
from my point of view,
(00:22:16):
are the people contributing to the Java community in different ways.
(00:22:22):
most of the time teaching others about how to use Java,
(00:22:26):
how to solve a problem,
(00:22:28):
how to deal with a lot of different things.
(00:22:30):
Rather than,
(00:22:31):
okay,
(00:22:32):
I just created a project,
(00:22:33):
my project is super nice,
(00:22:34):
it’s open source,
(00:22:35):
but okay,
(00:22:36):
it’s here.
(00:22:37):
It’s not teaching you,
(00:22:38):
it’s solving a problem,
(00:22:39):
it’s not teaching you or it’s not like sharing this word with everyone or try to
(00:22:44):
evangelize about Java in the different ways.
(00:22:48):
So these Java champions,
(00:22:50):
from my perspective,
(00:22:50):
are those people that are all the time influencing about how we can adopt it,
(00:22:58):
solve problems with it and finding new ways to solve new problems.
(00:23:02):
So they really seem interested in building the community as well in the sense of
(00:23:06):
teaching others and encouraging others to adopt this culture.
(00:23:12):
Yes, totally.
(00:23:13):
Totally.
(00:23:14):
And
(00:23:15):
This is mainly by what I can see,
(00:23:17):
at least for me as well,
(00:23:19):
doing a lot of public speaking or talks,
(00:23:21):
not even public speaking,
(00:23:22):
but like speaking in general about Java,
(00:23:25):
writing blog posts,
(00:23:26):
recording some videos,
(00:23:27):
sharing some videos about how we can solve problems,
(00:23:30):
basically.
(00:23:31):
And how long have you been a Java champion?
(00:23:33):
I got my last year, actually.
(00:23:36):
Last year?
(00:23:37):
Yeah, here in Netherlands, yeah.
(00:23:38):
Now, you’re also, how did you get involved in the Oracle ACE program?
(00:23:42):
It was interesting because my first contact with Oracle ACE was in 2017 Java 1.
(00:23:51):
And when I was there in San Francisco,
(00:23:54):
I learned about this program and I learned even the difference about like more or
(00:23:57):
less Java Champion and Oracle ACE.
(00:23:59):
And from my perspective, Oracle ACE is more a professional program, right?
(00:24:04):
We have some points,
(00:24:05):
we need to give some talks,
(00:24:06):
we have some like specific tasks to do in order to keep this like all the other
(00:24:11):
programs that other companies have.
(00:24:14):
But it’s different from Java Champion that is more community driven.
(00:24:18):
And I was really interested in that time.
(00:24:20):
I remember that I should do some professional contributions using Oracle products or things like this.
(00:24:27):
But I was a little bit like that after that.
(00:24:31):
I wasn’t talking anymore to the person that was explained to me, but turns out like.
(00:24:36):
Two years ago, actually, someone from Oracle, Elias, we talked, the same person.
(00:24:42):
We have talked a long time ago about this program.
(00:24:44):
What do you think about this program?
(00:24:45):
What do you think about contributing a little bit more?
(00:24:49):
We can see that they know that they have the Java champions.
(00:24:52):
But in the Oracle OASIS, they also have one of the categories of Java.
(00:24:57):
And they were really open to have people talking about Java as Oracle ACES to as well,
(00:25:04):
like influence others about the technology to technical stuff,
(00:25:08):
how we can write some,
(00:25:09):
like writing some articles specifically about the platform,
(00:25:12):
et cetera.
(00:25:13):
So that’s why when I started like this path in the Oracle ACES program.
(00:25:20):
Interesting.
(00:25:20):
So do you find yourself also interacting with that community in terms of the actual,
(00:25:25):
so in terms of the other ACEs?
(00:25:28):
Oracle ACE is a really big community.
(00:25:30):
So like when we have the,
(00:25:32):
we have like basically every two weeks,
(00:25:35):
maximum one month,
(00:25:36):
we have the get together online with some,
(00:25:38):
like with some presentations and we are sharing some experiences,
(00:25:43):
but we have like,
(00:25:44):
we have not only people from Java,
(00:25:47):
But we have database, we have cloud, we have everything there.
(00:25:51):
And I talk more with the ACs related to Java, of course.
(00:25:56):
But we have a big community, and it’s an open community.
(00:26:00):
It’s an online community,
(00:26:01):
but if I have some problems with Oracle or database or anything,
(00:26:04):
I know that I can go there first.
(00:26:06):
Ask the Oracle ACES for Oracle database.
(00:26:10):
Okay, guys, I’m facing this problem.
(00:26:12):
I know that I could do a Google search and everything,
(00:26:15):
but I need to learn from you guys,
(00:26:16):
the experts on this subject,
(00:26:19):
what I could do,
(00:26:20):
what I can do,
(00:26:20):
how I can solve this.
(00:26:22):
It’s a really huge community that you can learn a lot of different things other
(00:26:26):
than you’re like a technology specialist,
(00:26:29):
being a technology specialist.
(00:26:31):
Interesting.
(00:26:32):
Cool, cool.
(00:26:33):
All right.
(00:26:33):
Well, where should we go from here?
(00:26:35):
I mean,
(00:26:36):
you told me interesting stories about how you got involved with Java,
(00:26:40):
how you learned Java,
(00:26:42):
how you initially contributed to the community,
(00:26:44):
the value of the community,
(00:26:46):
things like that.
(00:26:47):
Different programs you’ve been involved with in terms of communities as well as
(00:26:51):
programs like the ACE program.
(00:26:53):
A little bit about Java, the technology and why it’s valuable.
(00:26:57):
I’m also interested to hear a little bit about why.
(00:27:01):
Why you became a developer.
(00:27:03):
So take me back when you were younger, you’re in school and you’re thinking about what you want to do.
(00:27:07):
You look ahead, you get this whole life ahead of you.
(00:27:10):
You’re in school, you’re taking some classes and stuff.
(00:27:13):
What made the decision, yes, I want to be a developer?
(00:27:17):
It might be seen as a little bit sad.
(00:27:19):
But back in the days when I was in Brazil,
(00:27:21):
I was really poor and I was trying to figure out,
(00:27:24):
OK,
(00:27:24):
what I can learn in work that,
(00:27:27):
of course,
(00:27:27):
can give me money because I need to survive.
(00:27:31):
But I can more or less match my skills because like when I was young,
(00:27:36):
like in the college,
(00:27:37):
I was really good in like everything that is mathematics,
(00:27:40):
physics,
(00:27:41):
etc.
(00:27:41):
So, OK, what is more related to it and more or less what what can be training after a while?
(00:27:48):
It wasn’t that training in Brazil, being a programmer.
(00:27:52):
It was like,
(00:27:53):
you should become an electrical engineer or any other kind of formal engineer that
(00:27:58):
they had back in the days.
(00:28:00):
It will be better.
(00:28:01):
But when I started, OK, I started to figure out, OK, this programming part.
(00:28:05):
By the way, when I started learning programming, I started learning before I joined university.
(00:28:11):
So I’m starting getting a little bit fascinated,
(00:28:13):
like some writing,
(00:28:14):
some like magic words,
(00:28:16):
and it could do something in the computer.
(00:28:18):
So this is really nice because it’s, there’s a lot of logic.
(00:28:22):
There’s a lot of things that I liked that I didn’t really make in this.
(00:28:25):
I was good.
(00:28:26):
Okay.
(00:28:27):
I saw.
(00:28:27):
This is an opportunity to maybe focus a little bit more and have a job on it.
(00:28:32):
That’s why I started basically by two things.
(00:28:34):
Try to match my skills back in the days.
(00:28:37):
And I also think how I could move from this not a good life condition to get a job
(00:28:43):
that can give me a good life condition.
(00:28:47):
That’s very, very important.
(00:28:48):
I always ask career-oriented questions because we all have to deal with this.
(00:28:55):
Life throws all these challenges at us at all ages,
(00:28:59):
and sometimes it’s making a decision when you’re young.
(00:29:02):
And you don’t necessarily know what to do when you have all these options.
(00:29:06):
Sometimes you’re in a circumstance where you want to get out of it.
(00:29:09):
You want more opportunity.
(00:29:11):
And sometimes life just throws you into situations where you are working in a
(00:29:16):
career and you get laid off.
(00:29:17):
Not your fault, right?
(00:29:18):
Economy changes and you have to change jobs.
(00:29:22):
These are all very real situations.
(00:29:24):
And one of the nice things about talking to developers about this situation is
(00:29:30):
is that they have very interesting skills.
(00:29:33):
They can build things.
(00:29:35):
They can create things using tools.
(00:29:37):
I used to be in the construction business when I was young,
(00:29:40):
and I was fascinated by how powerful a feeling it was to create something with a tool,
(00:29:46):
that very simple concept.
(00:29:48):
You’re not just thinking about something.
(00:29:49):
You’re not just pushing paper in an office.
(00:29:52):
You’re thinking about what to do,
(00:29:53):
and then you’re doing it using a tool,
(00:29:55):
your hands,
(00:29:56):
your head,
(00:29:56):
and some extension thereof,
(00:29:58):
like a shovel or a hammer or a bulldozer.
(00:30:02):
Well, now we have IDEs, we have software, right?
(00:30:05):
And that’s a very, very powerful thing.
(00:30:08):
It’s a very powerful tool of liberation.
(00:30:11):
You can seek opportunities.
(00:30:13):
You can do interesting things.
(00:30:14):
And that’s why I’m interested in that question about why.
(00:30:18):
Why did you do this?
(00:30:19):
The problem for me after I joined the university was, okay, I want to work with IT, but what I will do?
(00:30:27):
Will I be a programmer or will I be a programmer in which area?
(00:30:30):
Will I be a professional programmer?
(00:30:32):
Should I go to this direction, to that direction?
(00:30:34):
So a lot of questions as well, like when we are young, right?
(00:30:37):
Like we are trying to find what is most important for us or most enjoyable.
(00:30:44):
Okay, so then you moved to the Netherlands.
(00:30:47):
You find yourself in Europe, which is also an interesting topic.
(00:30:53):
Maybe we can end on Europe because I have noticed,
(00:30:55):
I think everybody has noticed in the Java community,
(00:30:58):
just how active the community is in Europe these last couple of years.
(00:31:04):
And that’s not necessarily the case in other parts of the world.
(00:31:09):
So what makes Europe so interesting these days with Java?
(00:31:12):
It’s nice.
(00:31:13):
Like,
(00:31:13):
of course,
(00:31:14):
Europe is like if we get like five,
(00:31:17):
like four to five countries is still like smaller comparing to other places like
(00:31:21):
United States,
(00:31:22):
Brazil,
(00:31:22):
if you go to any other country like that speak.
(00:31:25):
But they are super active.
(00:31:27):
They are doing two, for me, they are doing three different things that we should do everywhere.
(00:31:34):
They have communities like meetups or chucks.
(00:31:38):
They do or they are sharing a lot of knowledge through a lot of blog posts or
(00:31:43):
personal websites,
(00:31:44):
like mostly articles and blogs.
(00:31:47):
and we do have this kind of bigger conferences as well in different countries that
(00:31:52):
are also one really good thing when i’m seeing all the java conferences we do have
(00:31:59):
like that people that are all the time that in spotlight vein cut and other guys
(00:32:03):
like they are super nice they are teaching and teaching us a lot of things but
(00:32:08):
That conference as well, they are giving opportunities to people to start.
(00:32:12):
And this is really beautiful in the community.
(00:32:15):
I don’t know exactly why it’s happening a lot in Europe,
(00:32:19):
but since I’m here,
(00:32:20):
I can see a lot of conferences,
(00:32:22):
a lot of communities,
(00:32:23):
and everyone helping each other,
(00:32:25):
even different countries from different communities.
(00:32:27):
But here it’s like in one hour in Belgium,
(00:32:30):
but we are talking,
(00:32:32):
we are cooperating,
(00:32:33):
we are exchanging ideas.
(00:32:36):
And this is one of the best things that the Japanese community is doing here.
(00:32:40):
Really interesting.
(00:32:40):
Well, I think this is one of the things I I’ve been to a few conferences recently.
(00:32:45):
I was in Vietnam actually in early April at the FOSS Asia Summit.
(00:32:50):
And it’s a really big conference, 5000 people there, 60 or 70 percent of them were students.
(00:32:56):
And I was telling one of the things I told them is to is to pay attention to global communities,
(00:33:01):
try and connect yourself so you can see what other people are doing in other
(00:33:06):
countries in terms of the community.
(00:33:08):
Right.
(00:33:08):
You have to learn the technology in your classroom.
(00:33:11):
OK, but you can start contributing to communities if you can.
(00:33:15):
And I mean,
(00:33:16):
there’s a whole world on GitHub,
(00:33:18):
but also try and pay attention to what communities are doing around the world,
(00:33:22):
different cultures,
(00:33:23):
languages and how they’re implementing their communities,
(00:33:26):
because it gives you ideas of what you can do in.
(00:33:28):
So in this case,
(00:33:29):
in Vietnam,
(00:33:30):
and it just led to a lot of interesting stories because the students were very
(00:33:34):
interested in what was going on internationally because the speakers at the
(00:33:38):
conference were from 50 different countries.
(00:33:41):
And the students were like, that really blew some students away because these are really young kids.
(00:33:46):
They’re 20, 21 years old, you know, in the first couple of years of school.
(00:33:51):
And to see 50 speakers from all over the place, you know, so it was really, really cool for them.
(00:33:55):
So that’s why I asked the question about Europe,
(00:33:57):
because I think the Europeans and I think the European Java community is giving the
(00:34:02):
world a really good example of how they can implement Java.
(00:34:06):
a community function a community uh atmosphere basically so and one thing for sure
(00:34:11):
that i can see here uh that i mentioned it like all this those different
(00:34:16):
communities here in europe are helping each other and it’s really nice because of
(00:34:19):
course like in terms of events they are competitors of course because like we can
(00:34:24):
easily travel to different conferences different countries but they’re helping each
(00:34:27):
other at the same time and this is the beautiful of like this kind of contribution
(00:34:31):
like
(00:34:32):
All right, Elias, it’s been a great conversation.
(00:34:34):
I’m really happy I met you.
(00:34:35):
It’d be great to meet you in person.
(00:34:37):
I’m a little sick and tired, to be perfectly honest, of seeing people on Zoom.
(00:34:41):
I don’t actually like it.
(00:34:43):
You can come to Europe to some conferences.
(00:34:46):
Yeah, it’s not that far away.
(00:34:47):
It’s just around the corner.
(00:34:48):
I’m in Japan.
(00:34:49):
Just a few hours.
(00:34:54):
But yeah, no, I know there’s a lot of things to a lot of interesting conferences.
(00:34:58):
I have my eye on a few that I’d like to visit.
(00:35:00):
I’ll take some vacation and get over there.
(00:35:03):
Maybe I’ll bring my family with me and we’ll just spend a little time, you know.
(00:35:07):
So do you have any last words for us?
(00:35:09):
Do you have any last and maybe any advice or anything I missed that you want to mention?
(00:35:16):
The only advice that I can give is try to share everything you know.
(00:35:21):
It helped me a lot to be in the position I’m nowadays as a professional to become a
(00:35:27):
Java champion,
(00:35:28):
to be an Oracle ace.
(00:35:29):
Even if I didn’t have this title,
(00:35:32):
it’s still helping me like contributing to the community or sharing the things I’m learning.
(00:35:38):
It’s the best advice I can give.
(00:35:40):
Excellent.
(00:35:40):
I’ll leave it there.
(00:35:41):
I’ll take that advice.
(00:35:42):
I’ll run with it.
(00:35:43):
Thank you very much, Elias.
(00:35:44):
And hopefully we’ll talk to you soon.
(00:35:46):
Thank you.