Hashtag Jakarta EE #216

Welcome to issue number two hundred and sixteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

I’m back from my vacation and I am ready to roll again. This week, I will cross the pond to speak at PhillyJUG on Tuesday before continuing to Montreal and ConFoo 2024 for the remainder of the week.

As I mentioned last week, the Jakarta EE Platform project plans to deliver four milestones of Jakarta EE before the final release. Milestone 2 planned for March 2024 is fast approaching and the individual component specifications that are expected to be a part of this milestone are scrambling together the final bits and pieces to be ready for their releases.

Since I have been more or less off the grid the last week, I don’t have much more this week. Take a look at the minutes from the weekly Jakarta EE Platform call to stay up-to-date on the discussions going on.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #215

Welcome to issue number two hundred and fifteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

This week I started with a trip to Jfokus 2024 in Stockholm. Directly after that, I began a week of vacation, meaning I am diving in the Red Sea while you are reading this.

The Jakarta EE Platform project will use milestones as a part of the release plan for Jakarta EE 11. The planned milestones for Jakarta EE 11 are:
– Milestone 1: December, 2023
– Milestone 2: March, 2024
– Milestone 3: April, 2024
– Milestone 4: May, 2024

The goal is that some of the component specifications will be ready for release review for each milestone. Which component specifications that are expected in each milestone are specified in the Jakarta EE 11 release plan. After the last milestone, there should only be the Jakarta EE Platform, Jakarta EE Web Profile, and Jakarta EE Core Profile specifications left.

It is the first time we are using Milestones for a Jakarta EE release. Hopefully, it will turn out to be a good idea that will help us complete the release as planned in June/July this year.

Jfokus 2024

Jfokus is an excellent conference, and the 2024 edition was no different from the previous ones. I have had the pleasure of being a fairly regular speaker there, and since they try to rotate the speakers a little I didn’t really expect to speak there this year. However, due to a last-minute opening, I got to present my Prepare for Jakarta EE – Performance and Developer Productivity talk.

I had almost a full room, and lots of great follow-up questions and comments after the talk. A note to myself is that beanies are more popular than socks in Stockholm when “bribing” the audience for questions. Even so, all the socks were gone in seconds when I left them up for grabs on the stage while packing my laptop and presentation clicker.

Due to the short heads-up for my acceptance and the fact that I already had made other plans for the remainder of the week, I had to leave the conference after the first day. One day at Jfokus is way better than none, so I am very satisfied with the trip.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #214

Welcome to issue number two hundred and fourteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

I arrived back home from my January JUG Tour with visits to the JCP 25-Year Anniversary Party, Nashville JUG, Seattle JUG, and Portland JUG yesterday. But no rest for the brave. Already tomorrow, I am traveling to Stockholm for Jfokus 2024.

My talk is scheduled for Tuesday at 16:00 and is titled Prepare for Jakarta EE 11 with the subtitle Performance and Developer Productivity. In this talk, I give an update on what to expect from Jakarta EE 11 with demos of some of the features that are ready, or near to ready.

Talking about Jakarta EE 11, the Jakarta EE Platform project has decided to support Java SE 17 in addition to Java SE 21. This will allow for more adoption, especially for the compatible implementations of the individual component specifications. At the same time, vendors that have started working on their implementation based on Java SE 21 will be able to continue that journey. There is no requirement that they must certify their products on Java SE 17 in addition to Java SE 21.

If you want to learn more about this, come to my talk at Jfokus on Tuesday!

Portland JUG 2024

I decided to take the train from Seattle to Portland as it is the most convenient way of going between those cities unless you have a car. I’ve been told that this train usually is very reliable and punctual. This time, however, there was a mechanical issue with the train so they had to switch train sets in Seattle. Which in turn resulted in a two-hour delay…

The Portland Java User Group event was scheduled to start at 5:30 pm and the train was originally scheduled to arrive in Portland at 3:35 pm. Long story short, I arrived at the venue at 6:00 pm to start my talk. The participants could enjoy 30 minutes of pizza and drinks while waiting, so I guess it all turned out great at the end.

I did the From Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with Java 21 and Jakarta EE presentation here as well. With great discussions during and following the presentation.

The Portland JUG had also ordered the JCP 25-Year Anniversary Swag Kit, so there were lots of goodies for the attendees. I recommend all Java User Groups do the same. Just follow the instructions on the JCP 25-year Anniversary page.

Seattle JUG 2024

The January JUG tour continues to the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday, I visited the Seattle JUG and presented From Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 with Java 21 and Jakarta EE for 30 attendees at the Microsoft Reactor in Redmond. It was a very engaging group with lots of questions and great discussions following the presentation.

Even with free pizza and drinks, getting 30 people to show up at a JUG event is very good for most JUGs. For Seattle JUG, this has only happened before with Venkat or Josh as speakers. After the event, a group of us went for burgers and fries at a local restaurant. All in all a very successful evening!

Nashville JUG 2024

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Nashville Java User Group. The JUG was rebooted last year and now features monthly meetups. So far, every speaker has been a Java Champion and there is pizza and drinks at every event.

My talk about migrating from Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 focuses on how to deal with the namespace change from javax.* to jakarta.* is still popular. More and more attendees have migrated, but still appreciate the tips and tricks provided.

One thing the Nashville JUG does at every meetup, which I am going to shamelessly copy to Javaforum Malmö, is Job Talk. Job Talk is a couple of minutes before the presentation dedicated to those looking for jobs, or are recruiting for jobs. An excellent opportunity to connect.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #213

Welcome to issue number two hundred and thirteen of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

This week continued with discussions around Java versions. The latest update is that the Jakarta EE Specification Committee wants to do a Progress Review of the planned Jakarta EE 11 release. This is all according to the Jakarta EE Specification Process (JESP), so there is really no drama about that part. The Jakarta EE Platform Project will present its plan, and the Specification Committee will vote to approve it. While this is happening, the work with the release will progress as planned.

However, there is a potential bump in the road if the ballot does not pass. This will force the Platform Project to come up with a revision of the plan (a Plan C if you will) that will satisfy the Specification Committee. The outcome of that plan may, or may not, impact the release date of Jakarta EE 11.

While the focus is currently on the next version of Jakarta EE, there is also a need to look ahead to what will happen beyond Jakarta EE 11. To accommodate this, the Jakarta EE Working Group has put together a document to brainstorm this topic. Please take a look at it and provide input. The topic that attracts my immediate attention is a potential Jakarta AI Specification, something I also mentioned in Hashtag Jakarta EE #309 on December 31 last year.

I am currently in Nashville preparing for my first JUG Meetup of the year on Monday. I hope you will be able to come to Nashville JUG on Monday, January 29 at 6:00 PM if you are in the neighborhood.

While waiting for that, check out my blog post from the JCP 25-year Anniversary Celebration.

JCP 25-year Anniversary Celebration

On Thursday, I attended the JCP 25th Anniversary Celebration event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. This is the third time the anniversary was held at this location. It was great meeting up with friends in the Java community and having some of the traditional JCP Paella. Of course, there is no anniversary without cake, and this was no exception. Check out the JCP 25th Anniversary cake with Duke frosting.

Heather presented the 21st annual JCP Awards which this year had three categories. Congratulations to the winners!

– JCP Member/Participant of the Year: Frank Greco / Zoran Sevarac
– JCP 25-year Achievement Award: Brian Goetz
– Java in Education Community Award: Devoxx4Kids South Africa (Jozi JUG)

Read about the winners and the justification for their award on the JCP Annual Awards page.

Hashtag Jakarta EE #212

Welcome to issue number two hundred and twelve of Hashtag Jakarta EE!

As I mentioned in last week’s Hashtag Jakarta EE, there has been a change to the targeted Java version for Jakarta EE 11. In addition to supporting Java 21, the Jakarta EE Platform project is also planning to support Java 17 with Jakarta EE 11. While this may seem like a significant change, it turns out that it isn’t that dramatic. None of the component specifications were actually planning on exposing any Java 21 features in their APIs. The only one close to it was Jakarta Concurrency 3.1, with the planned support for Java Virtual Threads. But it turns out that careful API design allows for support if the underlying JVM supports it.

The biggest change is for the Test Compatibility Kit (TCK), which must be able to run on both Java 17 and Java 21. The implementations that had moved their code base to Java 21 are also affected to some degree depending on how far they have gotten and how many Java 17+ features they have started using.

To accommodate for the extra work involved, the Jakarta EE Project has adjusted the dates for milestones in the release plan. The goal of delivering Jakarta EE 11 in June/July 2024 still stands.

It’s been more than a month since I was at the airport. But that is about to change in a couple of days. I will participate in the 25th Anniversary celebration of the Java Community Process (JCP) in Mountain View on Thursday, January 25. After that, I will speak at three Java User Groups in three days. First up is Nashville JUG on Monday, January 29 followed by Seattle JUG on Tuesday, January 30, and Portland JUG on Wednesday, January 31. In addition to talking, The JCP anniversary will be properly celebrated in all the JUGs. Heather VanCura will join me in Seattle and Portland.

Jan 25: JCP 25-year Anniversary Celebration
Jan 29: Nashville JUG
Jan 30: Seattle JUG
Jan 31: Portland JUG (event soon to be published)