Foojay Podcast #93: Update Your JDK, Read More Code, and Talk to Your Users: Interviews From VoxxedDays Amsterdam

In this episode of the Foojay Podcast, we’re bringing you something special: a full batch of hallway-track conversations recorded live at VoxxedDays Amsterdam.

Fifteen guests, one conference, and one theme that kept coming back, whether we planned it or not: Java has grown up quietly, steadily, and in ways that still surprise people who haven’t looked lately. We talked about migrating between versions, new features in the latest Java releases, authorization done right, AI-assisted coding, cryptography, containers, open-source contributions, GDPR data experiments, and, yes, the things people hate about Java but secretly love.

I spoke with Ko Turk, who organized this very conference, Johannes Bechberger, Lutske de Leeuw, Aicha Laafia, Marit van Dijk, Adele Carpenter, Patrick Baumgartner, Sohan Maheshwar, Jeroen Egelmeers, Erwin Manders, Alexander Shopov, Maarten Verburg, Arjan Tijms, Joost Kaan, and Stephan Janssen.

That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of opinions. And somehow, they mostly agree: update your JDK, read your code, and please talk to your actual users.

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Content

00:00 Introduction

00:30 Ko Turk

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ko-turk-b271b929/
• Organizer of VoxxedDays Amsterdam
• Migrating between Java versions

02:25 Johannes Bechberger

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannes-bechberger/
• Java is boring, and that’s why it’s brilliant
• Java 26 test it, but not in production
• JFR improvements in the latest versions

06:28 Lutske de Leeuw

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/lutske/
• Volunteer at the conference
• Java is boring, and that’s why it’s brilliant
• Java 5 till 26 evolutions

10:35 Aicha Laafia

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/aicha-laafia-0266a6126/
• Lambda stream gatherers in Java 25
• Simpler and more fun code
• Update your JDK!

16:16 Marit van Dijk

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/maritvandijk/
• Fun in coding, write Java the playful way
• Java evolutions and how writing code has evolved
• Importance of code reading with AI-assisted coding

22:04 Adele Carpenter

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/adele-carpenter-a988623a/
• The things I hate about Java, but actually love it

27:37 Patrick Baumgartner

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/patbaumgartner/
• Organizing VoxxedDays Zurich
• Spring Boot optimization
• Using Buildpacks to create better containers

35:02 Sohan Maheshwar

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sohanmaheshwar/
• Authorization, the good way
• JWT is a bad idea

38:34 Jeroen Egelmeers

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jegelmeers/
• https://craftingaiprompts.org/documentation/se-framework/craft-framework
• AI, prompt engineering, agentic programming
• The CRAFT Framework: Orchestrating Agentic Flow
• The importance of interacting with your end-users

43:32 Erwin Manders

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/erwinman/
• Cryptography, digital signatures, and securing data and messages
• Comparing Kotlin and Java

45:12 Alexander Shopov

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/alshopov/
• Developer at Uber
• Comparing different languages: Java, Python, Go
• How Java is modernizing by learning from other languages

49:18 Maarten Verburg

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartenverburg/
• Using your own GDPR data for fun experiments
• Comparing early Java with the current status
• Java Streams the most important change

52:35 Arjan Tijms

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjantijms/
• https://omnifish.ee/
• Jakarta Faces, Security, Authentication and Authorization, EE,…
• Jakarta specs are used in Spring
• How Java evolved and is still evolving
• How can you contribute to opensource

59:55 Joost Kaan

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/joost-kaan/
• What you can learn at a conference, besides the expected language-related talks
• AI influences on the developer work
• Contributing to the Java community, AI user group

01:03:52 Stephan Janssen

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanjanssen/
• https://geniebuilder.ai/
• The importance of the “Hallway Track” where you can chat with like-minded people
• Using AI-assisted spec-driven coding
• Talking to your end-user becomes more important than ever

01:09:00 Conclusion