Mike's Java Café

This month's Java Users Group meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts, Drew University starting at 6:30pm. I will present " Building Microservices with Micronaut, A Full-Stack JVM-Based Framework ." Micronaut , introduced in early 2018 by Object Computing, is a full-stack JVM-based framework for creating microservices-based, cloud-native and serverless applications that may be written in Java, Groovy and Kotlin. There will be a brief introduction and overview of Micronaut followed by a live demonstration on an application written in Java, Groovy and Kotlin. We've had quite the lineup of speakers for the first four months of 2019. Here is a quick summary: Invest in Your Java Katalogue by Don Raab Alternates to Java Reflection and Unsafe Usage by Chandra Guntur Understanding Facebook/Google Authentication with Spring Boot 2.x Demo (Hands-On) by Gladwin Burboz Instan(t)a-neous Monitoring by Christoph Engel...

The ACGNJ Java Users Group had an excellent year in 2018 surpassing our 2017 accomplishments. We held our usual 11 meetings (summer break in August) and hosted seven (7) well-known Java industry leaders: January 9 - Jason Young presented "Introduction to Java 9." March 19 - Venkat Subramaniam presented "Twelve Ways to Make Your Code Suck Less." April 10 - Ben Evans presented "Gambling with Leopards." May 8 - Chandra Guntur presented "Garbage Collection - The Journey Until Java 11" October 9 - Jeanne Boyarsky presented "Java 11 - Keeping the Java Release Train on the Right Track." November 13 - Reza Rahman presented "What is CQRS+Event Sourcing and Why Java Developers Should Care." December 17 - Chandra Guntur , Donald Raab , Barry and I participated in a Java open-source panel where we shared our own contributions to open-source projects. We also had a remote presentation by Scott Stoll and Nash Ramdial on Fl...

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 - ...

I am happy to announce that Donald Raab will visit the ACGNJ Java Users Group on December 12, 2017.  He will present, " API Deep Dive: Designing Eclipse Collections " at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad (second floor) starting at 7:30pm. When designing an API, its authors have to consider many aspects: style, naming, scope, and implementation details are among these aspects. They have a direct impact on the resulting code, and its implementation can go in many different directions. How do you choose the best route to go? How do you guarantee consistency and performance across the framework? In this session, the mastermind behind Eclipse Collections (and previously GS Collections) shares the design choices he had to face and how he did it, the impact on different implementation strategies, and how the framework became a Eclipse project. Come take a look behind the curtains of a widely used API that has many years of development and that you can c...

The October 2017 ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Reza Rahman . He presented " Java EE 8 and Java EE 9: What You Need to Know ." He outlined the past, present, and future of Java EE, reviewed notable JSRs within Java EE 8, and what's on the horizon. Rahman also discussed the stagnation of Java EE , the emergence of the Java EE Guardians , and the events that lead to where Java EE is today. You can read all the details including Q&A with Rahman on my InfoQ news piece,  Eclipse Foundation Prepares to Open Source Java EE as EE4J .

This month's Java Users Group meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad starting at 7:30pm. Barry Burd will present " Swift Programming for Java Developers ." Abstract: Swift is Apple's new language for developing macOS and iOS applications. In this talk, Barry will introduce Swift programming and compare features of Swift with their counterparts in Java. He will also demonstrate the creation of a simple app for Apple's iPhone. Where: Scotch Plains Rescue Squad 1916 Bartle Avenue Scotch Plains, New Jersey 07076 When: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 7:30pm As always, you can visit the Java Users Group website for the latest information. Please contact me if you have any questions and I hope to see y'all on September 12!

I am happy to announce that Reza Rahman will visit the ACGNJ Java Users Group on October 10, 2017.  He will present, " Java EE 8 and Java EE 9 - What You Need to Know " at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad (second floor) starting at 7:30pm. The process of defining the scope for Java EE 8 was the most community opinion driven in the history of the platform.   Java EE 8 is supposed to solidly enable HTTP/2, Server-Sent Events (SSE), JSON and aligning all parts of the platform with Java SE 8.  It includes a much awaited security API overhaul, a brand new MVC API as well as a slew of critical updates to APIs like JSF, JMS, JPA, JAX-RS and CDI.  Unfortunately the road to Java EE 8 has not been smooth.  After a long and silent delay Oracle announced updated plans for Java EE 8 and Java EE 9.  The plans now include adding support for dynamic configuration, health-checks, NoSQL, fat-jars, eventual consistency, multi-tenancy, dynamic discovery...

The 12th annual Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference was held on Tuesday, April 18 and Wednesday, April 19, 2017 at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I was honored to have served as a steering committee member for ETE 2017 and to have covered the conference as a dedicated reporter for InfoQ . The summaries for both days are listed as follows: Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference 2017: Day One Recap Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference 2017: Day Two Recap Additional news items from ETE 2017 are listed as follows: Kiki Carter, Enterprise Architect at Lightbend, Speaks to InfoQ at ETE Jake Wharton, Android Engineer at Square, Speaks to InfoQ at ETE Oracle Defends the Java Module System   As always, the folks at Chariot Solutions went above-and-beyond organizing and hosting this conference!

The April ACGNJ Java Users Group meeting featured guest speaker, Elliotte Rusty Harold .  His presentation was entitled, " Exceptions: I'm Telling You for the Last Time ." Elliotte discussed the three rules of using exceptions: Rule #1 - try blocks should be long, not short Rule #2: Checked exceptions indicate environmental problems. Runtime, i.e., unchecked exceptions indicate program errors. Rule #3 - If you can't handle it, bubble it. Harold provided his reasoning for not using exceptions.  He stated, "If we haven't learned how to use exceptions within the last 20 years, will we learn over the next 20 years?  Maybe exceptions are just too hard.  And if exceptions are too hard, then what about Java features such as lambdas and data binding?" Sun forgot to document exceptions when they were first introduced in Java 1, alpha 3.  Elliotte encouraged everyone to search for the original white papers by James Gosling, Patrick Naughton, and Bi...

I am happy to announce that Elliotte Rusty Harold will visit this month's ACGNJ Java Users Group to present, " Exceptions: I'm Telling You for the Last Time " on Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at the Scotch Plains Rescue Squad (second floor) starting at 7:30pm. No feature of the Java programming language is as original or as misused and controversial as exception handling. More than twenty years after Java was introduced more developers don't understand exceptions than do. That's not surprising given that most textbooks and tutorials get exceptions seriously wrong by focusing on the rules you must follow rather than the reasons you should follow them. And yet just three rules cover 99% of what you need to know about exceptions: Separate exception handling from the main path by making try blocks as long as possible. Use checked exceptions for environmental problems and runtime exceptions for programming errors. Bubble exceptions you can't handle. Follow...

The 12th annual Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise (ETE) Conference will be held on Tuesday, April 18 and Wednesday, April 19 at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The two keynote addresses will feature: Blair McIntyre - The Web as Platform for Augmented Reality Experiences Scott Hanselman - A History of Back-End to Front-End: From Mainframes to Compiled JavaScript and Beyond Other notable speakers include: Jessica Kerr Yehuda Katz David Nolen Jake Wharton Maciej Ceglowski Andy Hunt Holden Karau Alex Grigoryan Guillermo Rauch Daniel Spiewak The entire schedule can be found here . ETE that is organized by Chariot Solutions in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.  I have participated in this conference since 2008 as an attendee, a speaker, and more recently, a member of the ETE Steering Committee.  Chariot Solutions is the most gracious hosts as they provide breakfast, lunch, and an after-hours social event after day one. This...