Speaking

Architecture

Software architecture includes the structures of a system and the architecture and technology decisions that the development team and architects make in the project. This is a broad field that is becoming increasingly differentiated as a result of digitalization, the expansion of IT landscapes and diverse architectural styles such as modular monolithic applications and microservices. The demands on the quality of modern applications as well as on deployment, security, resilience and many other topics are constantly increasing. In this stream, we want to hear about all these challenges and the solutions you would like to share in your projects, from your experience or trainings. What advice do you have for designing and documenting software architecture? What architectural styles, patterns or best practices are you discussing in your team? What experiences have you had with the different architectural styles?

Keywords: architecture styles, design patterns, microservices, message-driven architecture, domain-driven design, event sourcing, CQRS, behavior-driven development, serverless architecture, SOA, performance, resilience, REST, messaging, decisions, quality attributes, agile software architecture, technical leadership, technical debt, API design, documentation

Methodology & Culture

Software development is one of the most social professions of all: communication is an important basis for collaboration so that good software can be delivered. With the modernization of working models, our collaboration is constantly being put to the test. Whether fully-remote or hybrid models, Kanban or Scrum, on-site or co-working: the integration of different cultures, lifestyles, personalities and age groups is playing an increasingly important role in increasingly flat working structures. In this stream, we therefore encourage reflection on the principles, prerequisites, foundations and opportunities for improvement that support successful collaboration in software development.

Keywords: DevOps, Conway's Law, Agile, Lean Management, Lean Software Development, Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, Open Space, Lean Coffee, Extreme Programming, Grows Method, Growth Mindest, Sketchnotes, Graphic Recording, Design Thinking, New Work, Holocracy, Diversity

Server-side Java

Backend development is still complex and varied. Do you know interesting and little-known features of Spring, Quarkus, Micronaut, Jakarta EE or other frameworks? Have you had good or bad experiences with these frameworks, migrated your application from framework A to B or solved tricky problems that occur in practice? Then tell us about it!

Keywords: Spring, Jakarta EE, MicroProfile, Quarkus, Application Server, Runnable Jar, CDI, JPA, JAX-RS, JSF

Programming Languages

We also want to get to know other programming languages. This can be a JVM language like Jython, JRuby, Scala, Clojure, Groovy or Kotlin or another programming language like Go, Rust, Haskell or JavaScript or many others! Tell us about your favorite language. 

Keywords: Dynamic, Static, Functional, Object Oriented; C, Rust, Swift, Haskell, Go, Dart, Javascript, Typescript, Python

Security

Threats from cyber warfare and ransomware are also becoming an increasing challenge for developers. It is important to deal with the implementation of security measures early on in the development process (“Shift Left”). This stream deals with important topics relating to security in applications and shows techniques for protecting your own developments from attacks. The topic of data protection also plays a role here.

Keywords: OWASP, XSS, SQL Injection, CSRF, Authorization, Authentication, Penetration Testing, Vulnerability Scan, Cryptography, SSO, OpenID, OAuth, Cyberwar, Software Supply Chain, Data Protection

Quality & Testing

Due to ever shorter release cycles, quality assurance in the form of automated testing, monitoring, CI/CD etc. is becoming increasingly important and complex. In addition, the demand for software quality among users is increasing and concepts such as DevOps, CleanCode, TDD and CI/CD are being used in many companies. In this stream, we would like to hear your experiences on the topics of testing, DevOps and CI/CD.

Keywords: TDD, Coding Dojo, Clean Code, Integration Testing, Application Performance Monitoring, Unit Testing, DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration, Version Control System, Build Management, Performance Testing, End-to-End Testing

Container, Cloud & Infrastructure

In software development, topics such as Continuous Delivery, DevOps, container and Cloud technologies, configuration management, infrastructure as code, monitoring and observability have become indispensable. Not only start-ups and large corporations use these techniques/technologies, but also small and medium-sized companies have embraced the trend and benefit from the increased flexibility, scalability, testability and resilience. Infrastructure automation is also progressing beyond the hype topics. In this stream, we want to shed light on the potential of the concepts, discuss the use of the techniques and technologies in our own projects and also analyze the hurdles and stumbling blocks.

Keywords: Docker, Kubernetes, DCOS, CI/CD, Build, Deployment, Monitoring, Observability, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Discovery, Server Management, Orchestrierung, Configuration, Infrastructure as Code, GitOps, Terraform, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Ansible, Configuration Management

UI & UX

Even though many frontends are often no longer developed with Java, a UI is part of almost every (Java) application. In addition to desktop applications created with AWT, SWT, Swing or JavaFX, applications today very often have JavaScript- or TypeScript-based web frontends. In addition, more and more applications support mobile frontends. Where these topics will develop in the future and what means (Java) developers are using today to create interfaces for their applications is a central part of this stream.

Keywords: JavaScript, JavaFX, Android, Flutter, CSS, UX, Web, Native, Offline-first, Responsive, Vector, SVG, Web Components, Animation, 2D, 3D, Progressive Web Apps, Mobile

AI & Data

Recent developments in the world of artificial intelligence (AI), including advanced technologies such as large-scale language models (LLMs) and retrieval augmented generation (RAG), have ushered in a new era of data-intensive systems. These systems are drivers of innovation that are changing our lives and have the potential to impact some of society's problems, both positively and negatively. This stream will focus on the specific challenges in the field of advanced AI technologies. We will not only discuss the technological challenges of these systems, but also take a holistic approach to the topic. This includes addressing ethical questions, as the responsible use of data and AI is becoming increasingly important. These questions often do not have easy answers, as it is not always clear what fairness means in an algorithm. It is therefore crucial to tackle these issues head on and discuss them comprehensively.

Keywords: LLMs, Big Data architectures, SQL, NoSQL, Graph DB, Vector DB, AI, ML, Deep Learning, Neural Network, Fairness, Sustainability, Design Patterns 4 Sustainability

Innovation

Hardly any modern company can do without innovation – especially in IT. This often does not require separate R&D departments, but rather very pragmatic solutions based on trial and error by individual teams or a small number of people. Genuine innovations usually take a lot of time, require even more energy and also demand an extremely high level of patience and frustration tolerance. That's why it's important that we talk about this in order to learn together. But in the end, the result pays off! Let's talk about your experiments and your reach for the stars.

Keywords: IoT, protocols, M2M, machine learning, deep learning, virtual/augmented reality, chatbots, grid computing

Tooling

We have numerous small and large helpers that support us in the implementation of software projects. In this stream, we would like to get to know your favorite tools and benefit from your experiences. Contributions on development environments and editors, debuggers and tools for analysis, versioning, build management, documentation, CLI and operational aids such as automation, monitoring and logging are part of this. Even if your favorite doesn't fit into one of these categories, that's no problem – we're interested in all tools that make our lives a little easier.

Keywords: IDE, Editors, IntelliJ IDEA, Netbeans, Eclipse, VS Code, Debugging, Analysis, SonarQube, FindBugs, Linting, Versioning, Git, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Build Management, Gradle, Maven, Ant, SBT, Cobalt, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Documentation, Javadoc, Asciidoctor, Swagger, CLI, PowerShell, Bash, Vim, Monitoring, Performance, Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Logging, Log4j, SLF4J, Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana