Foojay Podcast #32: Philippines JUG

Transcript

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[0:00] Hello and welcome to this new edition of the Foojay podcast our next stop of the virtual world tour visiting Java user groups is in the Philippines welcome to the Foojay podcast all your news about OpenJDK once a month we talk about the history of a jug and the people behind it today we travel to the Philippines a new generation of developers has taken over the organization of The Jug and in addition they are also involved in the organization of the softcon conference let’s talk about the history and future of the Java community in the Philippines I’m Tristan Mah I’m one of The Jug leaders in the Java User Group Philippines and besides from the community effort I’m also a consultant for IBM and then I’m doing also some open source project like contributing to quarcus aside from the Java User Group I’m also like to get to gymm to be to have a Fit Body I’m k legaspi i was part of the co-founders of Pinoy jug which is bit older than chug pH it was started in 2001 it grew to about 2,000 members but most of the members got old so they busy so Tristan and his team with jug BH are

[1:35] Much more active now I’m also I also on in 2005 I started my old consulting firm orange and Broad software Labs we specialized very early on in Spring as well as AEL transformation I’m also on the board of the Philippine software industry Association which organizes the annual softcon conference among its other activities hi I’m Jen I’ve been a Java developer for more than five years and as one of the leaders of the Java User Group Philippines I help in organizing meetups secur securing Partnerships with other communities and building the group’s initial website and also managing the social media channels and sourcing merchandise so I’m not officially a contributor yet but I’ve recently been working to add improvements in longchain for J Library which is the Java version of the popular Library L chain I’m Kirby Kirby Martino currently I’m running a company that’s not in it right now but it’s a workspace like Ras and we were lexical workspace but prior to that I had a company which is a software development company and then from there I had this idea of

[3:04] Creating J pH and then after that years after I met with Tristan and from there he managed to push forward the initiatives of jug V I am a Java programmer as well been doing software development for many years before I transition to running businesses thanks a lot and I’m Frank dor technical writer at aul and making the Foojay podcast just because I want to learn more about Java and the whole Community around it let’s look first at the Java community in the Philippines how big is it an active Community also for the Java User Group community in the Philippines I think the one that is still active is the yeah the one we created with Kirby the Java User Group Philippines and the one that College said Pino jug I think it’s still yeah I think it’s still active right Ken as it could be better yeah yeah I think we are the one being the one being active and we already got confirmation from Oracle itself I think we are in dev. Java website that we are listed as the active one and we have this active partnership this October 28th with Samsung open conference which will be held at

[4:31] University of the Philippines we will be there with Kirby and Johnson and I think we will talk about there about data intelligence or AI so yeah we are active very active right now and yeah my vision is to be consistent with it and learn more with other Java developers here in the Philippines and since Java the Java here in the Philippines is very broad yeah most of the companies here and Enterprises here uses Java as their primary backend frame backend language you said you can share a bit about the history of java community in the Philippines Java in the Philippines has has been around quite a while like I said we started in 2001 and then we were really we were quite active we were we got to a point we were meeting more than once a week even there was the main meeting and there was the there was certain special interest groups like those studying for certification and I guess we were eager to discuss things because we didn’t have stack Overflow and all these other things that and there weren’t as many YouTube videos available as there are today so we eager to meet

[5:54] There were a lot of new things especially this new movement called agile we’re talking about things like test driven development and design patterns and continuous integration yeah so there it was an exciting the early 2000s that was an exciting time to be a Java developer but I guess now we have come to a new area of being exciting times with the big Evolutions in Java how do you integrate this in the ju do you special I on Evolutions in Java or you still also looking into development practices like agile so yeah I think it should be both the Java itself and then some best practices and software coding approaches yeah so I think it will be the good one since we have younger population here in the Philippines so maybe we can start with that with the best practices and then yeah just integrate the Java features that is included now in the Java versions mhm I guess you also had some impact of coid and not being able anymore to have physical events that you come together did that also have a big impact on your site this year is the first time that we

[7:19] Had a Meetup for The Jug pH this the 2023 we decided to have when I talked to Kirby last time we decided to be to start this initiative to have a Meetup by I think by monthly yeah that’s that was my plan to have a b monthly Meetup mostly in the office of o andb yeah so thanks to colen for that you mentioned before so you have the J but you also have the softcon conference that’s coming up so we are recording this podcast on the 16th of October we will broadcast it later after the conference how are these related the ju and the conference well the conference has been going on I can’t even remember when’s the first time maybe 2011 or something like that so it’s been it evolved quite a bit for the Java speakers I turned to the Java user groups for speakers in Java as well as my own personal Network and but of course it’s not just it’s not a just a Java conference we have people from who specialize in sayet or JavaScript Frameworks we have speakers that specialize in testing there’s discussions on architecture there’s been quite a few

[8:51] Talks on machine learning there’s people who talk about coding practices that not necessarily are limiting to a particular language but talking about clean code and test driven development Without Really limiting themselves to a particular language so yeah it’s a pretty broad conference right of course we need sponsors but we try to be impartial to any specific vendor right it’s also a conference a lot of the tech conferences here tend to cater to students right so this one we’re trying to cater to professionals the breakouts they’re they’re volunteers from the community very Community Driven right we don’t pay any speakers to you know if they’re if they come over we’ll we’ll give them a free dinner and buy them some beers but other than that it’s it’s Community Driven it’s also online so am I correct two days online one day in the University no not not University it’s it’s in one of the hotels for the main conference and then the breakouts will be online what is the experience of this mixed environment of people joining

[10:25] Online and at the venue obviously interaction is different when we did face Toof face conferences as a speaker it was more intimidating I personally don’t like crowds and I don’t like eye contact but I have to do it there are certainly more there were more active questions there was discussions after after the breakout sessions here it’s it’s a little challenging the organizing group that we hired does a good job they have this they have these online discussion rooms after like you know say so a speaker would say hey if you guys want to continue this discussion just log into this particular room just find me in this room so those have been so it’s good softon at least the online experience the group we hired are using some technologies to try to at least facilitate more interaction but of course it’s not it’s not the same we are recording this before the conference so we cannot share yet about how the experience was is everything prepared because yeah it’s in one week I’m I’m just in charge of finding the speakers so for the logistics and everything so far

[11:51] We’ve pulled it we’ve all pulled we pulled it off every year so I’m sure everybody else is already set on their parts M from the past events you had with the ju are there some events that really pop out because they were really remarkable or something went completely wrong that’s also a possibility for the best session I think it will be it will be really the kickoff so the one with Simon rer so it ignites the Java developers to have a Meetup again and then for the worse I think there I think for me there is no worse but maybe a session that can be improved on so I think if I’m planning to have more of a the younger ones to get involved to Javas Meetup sessions so I think there is a notion for Java that it will be just for older people and young people cannot really indulge with this language but I’m planning and had have a vision to have a more conversation with the younger people based on Java sessions do you try to involve younger people and new speakers so that they become a speaker themselves right now we are still on we are still ongoing on that but I

[13:19] Know some people that can help us and some volunteers that I have I think I have one already one volunteer his name was Eric and he was also my coworker and I’m I’m planning to have a sync with him on how we will in indulge our younger or University students to the Java Meetup sessions MH is Java one of the languages that is teached at universities in the Philippines less and less I’m I’m on the technical committee for computer science I’m part of I’m one of three people that oversee the conduct of computer science in you know recommending curricula and the other aspects of the conduct of computer science a lot of the better schools are teaching python so it used to be when I conduct training for fresh grads because my company does a lot called Java training I could assume that they’d already have a good level a good foundation in Java but some some schools often have little to no Java training so what’s happened is there was a time almost every school would teach well the better schools the schools that aren’t so good they’re stuck in I don’t know whatever

[14:46] Language I think they’re still using C for which is not a bad language to learn from but most Brads now they’re they’re most most of from the better schools the they’re strongest with python not so much with Java maybe second JavaScript actually and is python does it get pushed because of machine learning artificial intelligence do you think that has some kind of an influence I think it’s because it’s an easy it’s the easiest language to introduce programming so it’s it’s accessible as an inro language yeah so maybe we as a Java Community have some some more things to do there and promote Java even more also for education and young students I we as a trainer and educator myself because I also teach at one of the universities I think it’s good that the inro language is something that doesn’t have so many things so many you know you have to create a class in a main method just to produce output right of course for their professional to for to give the grads and Advantage professionally I think the schools that still include Java in their curriculum to provide

[16:16] An advantage for their graduates okay back to the J what are the plans for the next sessions and the next year the next one will be on November I think on at o again and then I think Ken will have some speakers that he knows and I’m also like invite Janssen I think Jansen will have a we’ll talk about some Java Plus AI on November MH yeah and then for the next year yeah just continuing searching for partners and then to be consistent with the B monthly me up Johnson can you share a bit about the topic that you will talk about yeah I’ll talk about L chain 4 J which was currently I’m contributing to but I’m not officially yet a contributor but I’ve been working to add some improvements and basically it’s a Java version of BL chain it’s an llm orchestration framework where you can utilize chat GPT to work with your Java applications so yeah I’ll share it in our next meet up you’re talking about Lang chain I was at devox this month in anwp and I saw a presentation by Lisa Ras that was really an amazing presentation this really looks like machine learning and chat GPT

[17:49] Like fun functions coming to Java correct yep I think lar did a great job and presenting langing for J at devox recently so I’m aiming to add more details aside from what was discussed before I will add a link to her presentation too to this show notes of this podcast because it’s it’s really a very nice library and I think there are a lot of great examples there which are available for any Java programmer who wants to do the stuff that many people do now with python it that a bit the goal to be able to do the exact same things very easy in Java yep we felt that you know all these other language communities like python are driving right now because you know python is really related to machine learning or AI so we see really a boost in Python with machine learning so I think it’s for Java developers we also need to use Java to you know to promote Java in using it for machine learning and AI as well and Dev there were a lot of talks about machine learning artificial intelligence is that a bit bit the same thing for softcon will there also be a lot of AI inspired

[19:09] Talks yeah there should be a good number I saw that I did approve a good number that was we well we’ve always had talks related to that topic I just imagine this year there’d be quite a number related to large language models specifically using those we are all doing Java development here are you afraid of your job which CH GPT around the corner no no it’s actually something I encourage we’re currently in the process of evaluating the right plug-in for our idees because but first we need to make sure that we don’t introduce maybe like our the code generated doesn’t introduce GPL code into our client or it doesn’t link our client code into the wild right or but so we’re evaluating but it’s something it’s not going to it’s obviously not going to get rid of a good Java developers job it’s going to get rid of the Java developers that just generate Getters and Setters and you know they do things without really thinking much about their work but it will free devs from the little things and it will allow them to be more strategic in their thinking so yeah I’m looking forward

[20:43] To this new age of just conversing with your IDE so just a while ago I was already telling for writing test cases I don’t even have to a lot of times even the scenarios I don’t even have to type out the scenarios I just type out the method name and it suggests and it starts suggesting all the scenarios I should have for my test method I also saw some demos at devox that they are using chat GPT live conversation with the codes in intelly I think it was to explain existing codes so if you’re a developer joining a team and you find a method which is not really explained or documented that it can help you to understand existing codes J jet brains had already a tool for that they have the built-in AI assistant tool to have an in built in explanation on the code yeah so I think it is in Pilot stage yeah I think that was the one that they was showing yes yeah I think GitHub also has one they’re I think they’re launching a way for your code base to be analyzed by AI actually I was I’m in the weight list already really interesting how AI is going to change

[22:05] Yeah it’s going to change how we quote and it also change a bit of the content of the J I think there will be a lot of talks about this topic practically how the Philippines J so how can people subscribe to your event or can they follow you you’re on Meetup yeah that’s correct we are on Meetup our primary was the Facebook but now for our Meetup sessions we publish it to the Meetup website and then I think we are already on 270 members since April 2023 so yeah I think it will be it will be increased on 2024 and targeting the Facebook membership from I think we are now on 80042 and targeting it to a th000 at the end of this year mhm and how many people join your events in average so we plan it for 30 people but the average is from 20 to 25 that’s a bit the numbers I hear from a lot of JS and definitely after coid when people work from home a lot and it’s more difficult to get people to get them out of their house and come to The Jug you think that will be a problem for you too that people work from home and are not so interested anymore to join a physical event so

[23:28] The solution that we had is to have a hybrid setup so we had a zoom zoom call meeting together with the on-site participants during the Java session but I think you agree that the activity around the talk is much more important sometimes than the Talk itself meeting other people and talking about problems you have at work problems you have with Java or just IDs you have to experiment with having the social events after the talk is that also important on your side quite a bit it’s important but we have we need to consider also the logistics part and the environment that we had here also in our country in the Philippines since the yeah we need to consider the traffic also here so that’s why most of the participants are online but yeah they’re still very active and chatting us through the zoom chat and very interested to the topic that we presented okay great organizing a ju can be quite challenging it takes some time takes some time from your work or private time why are you actually involved in the organization what is your goal of organizing the J in my

[24:41] Personal opinion maybe Kirby and johnsen will have later but for me I think I have an initiative to let the people know how to be involved in Tech and my solution for that since I’m already involved using Java is to use the Java sessions so that people can have this initial goal or initial like a startup to be involved in the job in the Tech Community yeah it’s more about how will they be involved and how they will contribute and also it will be an opportunity to them since the job opportunities for Tech is big and promising and yeah looking forward for them to be involved in the tech the it or tech industry Johnson for you what is your engagement in the J and reason well I yeah I aim to unite Filipino Java developers be they students professionals or aspiring coders into a like a cohesive Community focused on knowledge sharing and networking because we’ve observed a decline in the Java meetups in the Philippines and suggesting that our language community is falling behind compared to others where meetups are driving okay and Kirby yeah so my motivation for J is at first

[26:08] Is my goal is to hopefully help Java programmers find each other like have a community where we can find other programmers because as as we know like Java’s been like thought us or a thought of like programming language for the old one so I was thinking like if it could you could build a community that could showcase like people like any kind of generation any generation can collaborate even even companies like looking for programmers Java programmers they can also use our community for their hiring for their people look so it’s like a place where we really want people not just to collaborate with other programmers but also have this kind of opportunity for them to be engaged in actual companies that are in need of programmers Java programers specifically so that’s basic my initial motivation for that and then after that discussing with other leaders of John yeah we are also motivated to push forward the drug to more for ex Up For Students and hopefully make the community more more engaged Ken I hear here that

[27:40] Java is old but actually it’s it’s about the same age as python as JavaScript they all Python’s older isn’t it it’s even older yeah they were all born around the same same time how do you feel about the evolution of java versus other languages Java has its place definitely they you I I’ve heard Java is the new cobal right but and but the thing is nobody’s up to now nobody’s been able to replace so much of the Cobalt code of course cobal it’s hard to compare Java to Cobalt because Java especially in the last decade has been rapidly evolving while cball hasn’t so we’ve got the advantages of so much installed base right all the big companies all the banks the government the insurance companies they they’ve all got so much Java installed and then the Technologies getting better I had some I was training for one of the digital Banks I was conducting training for some grads of the University of the Philippines which is one of the top schools well most of them were from the University of Philippines and they were they didn’t they don’t have any Java anymore in the University of

[29:06] Philippines curriculum so when they started working with Java the tools they were so impressed at the level of tooling that we had it was an eyeopener the power for lack of a better word the power that’s available to us toly the performance the features of the language and the platform it was a huge eye opener for these grads they came into the training thinking Java was this language that they wouldn’t enjoy but I think they were quickly very very impressed with what was available to them I think it yeah it’s not only the tooling it’s all the Evol utions which are going on right now the six month release cycle the security updates four times a year and I think the one of the main reason of being Java so great is the community and that you’re able to reach out to people like I’m doing now and talking to you and that you are organizing these these events and get people interested in Java together and share their knowledge okay considering Java is dead it’s not so it’s definitely not it’s not soad considering it’s dead so but it has

[30:30] Been declared de a few times in many years so we just don’t listen anymore okay is there something I didn’t ask and you want to mention to the global Community the Philippine Java Community it’s a pretty big Community maybe we’re just now thanks to the efforts of Tristan Kirby and johnon it’s being woken up again because a lot of the early Java Community I think we’ve had we now have our families and kids or businesses so we’re not as active in organizing jug events but it’s a very strong Community with a very strong senior leadership a lot of the most critical software that’s running the world is actually written in the Philippines and in general the Philippine software Community is a very old and mature software industry we were doing software Outsourcing back when we had to ship rolls of tape on airplanes to get them abroad so it’s been around for it’s a very very old industry so we have strong leadership here we have a strong community so look I you know I’d like invite the rest of the world to get to know the Philippine software community and invite them maybe as a speaker at

[32:03] Your jug The Jug and in soft Pon not of course soft Pon is not limited to Java but speakers definitely welcome we’d love to interact with the global Community anything else you want to add right now we are migrating our website so it’s it’s kind of down we decided to move forward with a pure Java solution since we’re J after us so we’re going to re rebuild our website in a way that’s because right now the original website was designed in like more of events so what we’re planning is to make the website focus with community and also online community we’re we’re trying we’re going to build some kind of forum inside so people that are not able to chat with each other on this world so they could help help each other cuz what I see is in order for us to push forward with the community is that it’s not just about meetups but also help us on our day-to-day work with Java also with our projects so that’s our goal for the website and our online presets and as part of that I had this project that when we had this I mentioned that I had this

[33:26] Software company we actually built our own hosting platform it’s like similar to net Lei it’s like just a core version of that so it’s purely written in Java it’s a hosting platform platform it generates ssls it can host things so I was in when we tried to migrate our website from WordPress we I was kind of engaged to see if we could have a pure Java platform for we’re running our J operations like websites email and everything so can kind of just a way for us to live up with our name as jug so basically that’s what we’re planning to do also we’re we’re planning to because our leadership right now is kind of focused with a technical like technical activities so I was thinking like maybe we could diversify like maybe mainly focusing on the other aspects like I was thinking of doing to engage more more the younger generation which is we’re planning to do some kind of giving doing some merch for them like design something that they could take during our events at the same time give

[34:54] Our Dr a brand where people can remember more and be more engaged on our initiatives so basically those are the things to Target the younger Generations as after all the older communities of java is kind of like like me it’s kind of old and have families already so maybe people are not really engaged to this kinds of event so we try in order for us to move forward with our plans so we are going to do some things like that so that the ju becomes a bit of a mentor for everyone who’s interested in programming and want to learn more yeah yeah so we want to have that online Press thank you first of all guests of this episode and you for listening to this podcast keep an eye on Foojay for future articles about development and everything related to the Java World thanks a lot give me a give me J give me the friends of OpenJDK