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Duke's Corner

Duke's Corner

By: Jim Grisanzio
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 Duke's Corner is a forum for conversations with Java developers. Tune in to connect with the community and learn how developers are innovating with Java around the world. Host: Jim Grisanzio, Oracle Java Developer Relations @jimgris2024 Oracle Corporation Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Paul Bakker: Go Build a Lot of Stuff!

    Paul Bakker: Go Build a Lot of Stuff!
    Feb 3 2026
    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...
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    26 mins
  • Marit van Dijk and Anton Arhipov: 25 Years of IntelliJ IDEA

    Marit van Dijk and Anton Arhipov: 25 Years of IntelliJ IDEA
    Jan 29 2026
    This is the second 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. JavaOne: Register. Sessions. In this conversation, Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with developer advocates Marit van Dijk and Anton Arhipov from JetBrains about the 25th anniversary of IntelliJ IDEA, the latest features of the IDE, Anton's upcoming session at JavaOne in March, and their perspectives on JavaOne as the premier conference for Java developers. 25 Years of IntelliJ IDEA Just as Java turned 30 this year, IntelliJ IDEA is now 25 years young! Not every technology survives that long, and even fewer thrive while doing it. But both Java and IntelliJ IDEA are doing just that. The secret to this longevity for IntelliJ IDEA, according to Marit van Dijk and Anton Arhipov, comes down to something simple but demanding — staying current with the Java ecosystem and engaging the massive Java development community around the world. The main reason for their success is the huge effort engineered into the platform to produce the technologies that developers need while at the same time staying with all the bleeding edge stuff happening inside the Java community. This commitment reaches beyond just supporting new Java versions. The IntelliJ IDEA team works on preview features even though specifications sometimes change during the preview process. When Oracle moved to a six-month release cycle for OpenJDK about eight years ago, IntelliJ adapted smoothly since their teams were already involved with the OpenJDK community. Marit says that new release cycle actually streamlined their work. They already knew about preview features and could start developing support upfront, not at the very last moment. This let them iterate alongside the community rather than chasing after it. The company also collaborates directly with other community members — such as framework developers, build tool teams at Maven and Gradle, and even Google — to implement best practices straight into the IDE. Maven 4 is not even released yet, but IntelliJ already has support ready with migration features to help developers make the transition. Anton says that this effort means that support is not only working with the new version of a technology but also being smart about how you use it. The IDE catches outdated patterns and deprecated APIs and also offers quick fixes to migrate code with a single keystroke. First and Lasting Impressions Both Marit and Anton started working at JetBrains years after they had already become devoted IntelliJ users. Their first impressions of the IDE moved them deeply and remain with them today. For Anton, his first reaction to using IntelliJ IDEA was immediate. "In one word, wow, this is smart. This is an IDE that understands code." That intelligence in the software became the foundation of his relationship with the technology. Marit had a similar experience when she switched to IntelliJ IDEA. She had used other IDEs before and they were perfectly fine, but IntelliJ seemed different. "I found that it was actively helpful with the code inspections and quick fixes and helping me when my code didn't compile or preventing me from making mistakes. And I was sad that I didn't switch earlier, like years earlier. And I've been raving about it ever since. And now they pay me to do that. So, you know, everybody wins." AI and the Future of Development As usual in these conversation, we turned to artificial intelligence and its growing role in software development. Anton will explore this topic in depth at his JavaOne session titled "Spec-Driven Development With AI Agents: From High-Level Requirements to Working Software." Everyone knows that the AI landscape is changing fast, but things are actually getting simpler, Anton says. Developers can now get better results with less effort and less complex workflows using AI agents. Models are improving at guessing developer intent and reducing the need for careful constraint-heavy prompting. But Anton sets realistic expectations about AI. When asked whether his session targets junior or senior developers, he says that "we are all juniors in this regard." The field is so new that nobody can claim years of expertise with AI development tools. Marit emphasizes another crucial principle about AI-generated code. "You are still responsible for the code," whether you write it or an agent writes it. It has your name on it. AI does not diminish developer accountability or the need for developers to remain highly skilled in their craft. Anton adds another dimension about integrating AI with development tools. "AI without the IDE is kind of unreliable, but the IDE without AI is unproductive." The key, he says, is to fuse these things together leveraging the benefits of both for better productivity. The ...
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    31 mins
  • Jeanne Boyarsky: Get Ready for Java 25 Certification

    Jeanne Boyarsky: Get Ready for Java 25 Certification
    Jan 21 2026
    This is the first 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 $50 discount by using this code at checkout: J12026DCP. Register. Sessions. In this conversation, Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Jeanne Boyarsky, a Java developer, an author, and a Java Champion based in New York City. Jeanne previews her JavaOne session, which will be a Hands on Lab for Java 25 certification. Previously, Jeanne was a guest on Duke's Corner in January 2024: Jeanne Boyarsky on Java, Learning, and Contributing. Preparing for Java 25 Certification Jeanne will be running a hands-on lab about Java 25 and getting ready for the certification: Becoming One of the First Java 25 Certified Developers in the World (or Learning New Features). The session will cover features added to the language from Java 17 to Java 25. Although the certification has not been announced yet, Jeanne is already preparing for it. "You can be one of the first people in the world to be certified if you come to my talk and learn about it and are ready when the test comes out," she says. The lab will walk through tricky questions and edge cases featuring new functionality, with coding practice to explore the features directly. Even if you are not planning to take the certification test, the lab provides a good way to learn about the new features. The session is designed for beginners with one to three years of experience. Top Features in Java 25 Several features particularly excite Jeanne. She highlights scoped values, which she describes as "a good jump from thread local in order to be able to share code in a nice, safe, contained way." She also appreciates unnamed variables and unnamed patterns because developers no longer need to use annotations to suppress warnings for unused variables. "You can just use an underscore," she says. Jeanne is particularly interested in stream gatherers because streams are one of her favorite features in Java overall. She was excited when stream gatherers were in preview, and now that they are officially released, she can use them in her job. "Nice that the excitement hasn't worn off, right?" Among the new features, Jeanne is especially interested in the new main method, as described in JEP 495: Simple Source Files and Instance Main Methods. "I'm super, super, super excited about the new main methods where you don't need a class and you don't need the whole static void mess," she says. This change makes writing code more succinct. Making Java Accessible to Students This change in how Java handles the main method enables new developers to learn Java faster. Jeanne volunteers at a high school teaching kids how to code in Java. In the past, teachers had to tell students: "Alright, public class foo, public static void. Don't worry about what any of that means. We'll tell you later." But Jeanne says that curious kids would ask what it meant, and teachers could only say that comes later. Now, students start with void main, braces, and IO print line. "It's obvious what everything does," Jeanne says. Void means it does not return anything, which makes sense to students. They can even use the Java Playground and start with just IO print line. When they move to the command line or an IDE, they only need the void main part without discussing the word class until they are ready to learn about classes and objects. "It makes their first impression of the language so much better, and it makes it so much faster and easier for them to get started," Jeanne says. She particularly appreciates the Java Playground because students do not need anything installed on their computers to start. They can write print lines, loops, and control structures, and by the time teachers ask them to install something, they are already invested in programming. "It's fun." Jeanne calls the Java Playground "awesome" and says it's a "really nice utility" even for experienced developers. She uses it herself for quick tests when she does not want to open an IDE. JavaOne on Oracle's Campus When asked about JavaOne, Jeanne describes the conference as moving to California last year, just outside San Francisco on Oracle's campus. "The weather was great, which is awesome because I live in New York City. There's snow outside right now," she laughs. The venue particularly impressed her. "It was nice because it was on Oracle's campus. You got a feel for it. It was pretty. There was a lake. There was a lot of areas to connect with people inside and outside." The conference was held largely in one building, with lunch in another building nearby, which made it easy to engage people repeatedly. "Even if you don't know people, the fact that they're at JavaOne means they're interested in Java. So, you can go over to anyone and introduce yourself." One of Jeanne's favorite memories from a previous ...
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    16 mins
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