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Tom, Tom Cools, welcome to Duke’s Corner for the first time.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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So great to be here.
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Finally.
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It took a while.
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It took a while, but we’re here.
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It did.
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It took almost a year, I think, Tom.
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Yeah,
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well,
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I was doubting to switch companies and maybe doing a podcast while just switching
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companies isn’t the best,
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if you want to talk a bit about your career and such.
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So it took a while, but now I’m settled into the new company.
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So time to have a chat.
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Yeah, it’s great.
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Great.
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Excellent.
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So yeah, no, you’ve been on my list for a while.
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I just kept you there.
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And so we finally hook up and it’s really cool.
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So you are in Belgium, right?
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Yeah, I’m correct.
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I’ve never lived anywhere else.
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So it’s the land of fries and chocolate and all the good stuff.
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Actually,
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I’m lying because I did live for one year in the Netherlands,
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but there’s this rivalry between the Netherlands and Belgium.
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So I don’t always confirm that I lived in the Netherlands, but…
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Yeah, I love Belgium.
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Belgium is like the great place to be.
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And I’m very happy that I was able to push my beloved programming language here a
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bit because I’m also,
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for people that don’t know,
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I’m also the organizer of the Belgian Java user group.
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I make it my mission to spread Java all over Belgium.
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Excellent.
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Well, it’s a small place, so you should be able to reach every corner, right?
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I was only there once.
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That’s actually the amazing part of living in Belgium.
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It’s a two-hour train drive and I’m in Amsterdam.
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It’s two and a half hours and I’m under the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
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It’s two hours and I’m in London by train.
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So if you want to explore Europe,
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then Belgium is a great place to hang out for a couple of months and just travel
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from point to point.
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Yeah, Europe, I mean, physically Europe is very big.
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It’s like the United States, but it’s so tiny once you get in.
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It’s very, very different.
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you know for americans to understand i mean i go for two hours and i’m still in
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osaka and i live in osaka you know so this is still the same city so okay yeah so
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so you’re also a java champion and you lead a java user group you speak at
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conferences and stuff like that and stuff you love to you know talk about java why
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why do you love to talk about java
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I need to wind back a bit because my start with Java was a bit weird.
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11 years ago,
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11 and a half years ago,
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I joined a consultancy company and a consultancy company did two programming languages.
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Either you became a Java consultant or a .NET consultant.
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And at the start of my career,
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I basically got asked the question,
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what do you want to do,
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Java or .NET?
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And my honest answer was, I don’t care, you pick for me.
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So I told my manager,
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you know what,
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whatever you need at this company,
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I’m just starting out,
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you pick for me.
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And when I left a couple of months ago,
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I actually told this story again to my manager and I was reminiscing like,
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what if he had said .net?
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I wouldn’t be talking to you today.
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I wouldn’t be a Java champion.
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I wouldn’t be hosting the Belgian Java user group.
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So it was basically pure luck that I ended up with Java.
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It took me a good year to really fall in love with the programming language because
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I did my internship in .NET,
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then switched to Java,
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and it took a while because it felt a bit more,
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at least at that time,
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that’s 11 years ago,
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it felt a bit more rigid.
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The release cycles weren’t what they are today,
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so it was a release every three years or something,
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not every six months,
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like a nice cadence.
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But gradually, all these things started to improve and improve and newer things came out.
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I remember Spring Boot coming out like, oh, we don’t need these servers anymore.
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We can just have this jar that runs everything.
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And it started evolving.
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Then Grawl came with native images.
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And then, yeah, I’ve been in love probably for 10 years now.
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So it took about a year to get used to the changes.
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And then once I rolled in, I just wanted to go.
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So there seems to be a difference between before the release cycle and now.
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Because everybody brings that up in one way or another.
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Yeah, it just felt, you know, all these stereotypes we’re still trying to get rid of.
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Java is this old enterprise-y language, and it’s slow when it doesn’t evolve.
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Yeah.
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We’re still carrying that legacy along with us,
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but if you look close enough,
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that’s not what it is at all.
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Things like Project Loom,
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the virtual threats,
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it’s bloody amazing that they got that in there after so many years.
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Never really breaking backwards compatibility with previous programming language versions.
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Well, there’s always a few breakages, but mostly…
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You can still run the same Java as you did that many years ago,
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but you have a bunch of cool new features.
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So this evolution,
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I think,
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was the biggest trigger to bring my enthusiasm and also the enthusiasm of other people.
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Like, oh, look, it’s evolving.
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Every six months we have something cool.
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Sometimes it’s not finished with these preview features, but we can already see.
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What I really like is that collaboration that it also brings.
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Because before,
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it used to be you have a team of Java engineers that go away for a couple of years,
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or at least that’s what it looked like from the outside.
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They go away for a couple of years, they’ve come with a new Java version.
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Now it’s Java engineers post a Java enhancement proposal.
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Everyone on the internet can see it.
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Everyone can comment on it.
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You can try out early builds of the OpenJDK.
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You can do a bunch of stuff to really contribute to Java, the programming language itself.
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And I think we really needed those shorter release cycles to enable these preview features.
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And these preview features are the ones that really enable people to contribute.
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Because before it was like, we made a spec, we built it, good luck with it.
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Now it’s, we build a spec, everyone please look at it.
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We’re not sure, here’s a preview feature.
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And then we can iterate.
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But before there was no iteration,
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it was basically,
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we wait until all the features are done and then we just dump it on.
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Dump it sounds a bit aggressive, but it felt a bit like throwing it over the fence.
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Like, okay, we’re done with this version, let’s go.
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Well, it’s interesting you mentioned that iteration.
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I mean,
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I’ve been working in open source communities for a long time since Sun,
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Sun Microsystems.
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And I learned a lot about that very simple concept of iteration.
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Working at Sun on the Open Solaris project,
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I used to watch the engineers do code reviews and do architectural reviews.
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You would start this long thread,
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multi-hundred email thread on a mailing list,
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and you would start at one – essentially,
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you would start at one place and you would end up someplace very different.
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But then you have all that consensus building.
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And also, you had this education process that took place.
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And I can imagine it’s the same when you’re releasing,
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when you’re doing early release builds and things like that and publishing code and
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specifications and things like that.
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It gives people a chance to educate themselves as development is taking place.
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So just like you mentioned,
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it’s not just dumped and there it is,
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a couple of million lines of fresh new code for you to digest.
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Yeah, and I also think it is a good way to get out of the bubble of creation.
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And with that,
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I mean,
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if you’re working with seven people on something,
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you get so focused on,
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oh,
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we’re building this and we share the vision that sometimes you get these blind
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spots that you don’t even see anymore.
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Like, oh, but is this actually good for our users?
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Because we’re so focused on the nitty gritty details that you sometimes forget the
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wider sense of,
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is this usable?
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Yes or no?
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And I think by breaking it open,
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it has been done with the Java enhancement proposals and so on.
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It’s a great way to just say to the entire community,
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hey,
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it’s basically a card to say,
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don’t come complaining afterwards because you had any chance to help us make this better.
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Sometimes there’s trade-offs.
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And what I actually like very much about how Java is being,
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because you always need to have some stewards,
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right,
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that drive the process into a certain way.
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When there’s certain things that can’t happen,
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I love the explanation that Brian Gutz,
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for example,
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says like,
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yeah,
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I get that you want this feature,
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But here are all the reasons why you actually don’t want this feature.
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And then when you read his arguments and his thinking,
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then you’re like,
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oh,
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I didn’t know that my simple convenience feature would have this cascading effect
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through the entire JDK.
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So maybe you’re right.
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Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.
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But that’s all these insightful things that you might miss.
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And I really like,
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for example,
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I know Nikolai posts videos on those frequently,
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like,
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why is this the case?
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And I love knowing the reason why we don’t have certain things.
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Interesting.
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So what types of things do you do to talk about Java out there in terms of what are
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your activities?
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Yeah, so the biggest one is organizing the Belgian Java user group.
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It’s a user group that has existed since 1997.
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So I believe it was one of the very first user groups,
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originally created by Stefan Janssen,
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known from DevOps and Vox fame.
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But around 2018, I believe, was the last event.
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And then it kind of,
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well,
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it was going downhill for years,
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at least if I look in the history on meetup.com,
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2018 was the last one.
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And I knew that was the last one because I attended that last one.
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And I was like, ooh, it’s been a while.
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And then eventually I took over.
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There was a small sidestep.
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During COVID, I tried to run my own Java user group, the Entrop Java user group.
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I had a genius planning idea to start creating a meetup February, 2020.
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So that went downhill pretty fast.
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We had like two meetups at like six people at each meetup max.
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So that was not what I was feeling.
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But as COVID went away,
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I talked to Stefan,
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like,
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hey,
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Stefan,
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you still have the Belgian Java user group.
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Can you help me promote the end for a Java user group?
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Because you have this network and so on.
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And he said,
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I’m paraphrasing here,
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he basically said,
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yeah,
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but why don’t you just take over the Belgian Java user group instead of starting
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and something new,
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just take over this thing that has already existed.
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And that’s what I did since 2022.
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So after COVID, it was actually pretty funny.
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You know, meetup.com?
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So that’s the place where the meetup is organized.
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Did you know that if the leader of a meetup steps down,
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that any member of the meetup can say,
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I own the meetup now?
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Oh, really?
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Yeah.
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So at some point, I was a member of the group.
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And at some point I saw the banner.
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Hey, the event organizer has stepped down.
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Click here to claim ownership.
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Yeah.
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And my initial thing was,
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I’m going to claim this because I don’t want any sort of cynical marketing company
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to claim this.
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I don’t want, because it’s really cheap.
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For 50 euros,
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some cynical marketing company could have said,
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click,
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now I own the Belgian Java user group and the entire mailing list.
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So my first thing was, I’m going to safeguard the community from that.
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I’ll take ownership.
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Then I organized the BOF session at DevOps.
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And I just told the Belgian community, Belgian community,
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This is what happened.
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I now own the Belgian Java user group.
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Who wants to help organize this and then we can do it together because I don’t want
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to do it alone.
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Because at that time, me and my wife were starting to look into having children.
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And I knew that while I had a kid, I didn’t want to post a meetup full time.
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And basically, I have a few people then that stepped up and said, I want to help.
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And since then, we’ve been going every month like clockwork.
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Really?
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Well, that’s really cool.
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So it was really a coincidence that I saw that it was available and then being like,
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I don’t want anyone to claim this that I don’t trust.
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Yeah.
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Which sounds a bit selfish,
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but it would have been a good deal for any marketing company,
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but I wouldn’t allow them.
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And we’ve been going every month since then.
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And I think that’s the biggest way I contribute to the Java community right now.
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I make sure that every month there’s an event.
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I have asked a ton of people to help out and they do.
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which is amazing.
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And I try to keep it as open as possible.
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So our meetup is a bit weird, according to some.
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We basically run it like an open source project.
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So we have a GitHub project with all the issues.
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And the issues are meetup November, meetup December, meetup January.
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Inside the issue, I have a few items that need to be checked off.
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We need a location, we need a host, yada, yada.
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And then I say to the community, whoever wants to organize this, go ahead.
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Oh, interesting.
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But if you don’t do it, then I do it because I make sure that every month something happens.
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Okay.
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So that’s sort of how we organize the meetup.
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And also for other stuff,
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I just post a ticket or someone else posts a ticket when they think something’s important.
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For example, I’m going to show you the sticker.
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I know in podcast land that doesn’t work, but we have this nice Belgian jug sticker.
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This design is fully made by someone that answered one of those GitHub tickets.
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I just made a GitHub ticket.
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Hey, we need a recognizable logo for the jug.
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Someone answered,
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Luik,
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who is now one of the co-organizers,
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created that logo,
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printed stickers,
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and off we go.
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So I try to keep it as open as possible.
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Anyone can contribute anything they want at any time.
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But it’s really interesting that you do that.
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It’s a nice way to keep track of contributions because everything’s there.
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Everything’s in public.
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You can have a situation where someone is doing a lot of work,
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but it’s not necessarily easily visible.
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And so that’s really a great idea to do it like that.
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Yeah, and I do make it a point to yell out.
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So whenever I mention the sticker and the logo, I will always say that Loic Mania created this.
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So I do give credit where credit is due.
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What’s also in that same repo, by the way, is our guidelines.
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So while I say anyone can host it and anyone can organize,
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we do have some guidelines that everyone has to obey.
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And whenever we need to make a modification on the guidelines,
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it’s by approved pull request because it’s all Markdown files.
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So it’s a very developer-oriented way to organize a meetup.
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But I think when you’re organizing a Java user group,
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you can expect some developer-oriented crowd.
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Yes, absolutely.
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That’s really innovative.
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I had never thought of that.
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Usually,
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you know,
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someone has a website or they have a meetup and you just,
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you know,
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someone gets a room somewhere and you send a notice.
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Who’s going to be speaking?
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A couple of people speaking,
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you know,
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and then maybe you go out to dinner afterwards and stuff like that.
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So it sounds like you have a real feel for managing a community,
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for basically not only contributing,
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this is a major contribution that you’re doing,
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but there’s also sort of a,
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you have a lot of thought went into how you can get people to contribute.
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Yeah,
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and there I do need to go back to the fact that I lived in the Netherlands for a while,
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because one of the reasons I wanted to have a Java user group in Belgium or an
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active Java user group in Belgium again,
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because I’m so jealous of the Netherlands.
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And as a Belgian, this hurts to say, but they have like
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If you throw a stone in the air, you will hit the Java YouTube group leader on the head.
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There are so many leaders there.
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It’s incredible.
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And in Belgium, at some point, we had nothing active.
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We had DevOps,
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the biggest conference,
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one of the biggest conferences in Europe,
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but no monthly thing.
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Really?
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So that’s where the jealousy came from.
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And actually,
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my hidden plot that’s actually not so hidden because I keep telling every month at
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the meetup is,
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my dream is that the Belgian Java user group is a step up for more Java user groups.
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So whenever someone comes to me like,
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hey,
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Tom,
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I want to organize my own Java user group,
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I tell them,
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no,
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don’t start your own user group.
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Help me organize the Belgian Java user group.
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In your locations, the way we’ve set it up, you can do everything yourself.
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but you have me to help and you don’t get lost in the,
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you need a new logo,
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you need to meet the .com account.
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You don’t get lost in all the administration that it takes to set up a user group.
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Do it a couple of times.
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And if you love doing it a couple of times,
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I will help you set up all the things for your own user group,
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but make sure that you like it first.
(00:15:36):
So it was always meant as a springboard for newer Java user groups.
(00:15:40):
So one of the things that we do to try to enable that is Belgium has provinces,
(00:15:45):
and every month we host in a different province.
(00:15:49):
So last month…
(00:15:51):
Last month was in Blam’s Brabant.
(00:15:53):
This month will be in Antwerp.
(00:15:55):
Next month might be in East Flanders or West Flanders.
(00:15:59):
Maybe sometimes in the French-speaking part of Belgium.
(00:16:02):
And we really made the Belgian jug Belgian again by making sure that it’s more like
(00:16:06):
a traveling circus.
(00:16:07):
Because sometimes these national jugs, they park themselves in the capital city of the country.
(00:16:14):
We explicitly do not want to do that because our goal is to make sure that at some
(00:16:18):
point there will be enough mass to create a separate jug for a smaller area.
(00:16:23):
That’s the idea.
(00:16:25):
Interesting.
(00:16:26):
The,
(00:16:26):
you know,
(00:16:27):
the Oracle,
(00:16:28):
the all India Oracle user group has something kind of similar where they have,
(00:16:33):
you know,
(00:16:33):
India is obviously slightly bigger than Belgium.
(00:16:36):
But,
(00:16:36):
you know,
(00:16:37):
they have sort of this all India Oracle user group concept that it’s in like 20
(00:16:42):
different cities,
(00:16:44):
right?
(00:16:44):
And over the years, they’ve all developed sort of their own, you know, personalities.
(00:16:48):
And it’s mostly database and cloud and things like that.
(00:16:52):
But interesting.
(00:16:54):
Tell me why – I’ve noticed and a lot of other people have noticed recently as well
(00:16:58):
that the user groups and the conferences in Europe are very active.
(00:17:04):
And that’s not necessarily the case in other parts of the world,
(00:17:09):
certainly after COVID with all the shutdowns and everything.
(00:17:14):
Yeah.
(00:17:14):
I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on that.
(00:17:16):
Is there something unique about what’s going on in Europe?
(00:17:19):
Or has it always been this way?
(00:17:20):
That’s actually an excellent,
(00:17:22):
has it always been this way is an excellent question because I don’t have a good
(00:17:28):
view on how it was in different countries.
(00:17:30):
I have been to DeafNexus in Atlanta.
(00:17:33):
So that’s like my only kind of reference when it comes to real international conferences.
(00:17:37):
I’m not entirely sure if this is correct,
(00:17:39):
but in Belgium,
(00:17:40):
at least,
(00:17:41):
there is a thing where employers are forced to educate their employees.
(00:17:48):
So you are forced to give your employees a certain budget.
(00:17:52):
And what is an excellent way to make sure that your employees don’t lose a lot of
(00:17:56):
working time and get a lot of good content,
(00:17:58):
you send them to a conference for a week.
(00:18:00):
Interesting.
(00:18:01):
So that’s, I think, what is a big part of it.
(00:18:05):
But it’s also, especially if you look at the Netherlands, it’s also a cultural thing.
(00:18:09):
It’s just getting together, sharing some knowledge, and then having fun.
(00:18:13):
It’s almost like, you know, people have different hobbies.
(00:18:16):
Some people go sporting, like football team.
(00:18:20):
Some people go to a musical band that they play in.
(00:18:24):
And I think it’s a bit like that for programmers as well.
(00:18:28):
But it’s about programming.
(00:18:29):
You come together with a bunch of people and you share some values and a hobby that
(00:18:33):
you want to talk about.
(00:18:35):
And you just get together.
(00:18:36):
And I think also because Europe is quite more densely packed population wise.
(00:18:42):
So it’s easier to organize something if everyone goes to a certain office to then get together.
(00:18:48):
But I’m just grasping because I don’t really have a good reference to compare with different.
(00:18:54):
With different cultures much outside of Europe.
(00:18:57):
Well,
(00:18:57):
it’s interesting because there’s an active conference circuit,
(00:19:01):
but there’s also the jugs are very active there as well.
(00:19:04):
And so I’m just wondering,
(00:19:06):
I tend to ask when I get a European on the phone,
(00:19:10):
not that it’s a uniform place,
(00:19:12):
obviously,
(00:19:12):
many different countries,
(00:19:14):
but I try to see if I can figure out why,
(00:19:16):
because I don’t have an answer either.
(00:19:17):
All right, so you said earlier that you sort of had this decision to make with .NET and Java.
(00:19:24):
Yeah.
(00:19:25):
But go back a little further.
(00:19:27):
Like when you were a kid, did you always want to get into software development?
(00:19:31):
Have you been hacking on code since you were a little kid, or was this a later decision?
(00:19:35):
Oh, not at all.
(00:19:36):
This was a much later decision.
(00:19:38):
The only thing that I remember coding-wise…
(00:19:41):
was I used to be a big video game player and I played competitively.
(00:19:47):
I played competitively America’s Army,
(00:19:50):
which was like this American army recruitment tool slash free video game that you
(00:19:55):
could play and Call of Duty.
(00:19:57):
And if you do competitions and you want to be a cool group of people that play together,
(00:20:02):
you wanted to have a website.
(00:20:03):
And that’s actually where I started sort of programming that’s building websites
(00:20:07):
for my group of people,
(00:20:09):
a clan,
(00:20:10):
they call it.
(00:20:11):
and then play video games together.
(00:20:12):
So I’ve made awful, awful, like, fire banner websites with all the ugliest anime.
(00:20:19):
Those are the best ones, though.
(00:20:21):
Those are the best ones.
(00:20:23):
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t call them ugly.
(00:20:24):
It’s more like very retro, like fire banner, laser things, and crazy, crazy movies.
(00:20:30):
It was incredible that you were able to move something on a screen back then.
(00:20:33):
Exactly, exactly.
(00:20:35):
And the thing…
(00:20:36):
When young kids are learning this stuff now,
(00:20:38):
the tools are so advanced,
(00:20:39):
they have no concept of how much fun it was to do the stupidest little thing years ago.
(00:20:44):
yeah exactly i think now that you mention it the the thing that was a little bit
(00:20:49):
like programming but it wasn’t programming at all there was this video game called
(00:20:53):
the incredible machine where you basically some kind of ball fell and then you had
(00:20:57):
to put trampolines and stuff it’s like a physical machine that you had to create
(00:21:03):
sort of program by putting the things in the right places oh okay
(00:21:06):
And I think that’s sort of where the algorithmic thinking came,
(00:21:09):
like,
(00:21:09):
okay,
(00:21:09):
so if I place this here,
(00:21:11):
then the ball goes there.
(00:21:12):
And you could sort of program it like that.
(00:21:14):
But I think the websites were the first real thing.
(00:21:18):
And what really made me transition is I made a small detour.
(00:21:21):
So I graduated high school,
(00:21:23):
and I was convinced that all my teachers were,
(00:21:25):
how shall I say this politically correct,
(00:21:28):
subpar students.
(00:21:30):
And I could do better.
(00:21:31):
So I actually went and got my teacher’s degree for high school.
(00:21:35):
So I’m a licensed high school teacher in Belgium for economics, law, bookkeeping, and IT.
(00:21:44):
But IT in that case meant, of course, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, not anything programming.
(00:21:50):
But in the last couple of lessons that I had, we did discuss JavaScript.
(00:21:57):
And surprisingly, I fell in love with programming kind of there.
(00:22:00):
Programming in JavaScript, also creating some scripts in, what was it?
(00:22:04):
Adobe Flash.
(00:22:05):
So Adobe Flash to create Flash games.
(00:22:09):
And that’s where I learned a little bit of programming.
(00:22:11):
And when I graduated my teacher’s degree, I was 21 years old.
(00:22:14):
And I told my mom at the time,
(00:22:16):
I’m too young to go stand in front of a classroom and tell kids what the world is like.
(00:22:21):
Because that’s what you do as a teacher.
(00:22:22):
You have to tell them, this is what the world is like.
(00:22:24):
These are the things you need to learn.
(00:22:26):
And I told myself, I’m 21.
(00:22:28):
I know nothing about the world.
(00:22:29):
I need to go explore some more.
(00:22:31):
So I jumped to a second bachelor degree being IT.
(00:22:36):
And that’s where I really learned Java.net and all the good stuff.
(00:22:40):
Did some international projects, even went on Erasmus exchange.
(00:22:43):
So that’s student exchange from Belgium to Finland, nice and cold.
(00:22:47):
And that’s where I also fell in love with international travel and communicating
(00:22:51):
with other people and building a community.
(00:22:54):
It’s interesting, two bachelor’s degrees.
(00:22:55):
That’s kind of rare.
(00:22:56):
Usually it’s a bachelor’s and a master’s, so you follow up with a master’s.
(00:23:00):
But you did two separate bachelor’s degrees.
(00:23:04):
Yeah.
(00:23:06):
And there’s not a lot of overlap between those two degrees.
(00:23:09):
Just a small, small piece of how to communicate with people.
(00:23:13):
But I think also the teaching degree really helps a lot now that I want to speak at conferences.
(00:23:19):
And I think it’s kind of inverse.
(00:23:20):
I love teaching.
(00:23:21):
And I think speaking at conferences is like the next step.
(00:23:25):
Well, it’s a different step in a way.
(00:23:29):
It’s not teaching directly as in you can ask a lot of questions and a lot of interactivity,
(00:23:35):
but you are teaching something.
(00:23:36):
And my teacher’s degree actually allowed me to take complex things and wrap them in
(00:23:43):
a nice package and deliver it in 50 minutes,
(00:23:46):
which is very convenient because the time slots,
(00:23:48):
so the lesson duration in Belgium is 50 minutes.
(00:23:51):
And when I heard that most conference slots are like 45, 50 minutes, I was like,
(00:23:56):
Oh, I know perfectly how long it is.
(00:23:58):
I can just look at a piece of paper and go, yeah, that’s 45 minutes.
(00:24:03):
I don’t have to work on timing that much because I’ve done so many 50 minute
(00:24:07):
lessons that I know quite instinctively.
(00:24:10):
This is how long,
(00:24:11):
how much content I can put in that amount of time,
(00:24:13):
which kind of throws me off because on Friday I need to give a conference talk
(00:24:17):
that’s 30 minutes.
(00:24:19):
Too short.
(00:24:20):
And then it worked against me.
(00:24:23):
Well, this is interesting, though.
(00:24:24):
So you must have some feelings about how software is taught now.
(00:24:29):
In other words, you have some experience as an adult, but you also have teaching experience.
(00:24:35):
I mean, I know when I took programming classes years ago, it was archaic.
(00:24:40):
And now with a lot of advanced tools, there’s, you know, there’s so much more you can do.
(00:24:45):
However, the interface is the teacher, high school or college.
(00:24:50):
So do you have any thoughts about how software is taught now versus years ago?
(00:24:55):
Yeah,
(00:24:56):
and I’ll preface this by saying that at my previous company,
(00:25:00):
I was actually given the opportunity to teach at a university for one semester.
(00:25:04):
So I actually was able to put this into practice.
(00:25:07):
It was very practical.
(00:25:09):
What I like to do now is get the students hands on as quickly as possible.
(00:25:15):
But I’m also a big believer that we shouldn’t be teaching kids too much at the same time.
(00:25:19):
And with kids, I mean, I’m sorry, I still view students as like my kids in a way.
(00:25:25):
It’s a very familial thing.
(00:25:28):
It’s not meant as a negative like these damn kids.
(00:25:31):
It’s meant as a nice thing.
(00:25:33):
But I’ve actually spoken at conferences about this.
(00:25:36):
And that’s the concept that there’s a lot of, do you know cognitive load theory per chance?
(00:25:42):
Like the idea that there’s only so much at the same time that you can have in your head.
(00:25:46):
Well, I try to build gently when I’m making my lesson plan.
(00:25:52):
I try to first give a broad overview of this is approximately what we’re going to do,
(00:25:57):
a bit vague.
(00:25:57):
And then we go in depth into small slices that only introduce little small new
(00:26:02):
pieces one at a time.
(00:26:03):
And then once that all is done,
(00:26:05):
I make a bigger exercise that kind of integrates everything again.
(00:26:09):
And I really like what is happening and has happened in Java with JShell in the past,
(00:26:15):
make it easy to write small pieces of Java without having to introduce people to
(00:26:20):
a full-blown editor and so on.
(00:26:22):
And I really like,
(00:26:23):
I know there’s some contention in the Java community about this,
(00:26:25):
but I really like the new way to start Java programs with a simplified main method
(00:26:31):
that you don’t need to have a class,
(00:26:33):
you don’t need to have the public static things.
(00:26:36):
Because whenever I try to explain things,
(00:26:39):
the start of Java,
(00:26:40):
when you start teaching Java and you give them that public static void main block,
(00:26:45):
I’ve had students, not all of them, but I had some students completely go, what is this?
(00:26:51):
What is all these things that I don’t know what’s happening?
(00:26:54):
And then you basically, until recently, only have one option.
(00:26:58):
As a teacher say, ignore what’s in there and only read what’s between the brackets.
(00:27:04):
Don’t care about the static void main yet.
(00:27:06):
But I had some students that basically said,
(00:27:08):
no,
(00:27:08):
no,
(00:27:08):
no,
(00:27:09):
no,
(00:27:09):
I’m going to look it up online because I need to know what public means.
(00:27:11):
I need to know what static means.
(00:27:12):
And they go…
(00:27:15):
Absolutely.
(00:27:17):
You’re correct.
(00:27:17):
Because some people, myself included, cannot move on, cannot function.
(00:27:23):
We do seize up if there’s stuff there that isn’t explained or we don’t have a grasp
(00:27:28):
of because we feel like other people know it.
(00:27:32):
And so it’s a blockage.
(00:27:34):
It’s a huge, huge blockage.
(00:27:36):
So that’s really interesting.
(00:27:38):
In many subjects,
(00:27:40):
you’ll sit there and the teacher will say,
(00:27:42):
here’s the material we’re going to learn and this is what I want to focus on here,
(00:27:46):
A,
(00:27:47):
B,
(00:27:47):
C,
(00:27:47):
and don’t worry about X,
(00:27:48):
Y,
(00:27:49):
and Z.
(00:27:49):
But it’s right there.
(00:27:50):
It has to be influenced in some way.
(00:27:53):
Yeah, I think there we’ve made some remarkable strides to make it easier, this on-ramp.
(00:27:59):
And I think that’s going to be very important if we are going to try to introduce Java,
(00:28:06):
introduce,
(00:28:06):
it’s already there,
(00:28:07):
but reintroduce or revalue Java in all these universities again.
(00:28:12):
Because a lot of universities have moved on to Python or different programming languages.
(00:28:17):
One, because the curriculum was a bit too much.
(00:28:19):
So they tried to,
(00:28:19):
you know,
(00:28:20):
they’re teaching AI now and to sort of condense the amount of programming languages
(00:28:25):
that students need to know.
(00:28:26):
We’re going to drop Java because they’re already learning Python for other stuff
(00:28:31):
like machine learning.
(00:28:32):
So they can learn REST APIs and such with Python as well.
(00:28:35):
And I think they’re making it easier to learn Java.
(00:28:38):
It can only be a good thing.
(00:28:39):
So let’s stick with Java for a second here.
(00:28:41):
You mentioned a little bit earlier on the release model and following projects
(00:28:47):
contributing in that way and being able to have access to the technology in smaller
(00:28:53):
bytes over a series of time.
(00:28:55):
What else about Java makes it unique or special or something that you love to do in
(00:29:00):
terms of the technology itself?
(00:29:02):
Well,
(00:29:03):
recently with all these LLMs and Gen AI,
(00:29:07):
I love how easy I can integrate those things while still sticking to my main
(00:29:13):
programming language.
(00:29:14):
Because a lot of people told me, oh, you can’t do AI in Java.
(00:29:17):
You can totally do AI in Java.
(00:29:19):
Don’t worry about that.
(00:29:21):
And that’s one of the things that I love most, that it keeps evolving, keeps with the times.
(00:29:26):
When we were moving to microservices,
(00:29:28):
you had Quark is coming up and Spring Boot and all these frameworks that make it
(00:29:31):
really easy to build single runnable jars or Docker containers or whatever.
(00:29:37):
Just the fact that Java is still running with all these new technologies.
(00:29:42):
And if I look at what’s coming up with Project Panama and Leiden and all that good stuff,
(00:29:47):
I just get so excited.
(00:29:49):
And also the,
(00:29:50):
I have to mention it,
(00:29:51):
GraalVM,
(00:29:52):
being able to compile to native and just have command line tools that run Java,
(00:29:56):
that was unthinkable a couple of years ago.
(00:29:59):
And just enabling Java as like the,
(00:30:04):
it sounds a bit unrespectable,
(00:30:05):
but really right ones run anywhere.
(00:30:08):
Like before we had the JVM, but there were still limitations because you had to install a JVM.
(00:30:12):
But now it’s with all these new things, it’s really anywhere.
(00:30:15):
Yeah.
(00:30:16):
So that’s what I like.
(00:30:18):
It’s an amazing evolution.
(00:30:20):
I mean,
(00:30:21):
I oftentimes,
(00:30:21):
you know,
(00:30:22):
30 years now,
(00:30:23):
it’s 30 years this year and a couple of months,
(00:30:25):
I guess,
(00:30:25):
and 30 years of continuous development,
(00:30:28):
you know,
(00:30:28):
and also the community,
(00:30:30):
30 years of continuous development in the community.
(00:30:34):
And it seems like it’s just,
(00:30:35):
it’s everywhere as a marketing slogan,
(00:30:37):
you know,
(00:30:37):
Java is everywhere,
(00:30:38):
that kind of thing.
(00:30:40):
So what do you think?
(00:30:41):
I mean,
(00:30:41):
is there,
(00:30:43):
what do you tell,
(00:30:43):
you know,
(00:30:44):
like at the conferences and the hallway sessions,
(00:30:47):
you know,
(00:30:47):
when you,
(00:30:48):
especially around when you get around young people.
(00:30:51):
I’ve been to a few conferences in recent years where I was around,
(00:30:56):
like I was at this conference in Vietnam,
(00:30:59):
Voss Asia,
(00:30:59):
and there were 5,000 students there.
(00:31:01):
They were all 22, 23, you know, children.
(00:31:05):
They were children, right?
(00:31:06):
And compared to me.
(00:31:07):
And so, and I was talking to them about, you know, what they’re learning.
(00:31:11):
And I told them that,
(00:31:12):
you know,
(00:31:12):
one of the most important things you can do at this age is to build your network.
(00:31:17):
The technology in class,
(00:31:19):
but it’s really great if you can build your network by contributing to user groups
(00:31:23):
or starting user groups.
(00:31:24):
And then if you can find a project either in class or outside of class that you can
(00:31:31):
contribute to,
(00:31:31):
start learning the concept of contributing something.
(00:31:35):
So that’s just an example of conversations that I would have at a conference with experts.
(00:31:40):
young people.
(00:31:42):
What about you?
(00:31:43):
Tell me about some hallway conversations that you have, particularly with young people.
(00:31:46):
I’m most interested in them, but really it can be anybody.
(00:31:49):
Yeah.
(00:31:49):
So ever since I became a Java champion,
(00:31:51):
I get the question more and more,
(00:31:52):
how did you become a Java champion?
(00:31:54):
Oh, specifically that one, huh?
(00:31:56):
Yeah, specifically that one.
(00:31:57):
But I sidestep it and I almost always go to build your network because that’s the
(00:32:03):
most important one.
(00:32:03):
It’s basically how I got my new job.
(00:32:06):
One of the CTOs saw me speaking at a conference,
(00:32:10):
liked it,
(00:32:10):
and said,
(00:32:10):
hey,
(00:32:11):
if you ever want to be a developer relations guy,
(00:32:14):
eventually I’m going to need one.
(00:32:16):
So once the time comes, I’ll call you.
(00:32:18):
And a couple of months ago, he called.
(00:32:20):
So that’s basically how I did things.
(00:32:23):
Building a network, it works in very weird ways.
(00:32:27):
Even if you’re not planning to leave your company,
(00:32:29):
knowing someone who works on something is very interesting.
(00:32:33):
So for example,
(00:32:34):
a couple of years ago,
(00:32:35):
I had a problem with a certain software,
(00:32:38):
which I will not name specific by name,
(00:32:40):
but I knew the developer that was part of the team.
(00:32:43):
So I just posted a message to the developer like, hey, I can’t get this stuff to work.
(00:32:49):
I know there’s official channels, but I’m really in a pickle.
(00:32:52):
Can you help me?
(00:32:53):
And because he knew me, he helped out.
(00:32:56):
So it can work in really weird kind of ways.
(00:32:59):
So getting involved with the community,
(00:33:01):
especially,
(00:33:02):
yeah,
(00:33:02):
of course,
(00:33:03):
I toot the bee jug horn all the time.
(00:33:06):
So I keep telling people, come speak at a bee jug, even if it’s
(00:33:10):
Even if you think you have nothing to share, share your experience.
(00:33:13):
Your experience is unique.
(00:33:14):
You don’t have to be a super expert to start contributing in any way.
(00:33:19):
Even if you just print out a poster and put it up in your office,
(00:33:22):
luring people towards Bijak,
(00:33:24):
all good.
(00:33:25):
But getting people to know you is very important.
(00:33:29):
The second sort of conversation that I’m involved with,
(00:33:32):
because most of my topics that I’ve spoken about at conferences have not been technical,
(00:33:37):
but more career-oriented.
(00:33:39):
And my most successful one,
(00:33:41):
if I can say that,
(00:33:42):
the one that got accepted at the most conferences and I got to do the most,
(00:33:45):
It was actually about learning how to learn.
(00:33:48):
So advice to developers, how do you learn something?
(00:33:51):
And that is what I got the most questions about.
(00:33:54):
And very personal questions like, people called me too stupid to learn this.
(00:34:00):
Well, how should I react?
(00:34:01):
To which the answer is, you ignore that and you take things step by step.
(00:34:05):
But the learning part will always be a big part of what I do.
(00:34:08):
I didn’t pursue my teaching thing at high schools, but I still am a teacher by heart.
(00:34:15):
It sounds like it.
(00:34:16):
I think what you say, I mean, it hits me for sure.
(00:34:19):
I also do a presentation on building community and contributing to communities.
(00:34:26):
And so I touch on the concept of learning as well,
(00:34:29):
because I struggled when I was young to learn.
(00:34:32):
Many times I was told, you just can’t do this.
(00:34:34):
Oh, that used to used to drive me nuts, you know, because it’s obvious I can’t do it.
(00:34:39):
OK, I’m failing in this particular class, whatever it is.
(00:34:42):
And I don’t need to be told that.
(00:34:44):
I mean, you know, thanks a lot.
(00:34:46):
That’s not helping me very much.
(00:34:48):
And I once had a kernel developer tell me that,
(00:34:50):
you know,
(00:34:50):
I got some bad advice when I was young.
(00:34:53):
So that,
(00:34:53):
you know,
(00:34:54):
because you’re smart enough,
(00:34:55):
you can do these things,
(00:34:56):
you know,
(00:34:56):
that really made me feel better,
(00:34:57):
you know,
(00:34:58):
handled like the technical things,
(00:35:00):
the advanced algebra and calculus and things like this and differential equations
(00:35:04):
and things that I really,
(00:35:05):
really struggled with.
(00:35:07):
So that actually means a lot.
(00:35:08):
So I think it’s valuable for you to be combining these two disciplines so you can
(00:35:14):
talk about these things.
(00:35:15):
Because a lot of people,
(00:35:17):
you know,
(00:35:17):
we’re afraid to say,
(00:35:18):
you know,
(00:35:18):
we’re afraid to say that we struggle learning with some of these things.
(00:35:22):
And it’s valuable for you to say that.
(00:35:25):
I think that’s why the talk was so impactful.
(00:35:28):
I actually had a few people crying almost.
(00:35:31):
You know how people line up after a talk, like you end your talk with, are there any questions?
(00:35:36):
Nobody raises his hand.
(00:35:37):
And as soon as you close your laptop, people come to you and ask questions.
(00:35:41):
I had people basically almost crying and thanking me,
(00:35:44):
like,
(00:35:44):
thank you so much for,
(00:35:45):
because it’s a vulnerable story,
(00:35:47):
because I say where I failed and where I think I could have acted differently and
(00:35:52):
give a lot of advice.
(00:35:53):
And
(00:35:54):
The main message is you’re not stupid.
(00:35:55):
You’re probably making the small mistake of trying to learn too much at once.
(00:35:59):
So take smaller steps and you will get there.
(00:36:02):
It may take you longer than someone else.
(00:36:04):
Don’t care about that.
(00:36:05):
Just focus on yourself.
(00:36:06):
And just sending that message,
(00:36:08):
I had people come up to me like,
(00:36:09):
oh,
(00:36:09):
thank you so much because I’ve been stuck trying to learn five programming
(00:36:13):
languages at the same time.
(00:36:15):
And I said, yeah, if you’re overwhelmed, maybe choose one.
(00:36:19):
just choose one learn that and if you it also has to do with how much is going on
(00:36:24):
in your life right when my son was born i love my son but he takes a lot of my time
(00:36:29):
yeah time i spend gladly there’s no second doubt that i would spend any time with
(00:36:36):
my son i love that kid to death but i cannot lie i cannot learn as fast as i used
(00:36:42):
to yeah
(00:36:43):
I used to spend entire evenings building cool hobby projects.
(00:36:47):
And I like doing stuff and then exploring and seeing what explodes, basically.
(00:36:53):
But now that I have my son, I’m like, yeah, my learning ambitions are a bit lower now.
(00:36:58):
And that’s perfectly fine.
(00:37:01):
And even if it’s not something positive like having a kid,
(00:37:04):
I also had a burnout a couple of years ago.
(00:37:06):
During my burnout, it was basically, number one focus is get better.
(00:37:10):
No learning.
(00:37:12):
Just take time to recover and get better.
(00:37:14):
Well, I’ve gone through both of those experiences, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.
(00:37:19):
The burnout, the health issues and having a kid and everything.
(00:37:24):
But burnout is such a nasty thing, man.
(00:37:28):
Seriously.
(00:37:29):
And I think if you spend too much time on social media or you look up too much to
(00:37:34):
other people,
(00:37:34):
because in my head,
(00:37:37):
I was looking at Java Champions and thinking,
(00:37:38):
oh,
(00:37:39):
they do all those cool things.
(00:37:41):
But in my head, I forget that it’s like 50 different people.
(00:37:44):
And in my head, it’s like, I want to do all of that.
(00:37:46):
But it’s 50 different people doing all those things.
(00:37:48):
Well, you mentioned social media.
(00:37:50):
It’s like the distractions are a big deal.
(00:37:52):
And many times people just don’t get how expensive switching is.
(00:37:55):
You know, the switching cost.
(00:37:57):
It’s basically half an hour when you switch tasks.
(00:38:01):
That’s a long time for you to be able to reset and get into the next task.
(00:38:06):
If you’re constantly switching all day long,
(00:38:08):
especially on social media,
(00:38:11):
you’re not getting anything of value done.
(00:38:12):
And you can really feel seriously burned out like that.
(00:38:16):
Yeah.
(00:38:16):
And if you’re not careful,
(00:38:18):
because a lot of people boast on social media,
(00:38:21):
like,
(00:38:21):
hey,
(00:38:21):
I did this cool thing.
(00:38:22):
I did this cool thing.
(00:38:23):
And then you’re like, oh, I’m not good enough to do that cool thing.
(00:38:25):
Yeah.
(00:38:27):
Just stay away from it.
(00:38:29):
Try to build your own path,
(00:38:30):
even though it might feel tempting to go like,
(00:38:33):
yeah,
(00:38:33):
but I want to be that person.
(00:38:34):
No, you don’t.
(00:38:35):
You want to be yourself,
(00:38:36):
stick true to yourself,
(00:38:38):
do the fun things that you like doing,
(00:38:40):
and things will come.
(00:38:41):
Build your network,
(00:38:42):
make sure people know you for who you are,
(00:38:44):
not some fake AI avatar or whatever.
(00:38:48):
What’s happening now?
(00:38:49):
Well, it’s interesting you say that, know you for who you are because everyone is unique.
(00:38:53):
And what people don’t realize,
(00:38:55):
and even myself,
(00:38:56):
that the combination of your unique history,
(00:39:00):
Matt,
(00:39:00):
plus the particular skills,
(00:39:02):
plus the company that you work for,
(00:39:03):
et cetera,
(00:39:04):
is a unique package by definition.
(00:39:06):
Yeah.
(00:39:07):
You have an interesting mix.
(00:39:08):
You’re mixing two disciplines, education and software development.
(00:39:14):
I’ve spoken to people in the Java community who went through a biology degree as an undergraduate,
(00:39:19):
and they have a master’s degree in business,
(00:39:22):
let’s say,
(00:39:22):
or software development or something.
(00:39:24):
And they are mixing two different sciences,
(00:39:28):
two different disciplines,
(00:39:29):
but that makes them very unique.
(00:39:32):
And everybody’s unique.
(00:39:33):
Yeah.
(00:39:34):
I love it when those people bring those mixed experiences.
(00:39:39):
Mixed sounds wrong.
(00:39:40):
Mixed experiences sound like positive or negative.
(00:39:42):
Those different histories of themselves,
(00:39:43):
when they bring it together in a conference talk,
(00:39:45):
it’s really entertaining.
(00:39:47):
For example,
(00:39:47):
I remember seeing,
(00:39:49):
as you mentioned biology,
(00:39:50):
I remember seeing Grace Jansa,
(00:39:53):
who I believe has a biology degree.
(00:39:55):
And she was mixing it with some sort of deep microservice thing.
(00:40:02):
And I don’t remember exactly what she was talking about,
(00:40:05):
but I remember being really inspired,
(00:40:07):
like,
(00:40:07):
oh,
(00:40:07):
these things come nicely together.
(00:40:09):
There was another talk that I saw,
(00:40:11):
who has a psychology degree,
(00:40:14):
and she had this really funny talk about,
(00:40:16):
what does your code say about you?
(00:40:19):
Are you a psychopath or are you a normal person, depending on how you code things?
(00:40:23):
That was super entertaining and it was grounded in science.
(00:40:27):
And I also noticed that my own conference talks are the most successful when I
(00:40:30):
bring these different facets of myself to the stage.
(00:40:33):
My newest talk is about dealing with change and it talks about becoming a father
(00:40:38):
because it’s the biggest thing that happened in my life,
(00:40:40):
but also tying it back to
(00:40:42):
The biggest change that’s happening now, AI, is changing a lot.
(00:40:45):
People are afraid of their jobs sometimes.
(00:40:48):
How do we deal with change in general?
(00:40:50):
And I think bringing different facets and different aspects of yourself on stage
(00:40:54):
and sharing that with people makes it way more easy to emphasize with your content.
(00:40:59):
So in the hallways,
(00:41:00):
are people really seriously,
(00:41:02):
I mean,
(00:41:02):
I know they’re excited with AI,
(00:41:04):
but are they really seriously concerned?
(00:41:06):
Or is that just over-exaggeration in the media?
(00:41:09):
I’ve had some conversations,
(00:41:10):
and I won’t say where or when,
(00:41:12):
but I’ve had some conversations with some colleagues,
(00:41:16):
and some people are concerned,
(00:41:19):
but it’s mostly for different reasons.
(00:41:22):
Some are concerned because, I’ll speak for myself, I’m a little bit concerned, but
(00:41:26):
Because in the past, I’ve made programming too much of my personality.
(00:41:31):
As in, I used to call myself a coder, probably right after I call myself a husband to my wife.
(00:41:39):
So it’s such a big part of my identity.
(00:41:41):
And once your identity becomes under threat,
(00:41:44):
suddenly there’s something that can do what I thought made me special.
(00:41:48):
Interesting.
(00:41:50):
Then that creates a bit of…
(00:41:52):
There’s also the economical part, of course.
(00:41:55):
Are we going to lose our jobs?
(00:41:56):
Yes or no.
(00:41:57):
Some people are worried just financially about that.
(00:41:59):
But I’ve come to, for me, I’ve come sort of to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter.
(00:42:05):
I mean, no matter what you think it’s going to happen,
(00:42:07):
And so you better prepare yourself the best you can.
(00:42:10):
Take time to…
(00:42:11):
I’m also very…
(00:42:13):
Since I had the burnout,
(00:42:14):
I’m very sensitive about how I feel and how I react to things,
(00:42:18):
like on a psychological level.
(00:42:19):
And I try to process my emotions and my feelings whenever I feel my heart rate
(00:42:23):
going up because I saw that AI can do something that I…
(00:42:26):
I used to be uniquely empowered to do.
(00:42:29):
Then I do breathing exercises.
(00:42:31):
I meditate and I try to check like, what am I feeling inside?
(00:42:35):
Is this like serious stress or is this just something else?
(00:42:38):
Or didn’t I sleep well?
(00:42:40):
And take some time to process these feelings because just,
(00:42:43):
I’m a bit more skeptical on people waving it away.
(00:42:46):
Like, yeah, but it’s just going to happen.
(00:42:47):
Just accept it.
(00:42:48):
I don’t believe in the just accept it.
(00:42:50):
Some people need more time to process what is happening at the moment with AI.
(00:42:55):
And I think we need to be respectful for that as well,
(00:42:59):
especially when every conference last year was saying,
(00:43:01):
you’re all going to lose your jobs and AI is going to dominate.
(00:43:05):
Maybe we should think a bit about how that impacts certain people in the room,
(00:43:09):
because some people might actually be worried.
(00:43:12):
I think there are a lot of people that worry, but I also think a lot of it’s exaggerated too.
(00:43:17):
And so it’s probably somewhere in the middle.
(00:43:20):
I hate that expression,
(00:43:22):
but I can’t imagine that everyone’s going to lose their jobs within the next two to
(00:43:27):
three years because I don’t see these tools as actually having that ability to do that.
(00:43:32):
However, it is going to change life.
(00:43:34):
But it’s not just changing life of programmers.
(00:43:37):
It’s changing life for everybody.
(00:43:39):
But that’s the story of technology.
(00:43:41):
I mean, you can go back 5,000 years.
(00:43:44):
I used to work in the construction business,
(00:43:47):
so I know the old way of developers,
(00:43:51):
construction,
(00:43:52):
goes back many thousands of years.
(00:43:55):
And those technologies just throughout history have changed our lives for the better.
(00:44:02):
We have clean water.
(00:44:02):
Exactly.
(00:44:04):
I think a lot of claims are exaggerated.
(00:44:06):
Both the positive ones of AGI is here and we’re all going to be replaced tomorrow.
(00:44:12):
And also the people saying it’s never going to come and don’t worry about it.
(00:44:15):
I think both cases are sort of exaggerated.
(00:44:19):
When it comes to your vibe of we’ve already been here before, right?
(00:44:23):
I actually had a story in my case.
(00:44:26):
Something that actually happened to me that prompted me to make my new talk about
(00:44:29):
AI and change is a couple of years ago.
(00:44:32):
Well,
(00:44:32):
when I started my career,
(00:44:33):
so I always think it’s a couple of years ago,
(00:44:35):
but it’s been a decade by now.
(00:44:37):
So when I started my very first project,
(00:44:39):
there was this senior engineer and I had submitted a piece of code,
(00:44:43):
pull request.
(00:44:44):
I sent him a message, hey, could you review my pull request?
(00:44:47):
But he was sitting right next to me,
(00:44:48):
but asynchronous communication,
(00:44:50):
you know,
(00:44:50):
because I didn’t want to take him out of the zone.
(00:44:52):
And suddenly he jumped out of his seat and almost yelled,
(00:44:56):
these damn kids with their code completion,
(00:44:58):
they don’t know how to code anymore.
(00:44:59):
Yeah.
(00:44:59):
And I’m like, huh, what?
(00:45:00):
Code completion?
(00:45:01):
That’s normal, right?
(00:45:02):
And I was like, huh?
(00:45:05):
Fast forward, I was doing code reviews for a school.
(00:45:08):
So every year,
(00:45:10):
my previous company,
(00:45:11):
we went to a university,
(00:45:12):
they did a project and we did the code reviews to make sure that their code is up
(00:45:15):
to spec.
(00:45:16):
And I saw things in their code that I was like, no, this is all wrong.
(00:45:20):
This is bad.
(00:45:21):
And suddenly a thought passed my mind thinking these damn kids,
(00:45:25):
which are damn LLMs,
(00:45:26):
they don’t know how to code anymore.
(00:45:28):
And the moment I thought that, I was instantly portaled back to that old engineer.
(00:45:32):
And I thought, oh my God, I’m that old engineer now.
(00:45:35):
I’m the one that’s change resistant.
(00:45:38):
And that really triggered me to think like,
(00:45:40):
Oh, yeah.
(00:45:40):
You know what?
(00:45:41):
We didn’t just have code completion.
(00:45:42):
People thought that code completion would probably take away a few jobs because we
(00:45:46):
would be X times more efficient.
(00:45:48):
Now it’s this.
(00:45:49):
And is it going to be the same scale or the same thing?
(00:45:51):
No, because as they say, history never repeats, but it rhymes.
(00:45:55):
So we’ll see.
(00:45:56):
We’ll see.
(00:45:57):
Interesting.
(00:45:57):
Well, yeah, we will see.
(00:45:59):
It’s everywhere.
(00:46:00):
And it’s fun for now.
(00:46:02):
So…
(00:46:05):
Yeah, it is.
(00:46:06):
We can stay employed.
(00:46:09):
We’ll stay employed.
(00:46:10):
No problem.
(00:46:13):
So is there anything else you want to leave us with?
(00:46:16):
This has been a great conversation.
(00:46:17):
Did I forget to bring up an interesting topic that you want to riff on?
(00:46:22):
No,
(00:46:23):
I really just want to highlight that if you think about hosting your own Java user group,
(00:46:29):
just start doing it.
(00:46:30):
My key advice would be ask.
(00:46:32):
You have no idea how many people will say yes.
(00:46:35):
I’ve been,
(00:46:36):
for the past two and a half years,
(00:46:37):
been amazed by the amount of goodwill that I’ve gotten from famous people in our
(00:46:44):
Java industry.
(00:46:45):
When you ask them, hey, do you want to come over?
(00:46:47):
A lot of people say yes.
(00:46:48):
And I’ve been incredibly surprised about that.
(00:46:52):
Venkat, come at our meetup, our small meetup, taking a big detour just to come to us.
(00:46:58):
I’ve had a bunch of amazing speakers.
(00:46:59):
So if you are afraid to host something, you can find the BJC partnership guidelines online.
(00:47:05):
Everything’s open source.
(00:47:06):
So please copy paste if that could work for you.
(00:47:09):
But just try it.
(00:47:11):
And if you already have a user group in the area, please go and contribute.
(00:47:17):
Even if you just go check it out, what it is.
(00:47:18):
It’s so much fun to just hang out with people and be able to really make a change.
(00:47:24):
Because I know that people at our jug have gotten jobs,
(00:47:27):
have gotten brand new opportunities,
(00:47:29):
have become pretty big conference speakers themselves just by coming to our jug and
(00:47:33):
participating and
(00:47:35):
So yeah, build your network and participate.
(00:47:37):
I think that’s the best I can send you off with.
(00:47:41):
Beautiful.
(00:47:42):
I like it.
(00:47:42):
I’ll take it.
(00:47:43):
I’ll learn from it.
(00:47:44):
I actually use it because I have a presentation where I talk about things that you
(00:47:48):
guys have said.
(00:47:49):
So I like that.
(00:47:49):
So I’m going to steal that from you and I’ll attribute.
(00:47:52):
So thanks a lot.
(00:47:54):
It was great talking to you and hopefully see you at an event soon.
(00:47:58):
Same to you.
(00:47:59):
See you, Jim.
(00:47:59):
Cheers.