Mike's Java Café

The October 2018 ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Jeanne Boyarsky . She presented Java 11 - Keeping the Java Release Train on Track . Jeanne discussed the recent changes in the Java programming language including the delay of the module system (ultimately released in Java 9), the new six-month release cadence and which versions will have long-term support, debunking the myth of having to pay for Java, the pros and cons of the new var keyword (released in Java 10), and garbage collection. Jeanne is an experienced conference speaker especially CodeOne (formerly JavaOne), the author of several books, certified in Spring, Jenkins, OCAJP/OCPJP among others, and a distinguished Toastmaster.

The May 2018 ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Guntur Chandra , director at BNY Mellon , organizer/presenter at the NYJavaSIG , and co-chair of the NYJavaSIG Hands-On Workshop. He presented " Garbage Collection - The Journey until Java 11 ." Chandra provided a comprehensive overview of garbage collection (GC) in the Java programming language including various patterns and algorithms, logging, and performance. He also provided a sneak peek into what's on the horizon for GCs in Java 11. You can find Chandra's presentation here .

This month's Java Users Group meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at the Drew University starting at 6:30pm. Chandra Guntur will present " Garbage Collection - The Journey Until Java 11 ." Abstract: Chandra will provide an overview of basic Garbage Collection patterns and enhancements in Java. His presentation will cover various JVM options and flags to tune GC as well as new logging techniques with Java Unified Logging. Bio: Chandra is a Java geek, Spring Boot and cloud enthusiast, organizer and presenter at the NYJavaSIG , and co-chair of the NYJavaSIG Hands-On-Workshop (HOW). He loves coding in Smalltalk and is getting to love Java over the past 20+ years. Where: Dorothy Young Center for the Arts, Room 106 Drew University 36 Madison Avenue Madison, New Jersey 07940 When: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 6:30-8:30pm

The April 2018 ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Ben Evans , a Java Champion, co-founder of jClarity , and author of several books. He presented " Gambling with Leopards ." Ben provided an overview of a distributed sports book, known as BetLeopard , and the kinds of bets that are processed. He then demonstrated several ways to implement BetLeopard: Java 8 lambdas Hazelcast IMDG and Apache Spark   Hazelcast IMDG and Hazelcast Jet   Source code for BetLeopard can be found on Ben's GitHub page.

The Eclipse Foundation recently launched at survey for developers to choose the new Jakarta EE logo.  There are seven finalists and you get to choose your top three. Time is running out as the survey closes on Friday, April 6 at 12 noon EDT . Eclipse also announced a brand new Twitter account, @JakartaEE . These are indeed very exciting times in the Java world!

The ACGNJ Java Users Group (facilitated by yours truly ) and the NYJavaSIG (facilitated by Frank Greco ) recently hosted Venkat Subramaniam to speak at our respective groups on back-to-back nights. On March 19, 2018, Venkat visited the ACGNJ Java Users Group at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey where he presented " Twelve Way to Make Code Suck Less ." He discussed why we should care about code quality and defined the First Law of Programming which states, "Lowering quality lengthens development time." Venkat then introduced and discussed his 12 principles to improving code quality along with plenty of live-coded examples. On March 20,  2018, Venkat visited the NYJavaSIG at Credit Suisse in New York City where he presented " From Functional to Reactive Programming ." He discussed the differences between imperative vs. declarative styles, normal functions vs. higher-order functions, and functional to reactive programming along with plenty...

The 43rd annual Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) will be held on Saturday, March 17, 2018 at The College of New Jersey in Ewing, New Jersey. The theme for this year's event is Wearable Technologies. Dr. Nick van Terheyden , a leader in Digital Healthcare and Innovation and former Chief Medical Officer for Dell, will deliver the keynote address.  He provides strategic insights and guidance to support healthcare organizations, medical professionals and patients through information-enabled healthcare.  Dr. Nick brings an incremental approach to developing successful strategies and applies his expertise to achieve a technology environment that is interconnected, efficient and patient-focused.  He is a highly sought out speaker on the practical and futuristic use of healthcare technology and how it can improve patient engagement and wellness. As always, there will be a suite of talks throughout the day including tracks on wearable technologies, software applicat...

I am happy to announce that my request to join the Java EE Guardians was recently accepted! I first learned about the Java EE Guardians almost two years ago while writing my InfoQ news piece about Oracle's sudden slowdown in the development of Java EE 8 and the response by the Java community. It was during that time the Java EE Guardians were born. Reza Rahman , former Oracle evangelist and now senior architect at CapTech Consulting, led the creation of the Java EE Guardians. I was impressed with their charter and have followed along with their activities ever since. I am honored to be part of a membership that includes notable members such as the father of Java, James Gosling, along with JUG leaders, JCP experts, spec leads, bloggers, authors, and speakers. All you need is a passion for Java EE, now Jakarta EE , and be active in the community. If you have such a passion for Jakarta EE and interested in membership, please send an e-mail to their Google Group .

As you may already know, the Java EE name is in the process of a name change. Oracle forced a rebranding after open sourcing and transferring Java EE to the Eclipse Foundation last fall. The Java EE Guardians , led by well-known Java evangelist Reza Rahman , submitted an open letter to Oracle to express their concerns over Oracle's restriction of the name "Java" and the "javax" package names. Rahman conducted two surveys on the rebranding last fall and the results overwhelmingly demonstrated that the Java community supported to keep the Java EE name. Despite all the efforts by Rahman and the Java EE Guardians to keep the "Java" and "javax" names, the process of determining a new name for Java EE will move forward. A new poll to select Java EE's new name recently opened. There are two choices: Jakarta EE Enterprise Profile Once used by the Apache Foundation for stewarding various Java subprojects, the Jakarta name was ret...

The ACGNJ Java Users Group had a banner year in 2017.  We held our usual 11 meetings (summer break in August) and hosted five (5) well-known Java experts: April 11 - Elliotte Rusty Harold presented "Exceptions: I'm Telling You for the Last Time." May 9 - Victor Grazi presented "Reactive Programming by Example." May 30 - Viktor Gamov presented "The Splendors and Miseries of Distributed Streams." October 10 - Reza Rahman presented "Java EE 8 and Java EE 9: What You Need to Know." December 12 - Donald Raab presented "API Deep Dive: Designing Eclipse Collections." This is indeed a first for our quirky little JUG to host this many Java experts in one year.  The rest of the year featured presentations by our regular "cast of characters:" January 10 - "Technical Overview of Speedment" presented by myself . February 27 - "Getting Started with JavaFX" presented by Scot Jenkins. March 28 - ...