airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien

An airhacks.fm conversation with Francesco Nigro (@forked_franz) about:
break dancing and basketball including meeting Kobe Bryant in Italy during a dunk competition,
using AI coding assistants like Claude Opus 4.5 and GitHub bots for infrastructure setup and CI/CD pipeline configuration,
limitations of LLMs for novel performance-sensitive algorithmic work where training data is scarce,
branchless IPv4 parsing optimization as a Christmas coding challenge,
CPU branch misprediction costs when parsing variable-length IP address octets,
converting branching logic into mathematical operations using bit tricks for better CPU pipeline utilization,
LLMs excelling at generating enterprise code based on well-documented standards and conventions,
providing minimal but precise documentation and annotations to improve LLM code generation quality,
the Boundary Control Entity BCE architecture pattern and standards-based development,
the core problem of thread handoff between event loops and ForkJoinPool worker threads in frameworks like quarkus Vert.x and Micronaut,
mechanical sympathy implications of cross-core memory access when serialized data is allocated on one core and read by another,
CPU cache coherency costs and last-level cache penalties when event loop and worker pool run on different cores,
the custom virtual thread scheduler project (netty-virtual-thread-scheduler) enabling a single platform thread to handle both networking I/O and virtual thread execution,
approximately 50% CPU savings demonstrated by Micronaut when using unified Netty-based scheduling,
collaboration with Oracle Loom team including Victor Klang and Alan Bateman on minimal scheduler API design,
the scheduler API consisting of just two methods onStart and onContinue plus virtual thread task attachments,
work stealing algorithms and their complexity including heuristics similar to Linux CFS scheduler,
the importance of being declarative about thread affinity rather than automatic magical binding to avoid issues with lazy class loading and background reaper threads,
thread factory based approach for creating virtual threads bound to specific platform threads,
stream-based run queues with graceful shutdown semantics that fall back to ForkJoinPool for progress guarantees,
thread-local Scoped Values as a hybrid between thread locals and scoped values for efficient context propagation,
performance problems with ThreadLocal including lazy ThreadLocalMap allocation overhead on virtual threads and scalability issues with ThreadLocal.remove() and soft reference queues,
the impact on reactive programming where back pressure and stream composition still require higher-level abstractions beyond Basic Java concurrency primitives,
structured concurrency limitations for back pressure scenarios compared to reactive libraries,
deterministic testing possibilities enabled by custom schedulers where execution order can be controlled,
the poller mechanism for handling blocking I/O in virtual threads in a non-blocking way,
observability improvements possible through virtual thread task attachments for monitoring state changes,
cloud cost implications of inefficient thread scheduling and unnecessary CPU wake-up cycles,
the distinction between framework developers and application developers as different user personas with different abstraction needs
Francesco Nigro on twitter: @forked_franz

An airhacks.fm conversation with Kabir Khan (@kabirkhan) about:
first computer was a ZX Spectrum 48K with rubber keys,
playing Bomb Jack as a memorable early game,
growing up in Norway near Oslo with lots of outdoor activities including skiing and swimming in warm fjords,
discovering multimedia kiosks at Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus as career inspiration,
writing a Java applet dissertation visualizing Motorola 68000 CPU instruction processing with animations,
early programming in Basic on the ZX spectrum including a hardcoded cookbook application,
learning Pascal and the revelation of understanding what files actually are,
first job writing an HTTP server in C++ on Windows NT using Winsock,
implementing Real-Time Protocol streaming for multimedia content,
working at a consultancy learning multiple programming languages including Active Server Pages ASP and Microsoft Transaction Server MTS,
going freelance and building a Java-based exhibition industry booking system,
using JBoss with EJB3 for the second version of the exhibition system,
getting JBoss support and being impressed by their expertise,
contributing to JBoss Mail and JBoss AOP as open source contributions,
meeting Sacha Labourey at a JBoss partner event in Norway who advised focusing on AOP,
joining JBoss in September 2004 when the company had only about 50 people,
meeting Marc Fleury and having pizza at his house in Atlanta,
the Red Hat acquisition of JBoss in 2006,
leading the JBoss AOP project and standardizing interceptor chains,
working on the JBoss microcontainer for JBoss 5 which was over-engineered and slow,
joining the team that rethought the server architecture leading to Wildfly,
working on WildFly core server management and domain management,
the recent move of the runtimes division from Red Hat to IBM,
current work on Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol,
quarkus being the Java reference implementation for the A2A specification published by Google,
Agent-to-Agent Protocol as a standardized protocol for agent-to-agent communication using JSON-RPC REST and grpc,
agent cards as capability advertisements similar to business cards,
benefits of smaller specialized agents over monolithic AI applications including better traceability smaller context windows and flexibility with different LLMs,
comparison of agent architecture to microservices where smaller agents are preferable unlike traditional services where monoliths can be better,
upcoming episode planned to deep-dive into A2A with Quarkus and opentelemetry for agent traceability
Kabir Khan on twitter: @kabirkhan

An airhacks.fm conversation with Simon Ritter (@speakjava) about:
first computer experiences with TRS-80 and mainframe ALGOL68 programming via punched cards in the 1970s UK,
one-week turnaround times for program execution,
writing battleship games on mainframes,
bbc micro with color graphics and dual floppy drives,
father's influence as a tech enthusiast with a PDP-8 in his chemistry lab,
early fascination with robotics and controlling machines through programming,
writing card games and Mandelbrot set fractal generators in Basic,
transition from BASIC to C programming through sponsored university degree,
working at Rocc Computers on Unix device drivers and kernel debugging,
the teleputer,
memory leak debugging requiring half-inch mag tape transfers and two-week investigation periods,
AT&T Unix source code license access and kernel modifications,
Unix System V Release 4 and Bell Labs heritage,
Motorola 68000 processor's flat memory model versus Intel's near/far pointers,
Novell acquisition of Unix from AT&T in 1993,
Unixware development and time spent in Utah,
SCO's acquisition of Unix IP and subsequent IP trolling,
joining Sun Microsystems in 1996 as Solaris sales engineer,
transition to Java evangelism in 1997,
working under Reggie Hutcherson and Matt Thompson for nearly 10 years,
building Lego Mindstorms blackjack-dealing robot with Java speech recognition and computer vision,
using Sphinx for voice recognition and FreeTTS for speech synthesis,
JMF webcam integration for card recognition,
JavaOne 2004 robot demonstration,
Glassfish application server evangelism and reference implementation benefits,
Sun's technology focus versus business development challenges,
CDE desktop environment nostalgia,
Oracle acquisition of Sun in 2010,
Jonathan Schwartz's acquisition announcement email,
Oracle's successful stewardship of Java through openJDK,
praise for Brian Goetz Mark Reinhold John Rose and Stuart Marks,
six-month release cycle benefits,
Project Amber Loom Panama and Valhalla developments,
OpenSolaris discontinuation leading to docker adoption for server containerization,
Oracle's 2015 pivot to cloud focus,
career-defining conversation in Japan about cloud versus Java evangelism,
layoff during vacation in September 2015,
joining Azul Systems after three-and-a-half-hour interview with Gil Tene,
ten years at Azul working on high-performance JVM Platform Prime garbage collection and CRaC technology,
comparison of Azul culture to Sun Microsystems innovation environment,
commercial Java distribution value propositions and runtime inventory features
Simon Ritter on twitter: @speakjava

An airhacks.fm conversation with Holly Cummins (@holly_cummins) about:
first computer experience with her dad's Kaypro CPM machine and ASCII platform games,
learning Basic programming on an IBM PC clone to build a recipe management system,
studying physics at university with a doctorate in quantum computing,
self-teaching Java to create 3D visualizations of error correction on spheres during PhD research,
joining IBM as a self-taught programmer without formal computer science education,
working on Business Event Infrastructure (BDI) at IBM,
brief unhappy experience porting JMS to .net with Linux and VNC,
moving to IBM's JVM performance team working on garbage collection analysis,
creating Health Center visualization tooling for J9 as an alternative to JDK Mission Control,
innovative low-overhead always-on profiling by leveraging JIT compiler's existing method hotness data,
transitioning to WebSphere Liberty team during its early development,
Liberty's architectural advantage of OSGi-based modular core enabling small fast startup while maintaining application compatibility,
working on Apache Aries enterprise OSGi project and writing a book about it,
discussion of OSGi's strengths in protecting internal APIs versus complexity costs for application developers,
the famous OSGi saying about making the impossible possible and the possible hard,
microservices solving modularity problems through network barriers versus class loader barriers,
five years as IBM consultant helping customers adopt cloud-native technologies,
critique of cloud-native terminology becoming meaningless when everything required the native suffix,
detailed analysis of 12-factor app principles and how most were already standard Java practices,
stateless processes as the main paradigm shift from JavaServer Faces session-based applications,
joining Red Hat's quarkus team three and a half years ago through Erin Schnabel's recommendation,
working on Quarkiverse community aspects and ecosystem development,
leading energy efficiency measurements confirming Quarkus's sustainability advantages,
current role as cross-portfolio sustainability architect for Red Hat middleware,
writing Pact contract testing extension for Quarkiverse to understand extension author experience,
re-architecting Quarkus test framework class loading to enable deeper extension integration,
recent work on Dev Services lazy initialization to prevent eager startup of multiple database instances across test profiles,
fixing LGTM Dev Services port configuration bugs for multi-microservice observability setups,
upcoming JPMS integration work by colleague David Lloyd requiring class loader simplification,
the double win of saving money while also reducing environmental impact,
comparison of sustainability benefits to accessibility benefits for power users,
mystery solved about the blue-haired speaker at European Java User Groups years ago
Holly Cummins on twitter: @holly_cummins

An airhacks.fm conversation with Christofer Dutz (christofer-dutz) about:
first computer was a Commodore C64 from Hannover Messe,
early programming in Basic,
playing Wizards of War game on cassette tape,
growing up in Melbourne Australia until age ten,
visiting Ayers Rock and seeing prehistoric armored fish in puddles,
learning C and C++ at Volkshochschule around 1992,
memory management challenges with DOS gaming like X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Wing Commander,
starting Java at Technical University of Darmstadt in 1998 with version 1.0.7,
appreciating Java's simplicity compared to C++ and no system crashes from memory errors,
early involvement with Apache Cocoon for XML and XSL transformations,
contributing to eXist-db XML database as committer number two,
working with XML XSL and XSLT for data transformation,
frustrations with YAML compared to XML,
transition from Cocoon to Adobe Flex after Cocoon switched to Spring and Maven,
becoming co-maintainer of Flex Mojos Maven plugins,
Adobe donating Flex to Apache Software Foundation,
attending ApacheCon in Sinsheim and connecting with Apache committers,
committer and PMC member of 12 active Apache projects,
firefighting role fixing Maven builds for stuck projects,
retiring Apache Cocoon project,
strong focus on industrial IoT projects,
Apache IoTDB as best time series database,
Apache StreamPipes for cloud IoT orchestration,
Apache Camel and Apache NiFi involvement,
founding Apache PLC4X in 2017 at codecentric,
Apache PLC4X as JDBC-like interface for industrial equipment communication,
spending 80-90 hours per week on PLC4X for nine years,
challenges with industrial automation industry not understanding open source,
anecdote about steel melting plant operator expecting free enterprise support,
Germany being a difficult market for industrial automation consulting,
founding ToddySoft company end of last year,
building installable products and plugins for industrial solutions,
ethical approach to open source by only selling products from projects he contributes to,
real-time definitions varying from tens of milliseconds in cloud to nanoseconds in industrial systems,
ToddySoft named after PLC4X mascot Toddy the palm civet (toddy cat),
plans for future episode discussing IoTDB StreamPipes PLC4X and NiFi use cases
Christofer Dutz on LinkedIn: christofer-dutz