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Ivar Grimstad, welcome.
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Welcome to Duke’s Corner.
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Thank you, Jaymon.
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Happy to be here.
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It’s great to see you here.
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We met a couple of times.
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There was some recently at some conferences in Japan and elsewhere,
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and I thought it would be great to have a little session here on Duke’s Corner to
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find out what you do.
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I see you are doing a lot of conferences.
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You do a lot of travel and stuff.
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I sat in on your session in Tokyo, I guess about six months or so ago.
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And the audience was really into it.
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And so I figured, hey, I want to talk to this guy for this podcast here.
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So you’re in Sweden and you’re a developer advocate for Jakarta EE.
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So let’s start off with that.
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So what do you do as a dev advocate for Jakarta EE?
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yeah so before i get into that i actually have a you you said we were meeting at
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conferences and stuff and i think we met i can’t remember it and i certainly i’m
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sure you can’t either but i’m pretty sure
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that we must have met at Java 1 in the Open Solaris launch sometime in the early 2000s.
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Because I remember I was at Java 1, because you used to work with Open Solaris, right?
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Yeah, yeah, I was at Simon.
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Open Solaris was my baby.
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Yeah, so I…
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That was before like MacBooks were a thing and stuff.
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And so I went to Office Depot across the street from Moscone and I bought one of
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these small,
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you know,
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the small laptops,
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the mini laptops that had some version of Windows on it.
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And I just unpacked it,
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brought it down to the Open Solaris Lounge and somebody there gave me a USB drive
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and I just plugged it in.
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I never booted it on Windows.
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Oh, okay.
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So since you were working with that, you must have been there.
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I got some really good help from the people in the lounge there to set up the
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drivers and stuff to get the keyboard to work.
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Yeah.
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Oh, that’s a great story.
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Yeah, this goes way back.
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That was so much fun.
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We had a bootable CD, and we had a USB, and that was like gold back then.
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Everything has changed now.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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Well, so, yeah, so Jakari, that’s what I work with on a daily basis.
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And as I said, a lot of my work is speaking at conferences.
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So I travel around and do talks.
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So, yeah.
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That’s basically what I do.
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Jakarta EE, that’s the continuation of Java EE that used to be under the JCP at Sun and Oracle.
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So that was moved over to Eclipse Foundation.
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And we continued it there and rebranded it to Jakarta EE from Java EE.
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I was so lucky to get into the role of the developer advocate there.
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So that’s what I’m doing these days.
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Cool.
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I mean,
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so if we crossed paths way back with Open Solaris at Sun,
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so you’ve been in this business for a while.
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You’ve been involved in open source and advocacy and community building basically
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for a long time.
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Oh, yes.
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Yes.
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I thought back before I ended university or graduated from university in 98.
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I think in 96 or 97 was when I first encountered Java.
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Somebody talked about this stuff and I bought this book,
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Java 1.0 in a nutshell from the bookstore and went down to the computer room
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because we didn’t have our own computers.
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These old Unix machines logged in, had Java there and did Hello World.
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And that summer I worked, had a summer job at a consulting company in Oslo.
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And they put me on the client site because I had worked with them the year before
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so they trusted me.
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And we were working on the internet banking for that Norwegian bank,
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and they were using Java,
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and they were doing it in Swing.
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So I was put on that,
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and I think I did some modifications to some of the Swing components they were
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using.
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So that was kind of the first…
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time I was doing Java and the open source part of it that came a little later I got
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exposed to it through the mostly I think I can I can thank Java 1 for most of my
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this career path because that’s where I got in you know the JCP and started getting
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involved there and that was I guess it was back in 2017 2007
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Seven, yeah.
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Where I signed the agreement with the JCP.
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So it seems like the technology first and then the community second for you.
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For me, at that point, it was.
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But it was sort of the community around Java that also…
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made it a natural thing for me.
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And also at that time, in the company I was working, we had lots of Java developers.
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This was a tech consultant company.
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And we had an internal,
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what we call a Java competence group or sort of an internal jug or Java user group.
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where we had uh i think we had monthly meetings where we had technical like
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presentations and discussions and we also got people from the java bin which is the
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java user group in oslo coming to present with us at the company and we also went
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to their event so so that’s where i
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I started attending Java user groups.
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So that was the community that kind of brought me into there.
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But at the time,
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that early in my career,
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I guess it was mostly the tech at work and community at the conferences I was
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allowed to go to.
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And that was usually a Java one every year those years.
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Yeah,
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I’ve been to about 10 Java 1s over the years because I haven’t always been involved
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in Java because I was on the Solaris project for,
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I guess,
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about a decade at Sun.
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We used to piggyback off of all the Java operations because they were very, very big, you know.
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So we would go to their conferences basically and tag along.
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Yeah.
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And we did, you know, the Sun Tech Days had a big tour.
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And so we used to, you know, we used to go on that and we would obviously go to Java 1.
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One of these things about these open source projects is that they’re so dynamic,
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they just foster this notion of contribution.
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With Jakarta EE being Eclipse, obviously that’s an open source project there, right?
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And Java itself is less…
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sort of the meta, that’s the canonical open source project, right?
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A project of projects.
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Talk a little bit about this notion of contributing to open source in general,
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and specifically Java,
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since you’ve seen a lot of it.
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Definitely.
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And what I usually say when people are asking why you should get involved in,
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and also the reason why I got involved in open source is that
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we tend to consume a lot of open source technologies in our daily work.
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And at some point,
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that scale is not even you don’t contribute back to what you’re actually consuming
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and and you’re relying on a lot of these technologies.
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And if you’re not contributing back, you’re kind of losing control over
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over what’s happening with this technology, which direction is it going?
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Is it fitting our needs?
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Should we get involved to contribute back so we can kind of make sure it’s still
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the technology we can rely on?
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So it’s kind of a give and take, a win-win situation there.
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I think most contributions that are sustainable comes from when you are using the
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technology yourself.
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So you’re kind of feeling the pain points and you’re figuring out it’s easier for
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me to fix it than ask somebody else to do it.
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that was kind of my first contribution into open source that was actually sort of
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that but it wasn’t related to java it was um scala that was was kind of coming at
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that time and they had a lot of these getting started with scala guides like a
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couple of pages with some simple examples
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And they were translated to a lot of languages, but they didn’t have the Norwegian translation.
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So I translated it into Norwegian and committed it to their subversion or whatever they had.
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And they had one comment back about some of the formats I’ve used in the documents.
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So I fixed those and they accepted it and it was published on the webpage the next day.
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So that was kind of a big thing to have my name out there on some piece of stuff
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that people could use.
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So how long did that take to do?
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It wasn’t a big document, so some hours, maybe a day or two in total.
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So I just spread it out a little.
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So you truly understood the concept then in terms of actually doing some work and
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contributing it back and then seeing the result of that.
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Yeah, yeah.
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It’s interesting because sometimes I ask that question and I get these very
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interesting stories where somebody will say that they did a contribution and they
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wrote up a blog about it and then went to bed,
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right?
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Just, you know, here’s the contribution.
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This is what I did.
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They submitted it and then just,
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you know,
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articulated,
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you know,
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this is what I did basically in a blog post and went to bed and then woke up the
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next morning and they’ve got like 500,
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you know,
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comments on the blog and stuff.
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Yeah.
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And this thing is sneaking through whatever million list they contributed to and everything.
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And they’re just so blown away by the result of the contribution.
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I find that fascinating.
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It is.
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Yeah.
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And I think many people who are kind of struggling with where should I start?
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What should I do there?
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Maybe they’re thinking a little bit too big and thinking,
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hey,
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I can fix this big,
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massive project that everybody is using rather than focusing on this is a little
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piece of code or piece of document or a graphic.
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It doesn’t have to be code to be open source contribution.
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It can be anything,
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especially documentation and tutorials are what all open source projects are super
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happy to have contributions on.
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So it could be a small piece
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Like my three-page or whatever Norwegian translation, it doesn’t take me much effort to do it.
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But it is actually a fairly visible thing because it’s one piece of work that can be published.
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And if you contribute to,
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for example,
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a super vital if statement that solves a big security problem internally in some
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open source app server,
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You may have saved the world,
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but people may never notice that it was here because it’s just hidden down there.
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So find some kind of thing that you can actually show,
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like the blog post you’re talking about,
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show what you’ve done.
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I was at a conference once, actually it was last year in Vietnam.
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It was FOSS Asia, and there were 5,000 students there.
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And it was really kind of cool because it was just all these kids.
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They’re all 22, 23, 24 years old and from multiple universities in Vietnam.
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And a lot of them would ask, what can I do?
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Because they hadn’t left Vietnam.
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They’re too young.
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They haven’t traveled, but they know this stuff is global.
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And all these projects are global.
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And I said, well, I mean, you can start a user group.
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You can get involved in user groups.
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But think in terms of contributing something.
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Take what you’re learning in school and do some sort of contribution.
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Get involved in GitHub.
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Get your name out there within the project that you’re interested in.
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And start small.
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And if you do that as a student, when you graduate, you already have a portfolio.
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And they thought that was a really great idea, and they were really excited about it.
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And a bunch of them were actually learning Java.
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And it was really interesting to see.
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I like to talk about this concept of contributing because it sort of equals the playing field.
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There’s a lot of famous people in technology and stuff,
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and there’s a lot of people who are new and they’re young,
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right?
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What can you do?
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Well, you can contribute.
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And also, for me, it’s like I’ve changed careers multiple times.
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I got into this career really late.
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I’m older than everybody.
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And I got in because of this specific reason is things move fast and you can
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contribute and you can get yourself known.
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Because not all professions have this concept.
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Yeah.
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Yeah,
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so when I chose this kind of career path,
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my family were,
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are you sure you want to do this?
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People are, things are happening so fast there.
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You have to always learn.
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You can never,
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you know,
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in many other professions,
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you can just learn your trade and then just do it,
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you know.
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And continue.
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But in our industry, you have to learn continuously.
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And the second you stop learning,
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especially these days with AI coming in all over the place,
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and if you’re not on top of it,
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it’s hard to stay here in this industry.
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And one of the best ways of learning things is by doing.
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Like we learn with our fingers.
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We learn by doing it.
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You can read a lot of books about programming,
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but when you start actually doing the coding,
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that’s when you learn.
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I mean, that’s not special for our industry.
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I mean, who would go on a plane if the pilot had learned flying by reading about it?
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So it’s learning by doing and the best way of getting away from just the sort of
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exercises you have at schools and university and doing something that is actually
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industry relevant.
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is an open source project that many people are using.
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And if you can contribute and learn so much about that technology that you can
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contribute to it and learn by doing it,
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by building that open source technology,
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you’re actually building,
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you’re giving yourself the benefit of learning.
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So contribution is by the word itself,
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it’s you give something,
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you know,
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but it’s actually you’re getting something because you’re getting all this
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knowledge by doing it.
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And that’s what’s fascinating about open source that we can just, you know, trade this.
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I do this and I learn this.
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also when you when you contribute to an open source project there are usually
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committers there that has been there for a long time and many of them are like you
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say famous in this industry has written books or speakers at conferences or are
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well-known figures in the industry and you get to learn with them by solving
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problems together with them so you you learn from the best and you see how they
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write code how they solve problems
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So it is the best way of learning, I think.
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So by doing that with telling the students in Vietnam to go out and contribute to
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learn,
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that’s the best way of doing it.
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Yeah, it’s interesting.
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I’ve spoken with many developers who have told me that
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their first experience maybe at a conference and there would be approaching one of
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the senior developers with like a question or something after a session and they
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were so surprised that the you know senior or famous person was so willing to just
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chat for like a half an hour in the hallway about this obscure bug that they found
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somewhere you know and there’s a really famous people you know it’s like
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I was talking to Gosling, and he just was going off and off and off on this great thing.
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You’re talking to James Gosling here, and he gave you all that time.
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That’s a normal story.
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Same thing with Venkat Subramanian.
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He’s a sweet guy.
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He loves to teach.
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He loves to engage people.
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He goes to be in big conferences and stuff, but he also goes to small user groups.
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He interacts with everybody at all levels.
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So I think what you said is really apt in the sense of the more senior people,
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the more famous people many times are very humble and they just want to chat about
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technology.
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Yeah, and we have this technology that kind of unites us.
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And because most of us are,
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some are more geeky than others,
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but we’re usually,
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we’re coders,
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we’re probably geeks in everybody else’s eyes.
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And many of us are introverts,
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even though if we’re speakers,
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we’re not necessarily comfortable in a social context.
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But when we have this technology together that we can talk about,
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then we can open up more easily.
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Yeah.
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That’s really interesting you say that because although I’m not a coder,
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I’ve taken a few programming classes in school and stuff,
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but I can’t say anything without a camera in my hand.
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So when I go to a conference, I’m usually taking photographs, right?
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Even if I’m working and managing the event,
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which I had to do a lot of times at Oracle and previously at Sun,
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where we’d have to actually manage the event or run a user group,
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something like that.
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I always have my camera with me to shoot the event because I’m always interested in
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profiling developers and stuff.
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But I can’t talk to anybody socially unless I have the damn camera with me.
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So it’s a topic of conversation.
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So when you were in school,
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did you choose software for any of these specific reasons or you just like complex
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solving puzzles and complex problems?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, so I feel I just slipped into this career path by coincidence.
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I think I am a problem solver.
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I was good at math and physics and those kind of subjects.
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I got a computer fairly early.
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It was a, I don’t know if anybody knows, it was a Sharp MC700 or something.
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It has an integrated cassette player.
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So I could load it with BASIC on a cassette.
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So I learned a little bit of coding on that one, but it was mostly games.
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My coding started,
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I think,
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when I got a Commodore 128,
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which came with BASIC when you open it up.
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And I had this…
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a little program on my sharp computer that I could use to test me in words you know
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when we were learning English at school or English and French at school you had
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this test you get 20 words that you have to know until tomorrow and then you got a
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test just translated and this program let me type in the words and the translations
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and it would test me until I had all 30 words correct
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Cool.
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It’s like an algorithm.
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But the Commodore didn’t have this.
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So I made it.
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I coded it in BASIC.
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So I could still test myself in these words.
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And that was my first programming thing.
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After that,
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I elected some programming at the high school I was at,
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where we learned some Pascal coding,
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mostly by writing on paper.
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Because the computer room were limited access to,
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so we can only get in there like a couple of hours or so.
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So we had to write the programs on paper first and then have them evaluated by the teacher.
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He was kind of the walking compiler and then typing in.
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Different times, you know.
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At that time, when I was like 12, 13, I would say I was probably a decent programmer.
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I could solve problems using code.
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But when I came to university,
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the others were so much more clever and so much better because they were really
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into this kind of stuff more than me.
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So I was still the problem solver, but not necessarily the one typing the code.
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So what was the difference with them, though?
(00:20:30):
I’m not sure, actually.
(00:20:32):
But I think my interests were as far as it’s sort of useful within the kind of the
(00:20:41):
ecosystem I know about.
(00:20:43):
And that was sort of having the cassette tapes were my interface to the world.
(00:20:49):
I didn’t have a modem or anything.
(00:20:50):
So internet wasn’t a thing then.
(00:20:52):
Yeah, yeah.
(00:20:54):
But these guys had probably were in environments where they had some…
(00:20:59):
Internet,
(00:21:00):
it was in these young days.
(00:21:02):
So I started university in 93.
(00:21:06):
So internet was there, but it wasn’t like web browsers and stuff.
(00:21:10):
It was just you logged into a terminal and text-based everything.
(00:21:13):
But they’ve been doing that for a while, I think.
(00:21:16):
So they had been in these more hacker kind of environments.
(00:21:21):
Right.
(00:21:22):
at home,
(00:21:23):
and were more,
(00:21:24):
yeah,
(00:21:24):
I’m going to just have a master’s degree in programming,
(00:21:29):
where I was just,
(00:21:30):
I wanted to be a marine engineer,
(00:21:33):
and I didn’t get in there,
(00:21:34):
so I ended up on computer science.
(00:21:40):
But after the first classes, I felt at home there, and yeah, this is my thing.
(00:21:47):
When did you trip over Java?
(00:21:48):
It must have been in 96 or 97.
(00:21:55):
So right around Java, yeah.
(00:21:58):
Yes, it was Java 1.0, and I wrote the Hello World on the Unix terminal at the university.
(00:22:06):
And I got to use it in a, well, quote-unquote, professional capacity at my summer job in 97.
(00:22:15):
And I started using it in work around 99, 2000, and ever since, yeah.
(00:22:24):
So it’s been your main focus since then?
(00:22:26):
Yes, it has been.
(00:22:27):
I’ve touched into other programming languages, but I’ve ended up with Java.
(00:22:34):
That’s been my go-to language for everything.
(00:22:36):
I guess it is.
(00:22:39):
I think Jane Gosling, he wanted to be the blue-collar language.
(00:22:43):
It’s a multipurpose language you can use for anything.
(00:22:46):
It’s kind of the thing you would use to solve the most problems with.
(00:22:51):
Not kind of the special cases, you would use something else, but most cases you can use Java.
(00:22:58):
And I think the timing when I started working, Java was conquering the server side.
(00:23:04):
So everything was J2EE at that time.
(00:23:08):
And that was a money machine for everybody around there.
(00:23:12):
All the old COBOL systems had to be replaced by J2EE because they had to solve this
(00:23:17):
2000 year problem anyway.
(00:23:19):
So they had to do something and J2EE was there.
(00:23:22):
And it was a brilliant technology at the time.
(00:23:26):
And that was when I started working with it.
(00:23:28):
So that’s been my thing since.
(00:23:31):
So you’ve had the benefit of seeing really the whole evolution of Java.
(00:23:37):
So let’s talk a little bit about the technology.
(00:23:39):
I always ask everybody, why Java?
(00:23:42):
What makes it special?
(00:23:44):
Because, I mean, like in your case, it’s been your primary focus for your whole adult career.
(00:23:50):
So talk a little bit about the evolution.
(00:23:53):
You talked a little bit about how you got involved early on and now we’re 30 years later here.
(00:23:59):
30 years old, I guess next month is Java.
(00:24:03):
Why Java?
(00:24:04):
What makes it special?
(00:24:05):
Yeah, it’s a good question.
(00:24:07):
I think at the time, Java was everywhere.
(00:24:11):
If you were working anywhere as a consultant,
(00:24:16):
coder,
(00:24:16):
programmer in the industry,
(00:24:19):
you were using Java for everything.
(00:24:20):
It works for most things.
(00:24:23):
The language itself, I guess…
(00:24:27):
People complain that it’s too verbose, it’s too complicated to do certain things.
(00:24:35):
I think it’s one of the good things about why Java is still around here is its
(00:24:39):
simplicity and its readability,
(00:24:41):
its simple rules.
(00:24:43):
The things that made C++ hard, for example, isn’t hard in Java.
(00:24:48):
You have the garbage collector.
(00:24:51):
I hope you don’t have to think about the memory things, the issues you would have in C and C++.
(00:24:57):
The multiple inheritance that you have in Java.
(00:25:00):
C++ just makes things hard.
(00:25:02):
People miss it and Java says that by not having it, it’s hard.
(00:25:06):
But I think having these kind of simple guidelines when they created the language
(00:25:12):
makes it easy to learn,
(00:25:14):
easy to use.
(00:25:15):
And if you look at how it’s evolved over these years, oh my god, it’s…
(00:25:20):
When generics came in Java 5, I mean, that was a big thing for us to get over.
(00:25:27):
And then the next one, I guess, was Java 8 when you get streams.
(00:25:32):
And now the releases are coming so fast that you don’t remember anything that’s
(00:25:36):
coming in the different versions.
(00:25:38):
But it’s evolving and taking away these small pain points slowly and still being
(00:25:44):
relevant after 30 years.
(00:25:46):
I think it’s impressive.
(00:25:48):
But it’s a good question, why Java, why not something else?
(00:25:50):
It’s been here for 30 years.
(00:25:53):
It’s probably going to be here for 30 years or more.
(00:25:57):
It’s interesting you mentioned C and C++.
(00:26:00):
I remember taking C and kind of liking it.
(00:26:04):
I can handle it, right?
(00:26:05):
And then I took C++ and I choked.
(00:26:08):
I vomited immediately.
(00:26:10):
It just didn’t sit at all with me.
(00:26:16):
I’m happy to hear that Java solved that problem.
(00:26:19):
Okay.
(00:26:20):
Yeah,
(00:26:21):
I think from learning the basic on Commodore machines and then using Pascal,
(00:26:30):
which is more like function-oriented,
(00:26:32):
and when I saw C for the first time,
(00:26:35):
I thought it was,
(00:26:36):
well,
(00:26:36):
this is just complicated.
(00:26:37):
Where is the real words, like the begin and the end of the functions?
(00:26:43):
It’s these stupid curly braces.
(00:26:45):
I don’t understand them.
(00:26:47):
But then Java came around and it had this stuff and you got used to it.
(00:26:54):
Okay,
(00:26:54):
so you got involved in the technology and the community,
(00:26:58):
you were contributing,
(00:27:01):
and you also got involved in the JCP.
(00:27:03):
Yes.
(00:27:04):
The Java Community Process, which is a specification body.
(00:27:08):
How did that come along?
(00:27:10):
Yeah,
(00:27:10):
that’s a good story,
(00:27:11):
actually,
(00:27:12):
because it also shows what can be a motivating factor of these things.
(00:27:18):
And I’ll keep coming back to Java 1, because I think Java 1 has had a big impact on my career.
(00:27:27):
One of the things at Java 1 was that all these bofs at evenings where they had
(00:27:32):
these JSRs that presented discussions and JSR,
(00:27:36):
Java specification requests,
(00:27:38):
and all these acronyms.
(00:27:40):
It was JAXRS and JAXWS and JAXXML and whatever.
(00:27:44):
It’s all these.
(00:27:45):
these words and at the beginning it was so impressive to just sitting in a room and
(00:27:51):
hear people saying these letters like it meant something and not understand a
(00:27:56):
single thing and then started slowly to understand and then oh yeah it’s JSRs and
(00:28:01):
started noticing people with these ribbons on their badges that said specification
(00:28:08):
lead or expert group member and that and it kind of got curious how do I get that
(00:28:13):
ribbon
(00:28:14):
So you started going to these booths at Excavation Floor,
(00:28:19):
figuring out the JCP,
(00:28:20):
and I signed up for it.
(00:28:21):
I signed like a 40-page print.
(00:28:24):
You had to print out a document, like sign it on a couple of pages and fax it to some.
(00:28:30):
That was at the time we had fax machines.
(00:28:32):
And I got to become a JCP member.
(00:28:36):
And then I just randomly chose some expert groups to see if I can get in there.
(00:28:41):
And nobody accepted me until because they were all like pretty mature and
(00:28:46):
established until there was a new one coming out.
(00:28:50):
That was the MVC, a new specification.
(00:28:52):
And I had done my share development of like web frameworks and that kind of thing.
(00:28:58):
So I thought this is good for me.
(00:28:59):
So I applied for that one and I got in.
(00:29:02):
So suddenly I was an expert group member of the MVC specification.
(00:29:08):
We had bi-weekly calls.
(00:29:11):
So I got that ribbon.
(00:29:12):
And I also met Heather from the JCP there at Java 1.
(00:29:19):
And she introduced me to the executive committee.
(00:29:22):
And I heard that as an associate member of the executive committee,
(00:29:29):
Oracle would pay for the travels to these meetings.
(00:29:32):
And I like traveling, so yeah, why not go?
(00:29:36):
So I ran the election to become an expert member.
(00:29:40):
So I got into the executive committee of the JZB as an individual.
(00:29:46):
And I’ve been there ever since.
(00:29:47):
That was in 2013, I ran that election, I think.
(00:29:51):
Well, that’s really great.
(00:29:52):
And that’s also a huge contribution as well.
(00:29:54):
I mean, you have to run, you have to be elected, right?
(00:29:56):
Yeah.
(00:29:57):
And I also was contributing a little bit, at least, to the MVC specification.
(00:30:01):
And to that story also that when Java EE8 came out in 2016, MVC was supposed to be a part of it.
(00:30:12):
But right before the announcement of Java EE8, Oracle announced that we’re not taking MVC in.
(00:30:21):
We’re canceling that one.
(00:30:22):
And we were almost done, or we thought we were done, because we had done the spec and the API.
(00:30:28):
And we had an implementation.
(00:30:30):
We thought we had a TCK, because we didn’t do that.
(00:30:34):
There was some team at Oracle that did that one.
(00:30:36):
So I asked at one of these buffs at Java 1, I asked, but it’s almost done.
(00:30:43):
Can’t we just finish it, somebody outside of Oracle, if you don’t want to do it?
(00:30:48):
They asked me, yeah, but who would do that?
(00:30:51):
I said, I would do it.
(00:30:53):
So I got the IP rights for the MVC specification and the implementation signed over
(00:31:00):
to me by Oracle.
(00:31:01):
So suddenly I owned the IP.
(00:31:05):
of this specification.
(00:31:06):
And I brought in,
(00:31:07):
I had some other German friends,
(00:31:09):
Christian Kaltipoth,
(00:31:11):
which I brought on as a co-spec lead with me.
(00:31:14):
And we finalized that spec under the JCP and released it, MVC 1.0 there.
(00:31:19):
we brought it over to the Eclipse Foundation.
(00:31:21):
And actually, a month ago, we released MVC 3.0.
(00:31:26):
So it’s still going strong.
(00:31:27):
And now, no, I don’t have the IPO of that one.
(00:31:30):
I gave that away.
(00:31:31):
I contributed to the Eclipse Foundation.
(00:31:33):
So that’s a fully open source project.
(00:31:37):
So a lot of benefits there.
(00:31:38):
I mean, a lot of opportunity.
(00:31:40):
I mean, what you’ve just described is a chain of opportunities.
(00:31:44):
Yeah, it is.
(00:31:45):
And it’s also, I remember also being at conferences like Java One.
(00:31:51):
And I think if I should recommend a young developer, what should I do for training?
(00:31:57):
What books should I read?
(00:31:58):
What should I do to get better at something?
(00:32:01):
My standard answer is always go to a conference and continue doing it.
(00:32:06):
Because what I experienced was I had the opportunity to go to Java 1 every year and
(00:32:12):
also maybe some other conferences in between during the year.
(00:32:17):
By doing that continuously, I learned more and more and more and got inspired.
(00:32:23):
Every time I come back from one of these conferences,
(00:32:26):
I ended up buying a bunch of books because I’d seen those speakers.
(00:32:30):
They’d also written books.
(00:32:31):
So I went home and bought their books, read them, and I learned more.
(00:32:35):
And next year, repeat.
(00:32:37):
Until you get to that point where you’re sitting at a conference in a room,
(00:32:42):
you’re listening,
(00:32:43):
it’s probably a fabulously good talk.
(00:32:45):
But you’re starting thinking, I could be up there.
(00:32:48):
I now know so much that I could actually consider myself being a speaker.
(00:32:56):
And I started submitting talks.
(00:32:58):
And that’s how I stumbled into the speaker circuit.
(00:33:02):
And that’s almost 15 years ago that I submitted my first talk and got accepted to
(00:33:06):
an international conference.
(00:33:07):
And since that, the ball is rolling.
(00:33:09):
Now I do 40 conferences a year.
(00:33:12):
Wow.
(00:33:12):
All over the world.
(00:33:13):
That’s a lot.
(00:33:14):
That’s a lot.
(00:33:15):
I can’t match that.
(00:33:16):
Very few people can match that.
(00:33:18):
That’s just constant travel.
(00:33:20):
Obviously, you’re meeting hundreds of developers every year.
(00:33:24):
I mean,
(00:33:26):
thousands in terms of the number of people who are attending your session,
(00:33:29):
but you’re talking to certainly hundreds of people throughout the year.
(00:33:33):
Any interesting trends that you can see from the last few years?
(00:33:37):
Yeah.
(00:33:37):
I think it’s very different from which part of the world you’re going to.
(00:33:44):
Actually,
(00:33:44):
I have a feeling that Java had some struggle a couple of years ago where everybody
(00:33:52):
was,
(00:33:53):
no,
(00:33:53):
you have to go to other languages.
(00:33:55):
But it was usually on the JVM.
(00:33:56):
It was Groovy or Scala or it was Kotlin or something else.
(00:34:04):
But nowadays I feel people are sort of coming back a little bit or Java isn’t
(00:34:10):
irrelevant any longer that people were telling us a couple of years ago.
(00:34:15):
So I see, I wasn’t kidding when I said probably 30 more years.
(00:34:20):
So I think Java is going strong.
(00:34:24):
I see a lot of younger developers out there are very interested in Java.
(00:34:29):
And one concern we have nowadays is that universities tend to jump on the latest,
(00:34:37):
or not necessarily the latest,
(00:34:39):
but the easier path of learning.
(00:34:41):
So they’re choosing to learn Python to students rather than Java.
(00:34:45):
And developers come out and get the first job, and it’s usually Java.
(00:34:50):
they get exposed to so so having these initiatives like we have in the jcp with
(00:34:55):
java in education to to educate the university that i still have to learn java
(00:35:01):
because that’s what the industry wants still i think it’s um it’s interesting
(00:35:08):
another observation is is these cycles that we go through you know we always tend
(00:35:12):
to think that we have
(00:35:14):
invented something new and then we just dial back the time machine and yeah we did
(00:35:19):
it 20 years ago you know interesting so yeah i won’t get into the like server
(00:35:26):
started rendering people are talking like react server side components was a new
(00:35:31):
thing like man we had servlets back in 2000 or even before you know so
(00:35:38):
I see you have your J-Jug t-shirt on there.
(00:35:41):
I do.
(00:35:42):
Java.
(00:35:43):
Yeah, the user group up in Tokyo.
(00:35:47):
Actually, it’s all over Japan.
(00:35:48):
I’m in Osaka, so I’m a little bit further south or west, I guess.
(00:35:54):
So what’s next for you?
(00:35:57):
We’re in mid-25, actually May of 25 here.
(00:36:03):
What’s up next?
(00:36:03):
What’s your next event?
(00:36:05):
Tomorrow I’m going to J-Con in Germany.
(00:36:09):
I’m actually going back to Tokyo in June for the J-Jug CCC Spring event.
(00:36:17):
Cool.
(00:36:17):
Well, when you go to Germany to say hello to Char, he’ll be there.
(00:36:20):
And a couple of my teammates will be there as well.
(00:36:24):
That’s an important event for our team that we usually go.
(00:36:28):
And we’re Oracle sponsoring as well.
(00:36:30):
So there’ll be a bunch of stuff there.
(00:36:33):
You’re also a Java champion.
(00:36:35):
So I’m sure there’ll be plenty of Java champions that you cross paths with at these
(00:36:38):
events,
(00:36:38):
right?
(00:36:39):
Yeah.
(00:36:40):
How did that come about?
(00:36:41):
The Java Champions, that was… I had never heard of it.
(00:36:45):
But then at some conference,
(00:36:48):
I can’t remember which one,
(00:36:48):
but it was someone was pulled up on stage and given a jacket and called a Java
(00:36:54):
Champion.
(00:36:54):
And then I sort of, okay, this is a thing.
(00:36:57):
So I started recognizing and seeing these Java Champions around.
(00:37:01):
And I thought that maybe I should…
(00:37:07):
should make myself be a candidate for it.
(00:37:10):
So I know there are five like criterias of things that you should fulfill more or less.
(00:37:16):
So I kind of make sure that I covered them all for myself.
(00:37:20):
So I am a Java user group leader,
(00:37:23):
I’m doing conferences,
(00:37:24):
I’m doing blogging,
(00:37:25):
social media,
(00:37:26):
I’m doing a cool open source project contributing to technologies and all these
(00:37:31):
kind of other
(00:37:32):
community building aspects that the Java champions are.
(00:37:37):
And I was suggested as a Java champion and got my jacket on the stage at DevOps UK
(00:37:45):
a couple of years later.
(00:37:47):
So, yeah.
(00:37:48):
It’s a beautiful jacket.
(00:37:50):
Yeah, it is.
(00:37:51):
And one funny thing is when I tell people I’m a Java champion or people that aren’t
(00:37:57):
familiar with the program,
(00:37:59):
they think,
(00:37:59):
oh,
(00:37:59):
you have to be very good at Java.
(00:38:01):
And I say, no, I’m probably not.
(00:38:04):
And I mean, I know a way around it, but I’m not a very good Java programmer.
(00:38:09):
That’s nothing to do with, you’re not a champion of Java.
(00:38:13):
You’re championing Java.
(00:38:15):
So it’s about getting Java out to the people.
(00:38:20):
I think that’s a, people get a little bit surprised when I tell them that.
(00:38:25):
And then you see, some of them you see, which are probably very good Java developers and think,
(00:38:31):
I’m the best Java developer in the world.
(00:38:33):
I should be a Java champion.
(00:38:34):
But when I said, and they asked me, how should I become a Java champion?
(00:38:39):
I say,
(00:38:39):
well,
(00:38:40):
you can start coming to the Java user group and you can start presenting on the
(00:38:44):
Java user group because it’s all about the community.
(00:38:47):
And you see just the light goes off in their eyes and they turn around and go away.
(00:38:53):
Yeah, I mean, that’s true.
(00:38:54):
I mean, there’s a lot of people who just are coding behind the firewall and they’re happy.
(00:39:00):
And that’s fine.
(00:39:00):
That’s their role, too.
(00:39:03):
But what’s also interesting about that is many times those people,
(00:39:08):
especially early on in their career,
(00:39:09):
they’re not necessarily aware of the community anymore.
(00:39:13):
And they discover the community through work.
(00:39:16):
And they cross the firewall.
(00:39:17):
They go to a user group.
(00:39:18):
They go to a conference.
(00:39:19):
And they meet friends.
(00:39:20):
And they get problems solved.
(00:39:22):
And their career explodes as a result of that.
(00:39:25):
So the community is so big.
(00:39:28):
I mean, there’s millions and millions.
(00:39:30):
And there’s all different people doing different things at different levels.
(00:39:33):
Yeah.
(00:39:33):
What you said about the Java Champions is very true.
(00:39:35):
I mean, I talked to a lot of JCs.
(00:39:39):
I’m involved with managing the program through Oracle.
(00:39:42):
I mean, it’s an independent project, program, so to speak, but it’s sort of sponsored by Oracle.
(00:39:49):
And so I work on that.
(00:39:50):
So I’ve gotten to know a lot of you guys over the last few years since I joined
(00:39:55):
this team in 22,
(00:39:58):
the Java Developer Relations team.
(00:39:59):
Yeah.
(00:40:01):
It is true.
(00:40:01):
I mean,
(00:40:01):
some of them are highly technical and they’re just hacking on the JVM and some of
(00:40:06):
them are more generalists and some of them do a lot of community building.
(00:40:09):
I mean, there’s just a variety of people.
(00:40:12):
So it’s very interesting for me.
(00:40:14):
I do a lot of learning through my interactions with them.
(00:40:17):
All right.
(00:40:18):
Well, Ivar, it’s been great talking to you.
(00:40:21):
Is there anything that you can leave us with?
(00:40:24):
Is there any words of wisdom,
(00:40:26):
any interesting stories,
(00:40:27):
anything or anything I’ve forgot to ask you that I should have?
(00:40:32):
i feel i’ve just been rambling on for an hour now but i don’t know i i i say you
(00:40:39):
should listen to duke’s corners podcast because that’s where the real stuff is so
(00:40:45):
cool go back and listen to previous episodes and upcoming episodes and if you want
(00:40:49):
to skip this one fine but uh we’ll appreciate if you listen to this one as well
(00:40:54):
No, I only talk to good people.
(00:40:55):
It’s interesting because sometimes I talk to someone like yourself as well now and
(00:41:00):
someone who has no name recognition at all.
(00:41:04):
But I learn from every single one of you guys because you all have different
(00:41:09):
stories and different perspectives on things.
(00:41:13):
I do it because Oracle lets me do it,
(00:41:16):
so that’s really cool,
(00:41:17):
but I find it a learning experience.
(00:41:20):
And it’s something I can actually do.
(00:41:21):
I enjoy it.
(00:41:23):
So thanks for the plug.
(00:41:25):
Cool.
(00:41:27):
Learning while enjoying.
(00:41:28):
That should be our slogan.
(00:41:31):
Absolutely.
(00:41:31):
Absolutely.
(00:41:32):
All right, my friend.
(00:41:33):
I will see you at a conference because you’re everywhere.
(00:41:37):
I’m sure I’ll trip over you somewhere sometime soon.
(00:41:41):
Yeah.
(00:41:42):
Thank you very much for having me here.
(00:41:43):
It’s been a pleasure.