Paul Bakker: Go Build a Lot of Stuff!
February 4, 2026
Jim Grisanzio, Host, Duke’s Corner Java Podcast
This is the third in a short series of speaker profiles for JavaOne 2026 in Redwood Shores, California, March 17-19. Get early bird pricing until February 9, and for a limited time, take advantage of a $100 discount by using this code at checkout: J12026IJN100. Register. Sessions.
In this conversation, Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Paul Bakker, an engineer and Java architect in California. Paul is a staff software engineer in the Java Platform team at Netflix. He works on improving the Java stack and tooling used by all Netflix microservices and was one of the original authors of the DGS (GraphQL) Framework. He is also a Java Champion, he’s published two books about Java modularity, and he’s a speaker at conferences and Java User Groups.
Java Is Everywhere at Netflix
Paul will present “How Netflix Uses Java: 2026 Edition” at JavaOne in March. The session updates previous year’s talk because Java keeps evolving at Netflix. “Netflix is really staying on the latest and greatest with a lot of things,” Paul says. “We’re trying new things. And that means there’s always new stuff to learn every year.”
Java powers both Netflix streaming and enterprise applications used internally and supporting studio teams. “Java is everywhere at Netflix,” Paul says. “All the backends, they are all Java powered.” Why Java? It comes down to history and practicality. The original team members were Java experts, but more importantly, “Java is also just the best choice for us,” he says. The language balances developer productivity and runtime performance. At Netflix’s scale with thousands of AWS instances running production services, runtime performance is critical.
Netflix engineers stay closely connected with development at OpenJDK. They test new features early and work with preview releases or builds before official releases. When virtual threads appeared, Netflix engineers tested immediately to measure performance gains. Paul says they give feedback on what works, what doesn’t work, and what they would like to see different. This just demonstrates the value of being involved with OpenJDK, and Paul says they have a really nice back and forward with the Oracle engineering teams.
The microservices architecture Netflix adopted years ago enabled the company to scale. This approach has become common now, but Netflix pioneered talking about it publicly. Breaking functionality into smaller pieces lets teams scale and develop services independently. Most workloads are stateless, which enables horizontal scaling. Production services for streaming often run several thousand AWS instances at a time.
Early on with Java Applets
Paul’s coding journey started at 15 when he got his first computer and wanted to learn everything about it. Working at a computer shop repairing machines, the owner asked if he knew how to build websites. Paul said no but wanted to learn. He was curious about everything that involved computes. Java applets were hot back then. With nothing online available, he bought a book and started hacking away. “It was so much fun that I also decided right at that point basically like, oh, I’m going to be an engineer for the rest of my life,” he says.
That’s clarity for a 15-year-old. And it’s remarkable. But Paul says it felt natural. He just started doing it, had such a good time, and knew that was what he wanted to do. When he started university around 2000, right during the dot-com bubble and crash, professors warned students not to expect to make money in engineering because the bubble had burst. Paul still remembers how funny that seems now. You can never predict the future.
Initially, he learned Java and PHP simultaneously. Java powered client-side applications through applets while PHP ran server-side code. The roles have completely reversed now.
Engaging the Community
Paul attended his first JavaOne in 2006. “Those were really good times,” he says about the early conferences when everything felt big and JavaOne was the only place to learn about Java. Back then, around 20,000 people would travel to San Francisco every year. It was the one and only place to learn what was new in Java. All the major news would be released at JavaOne each year. The world has changed. Now information spreads instantly and continually online, but Paul misses something about those early days.
The more recent JavaOne conferences offer something different but equally valuable. Paul points to last year’s event in Redwood City as a great example. While the conference is still big, it’s small enough that attendees can actually talk with the Oracle JDK engineers and have deeper conversations. The folks who work on the JDK and the Java language are all there giving presentations, but they’re also totally accessible for hallway chats. “That makes it really interesting,” Paul says. This direct access to the people building the platform distinguishes JavaOne from other conferences.
Java User Groups also played an important role in Paul’s development. He lived in the Netherlands before moving to the Bay Area nine years ago. In the Netherlands, the NLJUG (Dutch Java User Group) organized two conferences a year, J-Spring and J-Fall. Paul would go to both every year. That was his place to learn in Europe. He has been continuing that pattern right up until now, which is why he is speaking at JavaOne again.
Open Source software has also been another major aspect of community for Paul. He has always been active in Open Source because he says it’s a fun place to work with people from all over the world solving interesting problems. Besides being a critical part of his professional career, it was also his hobby. Paul says the Open Source aspect with the community behind it is maybe his biggest thing that he really enjoyed over the years.
AI Throughout Development
AI now occupies much of Paul’s professional focus. At Netflix, engineers use AI tools throughout the development lifecycle. Paul uses Claude Code daily, though other developers prefer Cursor, especially for Python and Node work. Most Java developers at Netflix work with Claude Code. The tools integrate with GitHub for pull request reviews, help find bugs, and assist with analyzing production problems by examining log files.
Paul describes using AI as having a thinking partner to t all to and code with. Sometimes he needs to bounce ideas around, and the AI gives insights he might have missed or suggests additional issues to consider. For repetitive tasks like copying fields between objects, AI handles the grunt work efficiently. “That’s the nice thing about an AI,” Paul says. “While a person would probably get really annoyed with all this feedback all the time and like having to repeat the work over and over again, but an AI is like, fine, I’ll do it again.”
Go Build a Lot of Stuff!
When asked about advice for students, Paul’s answer comes quickly and has not changed much over the years. “I think what I really recommend is just go and build a lot of stuff,” he says. “The way to get to become a better developer is by doing a whole lot of development.”
That’s timeless advice students can easily adopt no matter how the modern tools for learning have changed. Paul had to go to a bookstore and buy a book to learn programming. Students today have AI tools to help them and advanced IDEs. But the fundamental principle remains the same, which is to build interesting applications. Paul recommends that students come up with a fun problem and just build it. You learn by making mistakes. You build a system, reach the end, and realize the new codebase already struggles with maintainability. Then you ask what you could have done differently. Those real-life coding experiences teach you how to design code, architect code, and write better code.
Paul also suggests that students use AI tools but not blindly. Do not just accept whatever an AI generates. Instead, try to understand what came out, how it could have been done differently, and experiment with different approaches. Use the tools available but really understand what is going on and what options you have.
Some students and even practicing developers worry that advanced tools might eliminate their future role as developers. Paul says that nobody knows exactly how things will look in the future because tools get better almost every day now. But AI tools are just tools. Someone needs to drive them and come up with the ideas they should build. Plus, the tools at present are far from a state where you can hand them a task, never look at it again, and have everything work perfectly. Substantial hand-holding is involved.
“Is our daily work going to change? Very likely,” Paul says. “That’s already happening.” But he tries to see this change as a positive thing. “It’s a new tool that we can use. It makes certain parts of our job more fun, more interesting. You can get more things done in some ways and be open to it.”
Why Java Works
At the end of the conversation, Paul answered a simple question — Why Java? What makes it great? — with a simple and direct answer: “Java is the perfect balance of developer productivity and runtime performance.”
That balance matters where Paul works at Netflix. But it also matters for students learning their first language, for teams building enterprise applications, and for developers choosing tools that will sustain long careers. Paul’s career started with Java applets 20 years ago when he bought a book and started hacking away. The language and platform has evolved dramatically since then, moving from client-side applets to powering massive backend services that stream entertainment to millions globally via Netflix. Through all that change, the core appeal remains — you can build things efficiently for many platforms and those things run fast.
Key Quotes from the Conversation
On Java at Netflix
“Java is everywhere at Netflix.” (00:01:25)
Context: Paul describes how Java powers both the streaming backend that consumers use and the enterprise applications for internal and studio use.
On Why Netflix Chose Java
“However, Java is also just the best choice for us. If you think about backends, Java is a really good mix of developer productivity on the one hand, but also runtime performance.” (00:02:20)
Context: Explaining why Netflix continues to use Java beyond historical reasons, emphasizing the balance between development speed and execution performance.
On Building Career and Reputation
“I just started hacking away. And it was so much fun that I also decided right at that point, basically like, oh, I’m going to be an engineer for the rest of my life.” (00:05:35)
Context: Paul recalls discovering programming at age 15 through Java applets and immediately knowing this would be his career.
On Early JavaOne Conferences
“My favorite moments from JavaOne are actually way back in time in 2006, 2007, when this was all so big and it was the place to learn.” (00:25:21)
Context: Reflecting on the importance of JavaOne in the mid-2000s as the primary venue for learning about Java developments before information became instantly available online.
On Recent JavaOne Conferences
“I think last year was a really good example. It was the first time in Redwood City. I think that worked out really well. The folks who actually work on the JDK and on the Java language, they’re all there and they’re giving presentations, but they’re also accessible to like have a chat with.” (00:13:49)
Context: Describing how recent JavaOne conferences offer direct access to the core Oracle JDK engineers and platform developers, which makes deeper technical conversations convenient.
On Advice for Students
“I think what I really recommend is just go and build a lot of stuff. The way to get to become a better developer is by doing a whole lot of development.” (00:21:32)
Context: Providing timeless advice that applies regardless of whether students use books, online resources, or AI tools to learn.
On Using AI Tools
“That’s the nice thing about an AI, while a person would probably get really annoyed with all this feedback all the time and like having to repeat the work over and over again. An AI is like, fine, I’ll do it again.” (00:19:04)
Context: Describing the patience of AI tools compared to human collaborators when iterating on code.
On AI and Developer Jobs
“But also, they’re just tools. And someone needs to drive these tools and come up with the ideas that these tools should be building.” (00:23:39)
Context: Addressing concerns about AI replacing developers by emphasizing that tools need human direction and creativity.
On Staying Positive About Change
“Yeah, it’s a new tool that we can use. It makes certain parts of our job more fun, more interesting. You can get more things done in some ways and be open to it.” (00:24:08)
Context: Encouraging developers to embrace AI as an enhancement to their work rather than a threat because no one can predict the future.
Rapid Fire: Why Java?
“Java is the perfect balance of developer productivity and runtime performance.” (00:24:45)
Context: Paul’s concise answer to what makes Java great in a rapid-fire question round at the end of the podcast.
Rapid Fire: AI Advice
“I think it’s a useful tool. It is changing the way we do development, but I think it can make our jobs more interesting and embrace it and see in which ways you can use it.” (00:24:56)
Context: Paul’s perspective on how developers should approach AI tools.
Rapid Fire: Advice for Students
“Build a lot of stuff. The way to become a better developer is to develop a lot, like build all the things that you can come up with.” (00:25:10)
Context: The core message Paul sends to coding students.
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Paul Bakker from Netflix in San Francisco.
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Welcome to Duke’s Corner.
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Hey, Jim.
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How are you doing?
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I’m doing pretty good, actually.
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And I wanted to talk to you here today because, actually, you were at Java One last year.
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And I noticed you were a speaker for this year.
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And I’m doing a little series here where I’m talking to some of the speakers who
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are going to be talking at Java One in a couple of months,
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actually in March,
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in mid-March.
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in the Bay Area.
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And I noticed you doing a session,
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how Netflix uses Java 2026 edition,
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as opposed to maybe last year’s edition.
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So I would like to talk to you a little bit about your session and a little bit
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about Java and other things that crop up here.
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So tell me a little bit about your session.
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What are you going to be talking about?
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Yeah, like the title kind of gives away.
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I’m going to talk about again how Netflix is using Java.
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And I’m saying again because I’ve done this session a few times now.
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And it’s different every year because, of course, Java is evolving every year.
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Netflix is really staying on the latest and greatest with a lot of things.
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And Netflix is also changing all the time.
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We’re trying new things.
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And that means there’s always new stuff to learn every year.
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Okay, so give me some detail about how Netflix uses Java.
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I mean, Netflix is a massive enterprise, and obviously so is Java.
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So a lot to unwrap there.
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Yeah, so Java is everywhere at Netflix.
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And if you kind of look at Netflix and our technology, you can almost split it in two.
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You have what we call Netflix streaming.
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This is what you as a consumer of Netflix basically use.
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So that’s the Netflix app on your phone or your TV, et cetera.
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The backend for that is all Java powered.
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The other side of the company is a lot of enterprise apps that we have built.
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And this is for internal use, but also for studio use because we create a lot of content.
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We create a lot of movies and shows and we build a lot of software for that.
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And again, all the backends there are all Java powered.
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Is there a specific reason?
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I’m sure there’s many reasons,
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but can you just talk about a few of the reasons why it’s so pervasive in Netflix?
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I’m sure that part of it is historical,
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like a long time ago when Netflix got started and it was just a very small group of
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engineers.
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I think they were Java experts and that’s kind of how that got started.
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However, Java is also just the best choice for us.
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If you think about backends,
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Java is a really good still mix of developer productivity on the one hand,
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but also runtime performance.
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And runtime performance is extremely important for us because obviously we’re on a
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pretty large scale.
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But yeah, it’s a really nice mix of how you can actually get things done.
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It’s a nice language and a nice platform to use, but you can also run it very fast.
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So you mentioned that you guys tend to stay updated with the various releases and stuff.
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Does that mean that you guys are sort of involved with OpenJDK on the mailing lists
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and actually getting all the code releases and things like that?
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Yeah, we are involved.
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And for the most part, by testing things out at scale.
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So anytime there’s a new feature coming in in the JDK, think about virtual threads, for example.
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We get excited about it and we’re like,
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oh,
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we can actually use this and we can get performance out of this.
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So we’ll try it in the preview releases and even like the builds before it gets released.
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And we’ll test it out and then we’ll give feedback what works,
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what doesn’t work,
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what you would like to see different.
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And it’s a really nice back and forward with the JDK team.
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So you’re actively talking to the engineers there?
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Absolutely, yes.
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Give me a little sense here,
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because I genuinely have no idea what it’s like to run a platform like Netflix at a
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global scale,
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like it is streaming all that data,
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high resolution video.
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I mean,
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so talk a little bit about some of the technical issues of having to,
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you know,
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you’re using Java to produce a service,
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but that service is so massively scalable.
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Yeah, many years ago, Netflix really got into this concept of microservices.
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And everyone is doing that now, right?
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It’s nothing new anymore.
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But this kind of is something that Netflix maybe started or started talking about.
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And that is really the way how we’ve been able to scale by kind of splitting the
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functionality up in smaller pieces.
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It sounds so logical now, right?
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But maybe it wasn’t 15 years ago.
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So we split things up in smaller services and you can scale these services independently.
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And most of the workloads are stateless because we’re building like server applications.
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And that means you can, for the most part, horizontally scale.
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And if you look at like the production service that we have for streaming,
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often we have several thousand instances like AWS instances running such a service.
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Okay, great.
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So let’s switch gears here a little bit and talk a little bit about you as an engineer.
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Why did you become an engineer?
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So when I was about 15 years old,
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I got my first computer,
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and I wanted to learn everything about it.
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I wanted to do everything with it,
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and I wanted to do whatever I could possibly do with this computer.
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I just wanted to learn about it.
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And at the time, I started working at a little computer shop.
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That was still a thing.
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And it was basically repairing computers, like building computers up, et cetera.
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And then the owner one day asked me, oh, do you know how to build websites?
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And I was like, no, but I would like to learn this.
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At the time, Java applets were still the cool and hot thing on the web.
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And that is kind of how I got into Java.
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So I bought a Java book because there was nothing online available, basically.
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I bought a book and I just started hacking away.
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And it was so much fun that I also decided right at that point,
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basically like,
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oh,
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I’m going to be an engineer for the rest of my life.
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That’s really cool.
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Self-motivation and the decision made at 15 to do something for the rest of your life.
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I’m really jealous.
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I’m really jealous of that.
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How did you know at 15?
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It was just natural.
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It just came from inside.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I just started doing it and I just such a good time.
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And that is just what I wanted to do all the time.
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And I was like, well, this seems like possibly what I should just continue doing.
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And funny enough, when I got into university, it was right around the 2000 bubble.
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And they told us when starting the university,
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like,
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well,
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this is a really interesting study,
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but don’t expect to make any money in your career because engineering,
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yeah,
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it’s kind of gone.
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And that is now just so funny to think back at, like, the world is different, of course.
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What was the first computer language that you learned?
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So there were two languages that I picked up at the same time.
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Java was actually one of them because,
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again,
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Java applets were the thing on the web,
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and that was what I was asked to do.
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And then I also started doing a lot of PHP because that was,
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surprisingly enough,
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the thing you used on the server side.
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So server side was all PHP.
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Client size was Java, which is now hard to imagine, but that’s how it was.
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So really, your whole career started with Java.
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Yeah, pretty much.
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It’s the whole thing.
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It’s interesting that you mention that because when I ask the question of
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everybody,
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basically how they got started in computer science or programming or whatever it
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might be,
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sometimes people start one way and they trip over Java later on,
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like in school or later on because of their job or whatever.
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But some people pick up Java right away and they’ve been into it for 25 years.
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It’s their whole career.
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And it’s a very interesting concept to me that you can build an entire career around.
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I mean,
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obviously using many technologies as you do as well,
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but I mean,
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the core of many developers that I talked to is Java is the core.
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That’s how they made their money.
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That’s how they made their reputation and things like that is around Java.
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I find that fascinating.
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Yeah.
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It’s definitely how it’s gone for me.
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And I’ve tried like so many other programming languages as well, right?
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Because also just I’m curious and I like learning this new stuff.
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So I’ve worked with many different languages, both for fun, but also professionally.
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But Java has always been there as part of what I do,
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part of the work that I’m doing in my career and played a very central role.
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Do you also get involved in the community?
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I mean, aside from the conference sessions that you do, there’s various Java user groups.
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You’re in the Bay Area.
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I know there’s a Java user group.
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There are actually a couple, I think.
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So do you engage the community in that respect as well?
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I would actually like to go back in time a little bit for that because I’ve been in
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the Bay Area for the last nine years,
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but I’m actually from the Netherlands.
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And when I got started with Java,
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obviously there wasn’t as much online content available as there is today.
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So the place to learn was really conferences.
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And in the Netherlands, you have the NLJUK, that’s the Dutch Java user group.
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And they would organize two conferences a year, J Spring and J Fall.
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So I would go every year to both of those conferences.
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And that was my place to learn, basically.
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And these are pretty big conferences as well.
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And it was just always so exciting to see the next thing that was happening in Java
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or what people are doing with Java.
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And that was really just a way to learn.
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And I’ve been continuing doing that basically right up until now.
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That’s why I’m speaking at Java 1 again.
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And I started going to Java 1 in 2006.
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And I’ve been like every year that it has been there.
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Then another aspect of community is open source.
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I’ve always been really active in open source because,
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again,
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it’s a really interesting and fun place to be working with other people from all
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over the world,
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solving interesting problems.
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career to work with open source.
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It was also just like fun.
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This was my hobby to do.
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And maybe more than anything,
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I think that the open source aspect with the community behind that,
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that is maybe my biggest thing that I really enjoyed.
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So you’re like an OG here.
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You go way back to open source and Java and just basically,
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and the community,
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it seemed to all sort of start for you at the same time.
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But again,
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some people would start hacking on code or they’d be working behind the firewall
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and they’d discover the community later.
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For you, the whole thing seemed to be like a package deal early on.
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Almost.
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It did take a few years because I only discovered the Java user group in the
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Netherlands,
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for example,
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when I started working.
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This was, I think I graduated in 2006.
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So that is when I really started learning about these things and start to more
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deeply be embedded in the community.
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Before that, I just didn’t even know that was a thing and I was just learning out of books.
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That was mostly it.
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But yeah,
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as soon as I really actually got paid to be an engineer,
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these things,
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I was always searching for it.
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So you mentioned in 2006 was your first Java 1.
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Mine was in 2000, because I was at Sun Microsystems at the time.
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So tell me about your experiences specifically at Java 1 over the years.
(00:11:02):
You’ve been to a few, right?
(00:11:04):
Yeah, I’ve been to all of them since that first 2006 year that I went.
(00:11:09):
It was a different world because Java 1 was, it was really big.
(00:11:13):
It was like 20,000 people that would travel to San Francisco every year to come to Java 1.
(00:11:20):
And I think the reason for that is that it was the one and only place to learn
(00:11:24):
about what’s new in Java.
(00:11:26):
Locally, there were maybe some much smaller conferences at the time.
(00:11:30):
We definitely had it in the Netherlands.
(00:11:31):
But most of the time,
(00:11:33):
these local conferences would basically just bring the content they had learned at
(00:11:37):
Java 1 back to the local community and repeat that,
(00:11:41):
and spread the word.
(00:11:42):
And what was also happening at a time in the Java world is that all the news was
(00:11:47):
kind of brought together at Java 1.
(00:11:50):
You didn’t have this constant news feed of something new coming out,
(00:11:54):
new framework,
(00:11:54):
new version of this,
(00:11:56):
new framework,
(00:11:56):
version of that coming out like every day,
(00:11:58):
and you can just follow that online.
(00:12:00):
Now Java 1 was the time of the year that everything got released.
(00:12:04):
And that is where you pick up all the new stuff and you hear about,
(00:12:06):
OK,
(00:12:07):
what can we do in the next few years basically with Java?
(00:12:11):
So it was just the one and only place to learn, basically.
(00:12:13):
And I missed it a little bit.
(00:12:15):
That was really fun.
(00:12:16):
Like there was so much anticipation going to a conference like that,
(00:12:20):
but also so much to take back from it because everything you hear was new.
(00:12:24):
Now, we are obviously now in a better world because we can learn every day right now.
(00:12:28):
There’s so much content online.
(00:12:30):
There’s the community in open source is much larger.
(00:12:33):
So this is all good.
(00:12:35):
But it also means that, hey, these conferences, their place has changed a little bit.
(00:12:39):
Yeah, it’s very distributed now.
(00:12:42):
And of course, it’s 24-7 now, like you mentioned.
(00:12:44):
I also remember those early Java 1s.
(00:12:46):
I was in marketing at the time at Sun.
(00:12:49):
And I remember preparing for about, it took about six months to actually prepare for Java 1.
(00:12:55):
And we would do,
(00:12:56):
you know,
(00:12:57):
press announcements and I’ll be working with the media and stuff with the
(00:13:00):
executives.
(00:13:01):
We would do dozens of announcements, dozens.
(00:13:05):
We would have hundreds of interviews.
(00:13:08):
The scale of it was phenomenal.
(00:13:10):
But as you mentioned, now that I think about it, it was the only one at the time.
(00:13:14):
Right.
(00:13:15):
And so, and there was no real, there was no YouTube or anything like that, you know?
(00:13:19):
So,
(00:13:20):
Very, very different time.
(00:13:22):
What about some of the later years?
(00:13:23):
I mean,
(00:13:24):
how do you feel about,
(00:13:25):
like with Java 1,
(00:13:27):
my experience,
(00:13:27):
I’ll just tell you what I,
(00:13:29):
actually what I experienced with Java 1 over the other conferences is all these
(00:13:34):
conferences are different.
(00:13:35):
They all have different personalities,
(00:13:36):
but Java 1 seems to be a place where you get more of the people who are working on
(00:13:42):
the platform itself,
(00:13:43):
whether that was at Sun or at Oracle.
(00:13:45):
Yeah.
(00:13:45):
Yeah, let’s just kind of look at the last few years.
(00:13:49):
I think last year was a really good example.
(00:13:50):
It was the first time in Redwood City.
(00:13:53):
I think that worked out really well.
(00:13:55):
Like you say,
(00:13:56):
the folks who actually work on the JDK and on the Java language,
(00:14:00):
they’re all there and they’re giving presentations,
(00:14:02):
but they’re also accessible to like have a chat with.
(00:14:05):
And the conferences,
(00:14:08):
it’s very big,
(00:14:09):
but it’s small enough that there’s space to just talk with people and talk with the
(00:14:13):
actual JDK engineers and have a deeper conversation about things.
(00:14:17):
And that makes it really interesting.
(00:14:19):
So it’s a great place to just come and learn about the new things that are
(00:14:22):
happening in the Java language in the ecosystem.
(00:14:25):
But also you can have these follow-up discussions with other attendees,
(00:14:29):
but also with the speakers and just go a little bit deeper.
(00:14:33):
Cool.
(00:14:34):
Well, I’m looking forward to this Java one in March.
(00:14:37):
It’ll be interesting to see the difference.
(00:14:39):
So every conference is different, and so I’m looking forward to this one as well.
(00:14:44):
Let’s talk about AI, because everyone’s talking about AI.
(00:14:47):
We can’t get enough AI.
(00:14:49):
Tell me how you’re using AI in your job.
(00:14:52):
Right.
(00:14:52):
Yeah.
(00:14:53):
AI has been my,
(00:14:54):
like my main focus almost in the,
(00:14:57):
in the more than a year for more than last year.
(00:15:00):
And there’s really two angles to this.
(00:15:02):
Uh,
(00:15:02):
the first angle is using AI tools like cloud code,
(00:15:06):
for example,
(00:15:07):
as a developer,
(00:15:08):
when I’m writing codes.
(00:15:09):
That’s the one really interesting side.
(00:15:11):
And we should talk about this more,
(00:15:13):
but it really changes the way,
(00:15:14):
like how I do my development on a daily basis.
(00:15:17):
On the other hand,
(00:15:19):
it is how can we make it possible to make our existing applications kind of Gen AI
(00:15:24):
enabled,
(00:15:25):
like put AI in our Java services to make them more intelligent,
(00:15:30):
to get more functionality out of it.
(00:15:32):
So it’s both using AI to build our things, but also putting AI in the things we build.
(00:15:38):
And those are kind of two different aspects on it.
(00:15:41):
Interesting.
(00:15:41):
So did this emerge a little bit more slowly than is characterized?
(00:15:47):
I mean,
(00:15:48):
a lot of people are acting like AI just sprang up out of nowhere,
(00:15:51):
where in reality,
(00:15:51):
this technology has been emerging over a long period of time.
(00:15:55):
Have you been working with tools like this for longer than the last year?
(00:15:59):
I’m going to say it was probably the last two years,
(00:16:03):
but I do feel it kind of has sprung upon us because even with kind of tools with
(00:16:08):
like the newer models that we are kind of now all looking with LLMs,
(00:16:12):
although that was available for
(00:16:15):
several years before this, they weren’t all that useful.
(00:16:19):
So yes, I played with it.
(00:16:21):
Yes, I looked at it.
(00:16:22):
And it was like, oh, this looks really cool.
(00:16:24):
Look at all these advancements that we’re making.
(00:16:26):
But it wasn’t useful enough to actually use during work or get anything done.
(00:16:32):
It was fun to play with, but it wasn’t useful.
(00:16:35):
And then something changed like two years ago.
(00:16:38):
And I think it started with,
(00:16:40):
okay,
(00:16:41):
ChatGPT became like widely available with like the newer models they had.
(00:16:45):
And suddenly we could see it do things where like,
(00:16:47):
oh,
(00:16:47):
wow,
(00:16:47):
this is actually,
(00:16:49):
this is very impressive.
(00:16:51):
And that is where more and more myself and others just started using it first just
(00:16:56):
on the ChatGPT website,
(00:16:57):
right?
(00:16:57):
Like you’re just chatting with this thing and you’re asking it questions and it’s
(00:17:00):
like,
(00:17:00):
oh,
(00:17:00):
I can just copy paste this thing and it seems to work.
(00:17:03):
And then now it’s just part of our daily development basically where I’m using
(00:17:09):
cloud code mostly,
(00:17:09):
which is obviously many different tools.
(00:17:13):
And it really changed the way how we are working every day.
(00:17:17):
And I think that just happened over the last year.
(00:17:20):
Okay, so you’ve embraced this, which most people have.
(00:17:24):
I mean, most senior developers have actually embraced it, obviously.
(00:17:27):
It’s a fantastic tool.
(00:17:29):
Talk a little bit about how it has changed how you develop code now versus when,
(00:17:35):
say,
(00:17:35):
10 years ago.
(00:17:37):
I use it as a useful, almost code developer.
(00:17:41):
I’m programming together with this tool.
(00:17:45):
You have almost sitting somewhere next to you who’s doing some of the typing, et cetera.
(00:17:49):
And depending on what I’m doing, I use it in slightly different ways.
(00:17:53):
If I’m working on a really hard problem and it is something that maybe doesn’t
(00:17:57):
require a lot of code to be written,
(00:17:59):
but it’s more something you have to think about,
(00:18:01):
you have to figure it out.
(00:18:02):
i’ll use it kind of as a rubber duck i’ll ask questions like hey i’m thinking about
(00:18:07):
this thing but what am i missing and sometimes it doesn’t give you much much news
(00:18:13):
and but sometimes it does it gives you insights where you’re like oh yeah i missed
(00:18:15):
that or i have things with you and like okay what else should i be thinking about
(00:18:19):
so it’s more about like having something to to to bounce ideas off so that that’s
(00:18:24):
that’s one way for other things
(00:18:27):
Maybe you just write a whole bunch of code that isn’t all that interesting to write.
(00:18:30):
It’s like copying fields from one place to another field.
(00:18:33):
And that is real part of the work often.
(00:18:36):
Not something that is super fun, but it needs to be done.
(00:18:39):
And that is also stuff that AIs are really good at because you can give it a spec
(00:18:43):
and you can just tell it to write some code for it and it will just do so.
(00:18:47):
And in that case, I can be a little bit more hands off and I’ll just let the AI do its thing.
(00:18:53):
And then I will just review and yeah, I will probably have done more or less the same thing.
(00:18:57):
Or I will give it feedback like,
(00:18:58):
no,
(00:18:58):
I kind of don’t like this style or the techniques that you used.
(00:19:02):
Can you rewrite it doing this other thing?
(00:19:04):
And that’s the nice thing about an AI.
(00:19:06):
While a person would probably get really annoyed with all this feedback all the
(00:19:10):
time and having to repeat the work over and over again,
(00:19:13):
an AI is like,
(00:19:14):
fine,
(00:19:14):
I’ll do it again.
(00:19:16):
So you can just iterate on things as much as you want.
(00:19:19):
So I’m obviously used to AI,
(00:19:21):
just the commercial tools like Claude and Grok and,
(00:19:26):
you know,
(00:19:26):
ChatGPT,
(00:19:27):
just,
(00:19:27):
you know,
(00:19:27):
the interface with the website.
(00:19:30):
You’re using it embedded into other development tools though, right?
(00:19:34):
So on the development side, it is, for me, it’s mostly cloud code.
(00:19:39):
And we have like a
(00:19:41):
several tools available at Netflix.
(00:19:43):
Cursor is another popular one that’s more so popular for like Python and Node
(00:19:47):
developers,
(00:19:48):
a little bit less so for Java developers.
(00:19:51):
Most Java developers at Netflix I’m talking about are on cloud code.
(00:19:56):
But then you also see it in
(00:19:58):
integration with GitHub,
(00:19:59):
for example,
(00:19:59):
where you get reviews on your pull requests and it helps find bugs in your pull
(00:20:05):
requests and things like that.
(00:20:07):
So more and more in the whole development lifecycle,
(00:20:10):
all the way from writing code or even designing code and writing code,
(00:20:13):
but then also getting pull requests merged.
(00:20:17):
And eventually also, we also have tools that help like analyze problems in production.
(00:20:23):
Then it’s not actually actively writing code,
(00:20:25):
but it’s like looking at log files and things like that.
(00:20:27):
Interesting.
(00:20:28):
I wish I had it when I was in school.
(00:20:30):
And maybe I should go back to school and start over because it seems like a really,
(00:20:33):
even just at the level that I’m using it with text and stuff,
(00:20:38):
just like you mentioned,
(00:20:39):
you feel like you have somebody there that you’re actually interacting with.
(00:20:43):
And I think that’s really valuable.
(00:20:45):
It would have really helped me as a student when I was a kid, for sure.
(00:20:48):
Speaking of students, let’s talk a little bit about school here.
(00:20:51):
So you were self-motivated.
(00:20:53):
So school probably wasn’t a problem for you.
(00:20:55):
But let’s talk a little bit about your advice for students who are maybe they’re in
(00:21:01):
computer science or thinking about going into computer science.
(00:21:05):
The world today is very different from what it was 20 years ago.
(00:21:10):
What do you think about computer science now or the market,
(00:21:15):
the whole ecosystem now versus,
(00:21:18):
say,
(00:21:18):
20 years ago when you were going through things?
(00:21:22):
Any advice for kids?
(00:21:24):
Yeah,
(00:21:25):
actually,
(00:21:26):
I think it’s the advice that I’m going to give is not so different now than it was
(00:21:30):
many years ago.
(00:21:31):
Really?
(00:21:32):
I think what I really recommend is just go and build a lot of stuff.
(00:21:35):
Like the way to get to become a better developer is by doing a whole lot of development.
(00:21:41):
And the way you do that might change a little bit over time,
(00:21:44):
because when I got started,
(00:21:45):
I literally had to go to the bookstore,
(00:21:47):
buy a book,
(00:21:48):
and read that book.
(00:21:49):
And that’s how you learn a programming language.
(00:21:51):
That is probably not how you’re learning a language today.
(00:21:54):
Today, you have all these AI tools helping you as well.
(00:21:57):
I think the goal should really be
(00:21:58):
Just go build a lot of interesting applications and things that you might want to
(00:22:03):
use or come up with.
(00:22:05):
It doesn’t even have to be useful.
(00:22:07):
Come up with like a fun problem to solve and just go build that.
(00:22:11):
And that is how you really learn how to become a better developer by making your own mistakes.
(00:22:16):
You build a system and at the end of it, you realize like, ah,
(00:22:20):
This code base is brand new and already I struggle with maintaining this thing.
(00:22:25):
But could I have done different to make this more maintainable?
(00:22:29):
And you kind of learn from all these different steps and your own experiences.
(00:22:33):
And then you get better at designing code, architecting code, and actually writing code.
(00:22:39):
And you can definitely use AI tools in this whole process,
(00:22:43):
but I would recommend don’t just accept whatever an AI is giving you.
(00:22:48):
Try to understand what came out of it and how it could have done it differently and
(00:22:53):
experience with these different approaches.
(00:22:56):
So use the tools available,
(00:22:57):
but also,
(00:22:58):
yeah,
(00:22:58):
try to really understand what’s going on and what options you have.
(00:23:02):
What do you say to some students or even more established developers who have some
(00:23:08):
apprehension about the future that tools are becoming so advanced that they’re a
(00:23:14):
little bit concerned about what’s my place as a developer in the future?
(00:23:19):
I think no one knows how that is going to look like because we all see everything.
(00:23:25):
The tools are getting so much better almost every day.
(00:23:27):
So yeah,
(00:23:28):
who knows where that ends up and who knows how much of the work that I might need
(00:23:34):
to be doing today can be done by one of these tools in the next years.
(00:23:39):
But also, they’re just tools.
(00:23:41):
And someone needs to drive these tools and come up with the ideas that these tools
(00:23:46):
should be building.
(00:23:48):
And they’re also,
(00:23:50):
at least currently,
(00:23:50):
far from a state where you can just have it develop something and you never have to
(00:23:56):
look at it and it all works fine.
(00:23:57):
There’s actually a lot of hand-holding involved.
(00:24:00):
So I think, is our daily work going to change?
(00:24:03):
Very likely.
(00:24:04):
That’s already happening.
(00:24:05):
But I try to see this like a positive thing.
(00:24:08):
Yeah, it’s a new tool that we can use.
(00:24:10):
It makes certain parts of our job more fun, more interesting.
(00:24:13):
You can get more things done in some ways and be open to it.
(00:24:18):
It’s not going to not happen if you’re not open to it.
(00:24:22):
That’s really good.
(00:24:23):
It’s good advice too about being positive and just engaging because you can’t tell
(00:24:27):
the future,
(00:24:28):
right?
(00:24:28):
Obviously.
(00:24:29):
Yeah.
(00:24:30):
All right,
(00:24:30):
Paul,
(00:24:30):
let’s switch gears here a little bit and go into a rapid-fire round here where I’m
(00:24:34):
just going to ask you just a few questions and give me your first impressions,
(00:24:39):
and then we’ll wrap up and get out of here.
(00:24:41):
Okay, first question.
(00:24:43):
Why Java?
(00:24:43):
What makes Java great?
(00:24:45):
Java is the perfect balance of developer productivity and runtime performance.
(00:24:51):
Excellent.
(00:24:52):
Okay.
(00:24:53):
Talk to me about AI.
(00:24:54):
Should I love it?
(00:24:55):
You should.
(00:24:56):
I think it’s a useful tool.
(00:24:57):
It is changing the way we do development,
(00:25:00):
but I think it can make our jobs more interesting and embrace it and see in which
(00:25:05):
ways you can use it.
(00:25:06):
Cool.
(00:25:07):
Excellent.
(00:25:08):
Give me some advice for students.
(00:25:10):
Build a lot of stuff.
(00:25:11):
The way to become a better developer is to develop a lot,
(00:25:15):
like build all the things that you can come up with.
(00:25:17):
Excellent.
(00:25:18):
Any cool stories from any of your Java 1s?
(00:25:21):
My favorite moments from Java 1 are actually way back in time in 2006,
(00:25:26):
2007,
(00:25:26):
when this was all so big and it was the place to learn.
(00:25:33):
I say we have fond memories of those times.
(00:25:36):
It’s still really great.
(00:25:37):
I’m not saying that it’s all not as good anymore,
(00:25:40):
but those early days for me,
(00:25:41):
also as a young developer,
(00:25:43):
those were really good times.
(00:25:45):
Excellent.
(00:25:46):
All right, Paul, it was great meeting you here.
(00:25:48):
You’re going to be at Java One in March, in mid-March, in Redwood City in California.
(00:25:55):
Your session is How Netflix Uses Java, the 2026 edition.
(00:26:01):
I’ll be there.
(00:26:01):
I want to meet you.
(00:26:03):
And yeah, thanks a lot for chatting with me.
(00:26:06):
See you at Java One.