airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien

An airhacks.fm conversation with Billy Korando (@BillyKorando) about: Apple IIe and Packard Bell in the late 80s/early 90s, playing games like Three Stooges and Wolfenstein 3D, taking a year off after high school to work at FedEx as a package handler which motivated him to pursue higher education, his first professional job working on insurance regulation software using Java 1.4 with Apache Struts and custom frameworks, transitioning to Spring 2.5 and experiencing the XML configuration challenges, experience with the microservices hype around 2015 and learning that organizations that couldn't build good monoliths wouldn't succeed with microservices either, automated testing and JUnit 5, meeting Pratik Patel at DevNexus which led to his first devrel position at IBM, traveling extensively for conferences including J-Fall in the Netherlands, being laid off from IBM in 2021 and joining Oracle's Java team, focusing on JDK technologies like JFR, garbage collection, and project leyden, helping organize the Kansas City Developers Conference, involvement in reviving JavaOne as a standalone conference, the importance of automated testing with tools like Test Containers versus older approaches with H2 databases, the challenges of maintaining code coverage as a metric, the evolution of Java, focus on Java observability tools and performance optimization Billy Korando on twitter: @BillyKorando

An airhacks.fm conversation with Maurice Naftalin (@mauricenaftalin) about: Shelton Signet CP/M machine costing £3000 in the 1980s, discussion about the CP/M operating system which started in 1972, Maurice's early career teaching programming at Wolverhampton Polytechnic (now University), teaching Pascal programming language, creating a membership system for a political campaign using his first computer, Maurice's background as a chemist studying nuclear magnetic resonance (which later became MRI), learning fortran to process data using Fast Fourier Transforms, discussion about the NAG Library and challenges with array indices between C and Fortran, programming in the early days using punch cards and waiting hours for compilation results, the evolution from punch cards to paper tape which was more fragile, the role of punch operators who would type programs onto cards, Maurice's experience programming in assembler after learning Fortran, working at British Steel on an eccentric project to create a new programming language, moving to ICL (International Computers Limited) to work on the VMEB operating system with 15-16 protection rings, using traffic lights mounted on walls to indicate system status (red for down, amber for booting, green for operational), Maurice's interest in formal methods and the Vienna Development Method (VDM), working at Sterling University on formal specification and stepwise refinement, programming in HyperTalk for HyperCard in the 1990s, the Post Office Horizon scandal where a flawed computer system led to false fraud accusations against hundreds of sub-postmasters, Maurice's early Java programming creating a local information service distributed on CDs in the mid-1990s, discussion about offline-first principles and caching data that are still relevant today, Maurice being a "singleton" as the only Maurice Naftalin on the internet Maurice Naftalin on twitter: @mauricenaftalin

An airhacks.fm conversation with David Kral (@VerdentDK) about: Helidon Declarative as a new feature set for Helidon SE, build-time dependency injection with zero reflection capability, code generation approach that creates actual Java source files instead of bytecode manipulation, Service Registry as an enhanced Java service loader with ordering capabilities, compatibility with GraalVM for native image compilation, JPMS (Java Platform Module System) compatibility, the Maven plugin that eliminates reflection completely, HTTP module for declarative REST endpoints, REST client generation, metrics and fault tolerance support, interceptors for modifying service creation behavior, annotation mapping to support standard JSR-330 annotations like @Inject, comparison of performance between Helidon SE and MP flavors, use cases for serverless and CLI applications, the incubating status of Helidon Declarative with full release planned for Helidon 5, the ability to see and modify generated code for better debugging and transparency, the possibility to copy generated code to take ownership and remove dependencies, the value of using standard annotations for better portability between frameworks David Kral on twitter: @VerdentDK

An airhacks.fm conversation with Volker Simonis (@volker_simonis) about: explanation of corretto as an openJDK distribution with support for multiple platforms and Java versions, insights into the build and certification process for Corretto releases including TCK testing, discussion of the security vulnerability group and embargo process for Java security fixes, explanation of how Amazon contributes features back to OpenJDK, detailed overview of Amazon's contributions including async logging for improved performance, Project Lilliput for compact object headers reducing memory usage by 10-50%, Generational Shenandoah garbage collector achieving sub-millisecond pause times, comparison between ZGC and Shenandoah garbage collectors, discussion about the Graal compiler and Project Galahad to reintroduce it into OpenJDK, mention of Amazon being the second largest contributor to OpenJDK after Oracle, information about the Amazon Corretto Crypto Provider for improved encryption performance, introduction of arctic GUI testing tool for Java, insights into the collaborative nature of the OpenJDK ecosystem despite competition between vendors Volker Simonis on twitter: @volker_simonis