Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Mattias Karlsson, Java Champion and prominent developer in the Java community who was also honored with the Java Community Lifetime Achievement recognition at Jfokus in February 2024.

“I was shocked and honored — very humbled!” Mattias said about being recognized for his lifetime of achievements in the Java community by Sharat Chander of Oracle’s Java Developer Relations Team.

Mattias, a Stockholm-based engineer and long-time leader of the Stockholm Java User Group, shares his journey with Java, from its early days to its current role in modern tech ecosystems. He also talks about the evolution of Jfokus, a leading annual Java conference he organizes, which has grown from a small Java user group into a major gathering of over 2,000 developers from diverse backgrounds around the world.

Mattias highlights Java’s enduring appeal, driven by its robust JVM, backward compatibility, and vibrant community. He also reflects on the six-month release cycle, calling it “brilliant” for its balance of stability and innovation, and shares insights on mentoring young developers and using AI to stay updated.

When talking about how students learning programming will inevitably encounter Java due to its widespread use in the industry, Mattias said, “Sooner or later they will end up with Java anyway.”

Finally, the episode underscores the unique culture of the Java community and Jfokus as a conference for its blending of culture, professionalism, and a welcoming atmosphere.

Mattias Karlsson https://x.com/matkar

Jim Grisanzio https://x.com/jimgris

Duke’s Corner https://dukescorner.libsyn.com/site

Podcast Archives, Transcripts, Quotes https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com/duke

Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Venkat Subramaniam who was recognized with the Java Community Lifetime Achievement honors by Oracle’s Sharat Chander at Devoxx UK in May 2024. Venkat is a Java Champion, author, speaker, founder of Agile Developer, co-founder of the dev2next conference, and teacher at the University of Houston.

In this conversation, which is part of an ongoing series honoring Java pioneers, Venkat expresses profound humility about his accomplishments and credits industry giants and his passion for learning and sharing technical knowledge. He reflects on leaving his own company years ago to focus on teaching and technology, writing books like Cruising Along with Java, and speaking at over 45 conferences and 30 Java User Groups — every single year! Venkat has one of the most impressive global speaking schedules of anyone in the Java community.

Venkat praises Java User Group leaders as “unsung heroes” for their organizational efforts and highlights Java 25’s evolving features like structured concurrency, scoped values, pattern matching, and the instance main method, which helps simplify the learning process for new developers. Venkat also cites Java’s agile six-month release cycle, which helps improve the smooth evolution of Java, increases developer engagement, and makes Java more suitable for today’s rapidly expanding technology markets.

Emphasizing teaching as reciprocal learning, Venkat advises students to engage mentors and senior developers to collaborate with juniors to help welcome into the community. He stresses that knowledge grows when shared. His mantra? Teaching fuels learning and he lives that ethic every day as he interacts with thousands of developers around the world.

Venkat Subramaniam https://x.com/venkat_s

Duke's Corner Java Podcast https://dukescorner.libsyn.com/site/

Jim Grisanzio https://x.com/jimgris

Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Bruno Souza, who is a Java Champion, leader of the Soujava User Group in Brazil, and a member of the JCP Executive Committee. Bruno received the first Java Community Lifetime Achievement recognition in October 2022 at JavaOne in Las Vegas. “I was totally surprised! I was jumping up and down! I was so honored! It’s an honor to be a member of that group.” he said.

Bruno Souza is known as the “Java Man” from Brazil and that nickname started way back at Sun right when Java was announced and Bruno started evangelizing the technology. Bruno’s biggest early contribution was related to his involvement with the team that worked to open-source Java as well. This fit Bruno’s career well because at that time Brazil had a big government program to embrace free software. Bruno’s main message to the community was “Open Standards and Open Source” as he began his community building efforts around Java. He continually brought top FOSS and Open Standards experts to Brazil to talk about open, standards-based software development. Bruno worked hard to engage the community to get a standards-based Open Source implementation of Java that would pass the TCK.

Bruno left Sun and then returned, and he also joined the JCP (Java Community Process) around 2000 while he was outside Sun because at that point individuals could join. The user group that Bruno helped found, Soujava, also joined the JCP and that helped the JCP grow and be more inclusive. Now all these years later we have an OpenJDK, and open JCP, and hundreds of independent JUGs that can participate in community building and also Java development.

“Maybe my greatest pride, I think, is the idea of the Java User Groups community, “ Bruno says. “We have OpenJDK for development and the JCP for standards, but for me the real Java community is the Java User Groups! These are all volunteers who meet and help others participate and learn.”

Bruno in recent years has been talking a lot about building reputation and career by embracing the open-source lifestyle — writing code in Java or other FOSS technologies, contributing to open-source communities, and helping build the community itself. Since all of your work lives in public mailing lists and open-source repositories, you earn credibility by being visible, contributing, engaging the community, and helping others get involve as well.

Bruno advises that career is a long-term project: “The more you work on it, the more you grow, the more results you have. So, the sooner you start the better. This is not a sprint! This takes time.”

Getting back to Java itself, Bruno, like most Java developers, really prefers the 6-month release cadence over the older system of multi-year development and release cycles. There is a constant flow of technology now which allows for more iteration and interactions between the Oracle engineers and engineers in the community. “Everything you see today in Java, it’s possible because of the 6-month release process. I just loved it when the guys did that! I think it’s amazing! The fact that we now have two releases per year changed Java. I think we’re positioning Java to be even stronger in the years to come. I’m very excited about the whole thing,” Bruno says.

Throughout this conversation Bruno provides a wonderful history of Java since he’s been involved from the very beginning! “People don’t remember that Java was a community from the very beginning!” Bruno says. “We were able to look at the source code from the very beginning and that allowed us to build the community from the very beginning with lots of other companies joining.” And then the JCP was created to allow Sun and the community to discuss the standardization of Java. And then OpenJDK was a huge step because now Java would be everywhere with Oracle leading and building the community. “Java is more participative today under Oracle than during the Sun times.”

“Java + Open Source + Community: That’s what grows our career. That’s what grows Java too!" — Bruno Souza

Bruno Souza

https://x.com/brjavaman
https://x.com/SouJava

Duke's Corner Java Podcast

https://dukescorner.libsyn.com

Jim Grisanzio

https://x.com/jimgris
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimgris/

Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Trisha Gee, an author, a Java Champion, and a Developer Advocate at Gradle. In February 2025 at Jfokus in Stockholm Trisha received the Java Community Lifetime Achievement honor from Sharat Chander from Oracle Java Developer Relations. Trisha has been a Java developer for 25 years, and since 2011 she’s been actively blogging, presenting technical sessions at conferences, and evangelizing Java globally. Recently, Trisha has moved from a traditional developer advocate role to more of a facilitator of developer advocacy internally at her company as well as externally. She works with engineering teams, marketing, teams, and sales teams to ensure the voice of the developer resonates throughout the organization and the community. Trisha is always evolving, she’s constantly growing.

In this conversation we talk about the JVM, the six month Java release cycle, writing code, the unique features that make Java special as a technology and as a community, Generative AI, design patterns, understanding requirements, asking questions, problem solving, edge cases, documentation, testing, open source, standards, advice for students, and teaching her 9-year old how to code in Java. Trisha is fascinated with the entire development life cycle of software projects and especially the skills developers need now for working with AI.

“It feels like a very personal thing from him … he’s such a huge powerhouse in the community. Obviously, he cares about the technology, but he understands that the technology isn’t enough. It is about individuals stepping up but not just doing stuff for themselves but doing stuff to enable other people, to empower other people. It’s the community that makes it a great place to be, and Shar is such a huge champion of that. He makes you feel really appreciated for making the effort to help others and to be involved in the community.”

— Trisha Gee commenting about receiving the Java Community Lifetime Achievement recognition from Sharat Chander at Oracle.

Trisha Gee
https://x.com/trisha_gee
https://linktr.ee/trisha_gee

Duke's Corner Java Podcast
https://dukescorner.libsyn.com
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com/podcasts/
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com/73-trisha-gee-txt/

Jim Grisanzio
https://x.com/jimgris
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimgris/

Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Cay Horstmann, a professor, author, and Java Champion. In April in Cologne, Germany at JCON Cay received the Java Community Lifetime Achievement recognition from Sharat Chander on the Oracle Java Developer Relations Team.

This conversation covers the evolution of Java, the constant polishing of the library, the upcoming Java 25 release, the six-month release cycle, improvements in the Java language to make the technology more beginner friendly, teaching methodologies, conferences vs unconferences, and also timeless task-driven learning methods for students and developers to keep their skills sharp. Also, Cay has been writing books about Java for decades and years ago he was instrumental in initially getting Java integrated into the curriculum for the computer science AP exam in the United States.

“One of the reasons why Java is still so vibrant 30 years in is that there is a constant stream of low-level innovation going on. It’s pretty amazing.”

Cay Horstmann
https://horstmann.com/

Duke's Corner Java Podcast
https://dukescorner.libsyn.com
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com/podcasts/
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com/72-cay-horstmann-txt/

Jim Grisanzio
https://x.com/jimgris
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimgris/

Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Heinz Kabutz from the Island of Crete in Greece. Heinz has a PhD in Computer Science, publishes the The JavaSpecialists' Newsletter, and runs the JCrete Unconference. Heinz is also a Java Champion and a teacher, and he cares deeply about the technology and the community. Recently, Heinz was recognized for his Lifetime Achievement by Sharat Chander from Oracle Java Developer Relations. “I was on cloud nine! I was so honored,” Heinz said.

In this conversation Heinz previews some JEPs in the upcoming Java 25 release, he comments on the value of the 6-month Java release cycle, he outlines how he’s contributed code to OpenJDK (and how others can too!), he offers some detailed advice to students getting involved in software development for the first time, and he talks at length about the opportunities for developers who participate at the JCrete Unconference. “I have seen people whose entire careers got revolutionized just by coming to JCrete once. It’s really life changing!”

Heinz Kabutz
https://x.com/heinzkabutz
https://www.javaspecialists.eu/
https://www.jcrete.org/
https://x.com/heinzkabutz/status/1920855230910005540

OpenJDK
https://openjdk.org/

Duke's Corner Java Podcast
https://dukescorner.libsyn.com

Jim Grisanzio
https://x.com/jimgris
https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimgris/

Jim Grisanzio from Java Developer Relations talks with Nate Schutta, an author, a teacher, a software architect, and Java Champion. Nate lives in the United States and teaches computer science to university students. He loves teaching and he loves learning, and he specializes in exploring the big picture of complicated systems in his career as a software architect. The conversation covers the Java community, the value for developers if they contribute to Java User Groups (JUGs), the benefits and some possible drawbacks of AI, and the engineering feat that is the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Nate has a passion for learning and here’s his advice for young developers and engineering students. “The fundamentals can’t be skipped! And they take time to learn! You just have to put in those hours to understand the basics, and then you can graduate to the more complicated stuff.”

Nate tripped over Java a bit in school and joined his first Java project right in his first job. Once he heard about this new Java project, he said: “Heck, yeah! I want in on that!”

Nate Schutta

https://x.com/ntschutta

https://bsky.app/profile/nts.bsky.social

Duke's Corner Java Podcast

https://dukescorner.libsyn.com

Jim Grisanzio

https://x.com/jimgris

https://jimgrisanzio.wordpress.com