airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien

An airhacks.fm conversation with Prof. Dr. Michael Stal (/in/drstal/) about:
writing a Star Trek Basic game from memory after a context reset,
the Z80 chip and assembly programming via a disassembly and debugging monitor,
buying Turbo Pascal directly from a Munich garage 500 meters from home,
studying computer science with C and Turbo Pascal,
building a functional interpreter for a compiler generator with visual UI at university,
joining Siemens for a research project,
working on the C++ standardization proposal for meta-information and reflection through source-code instrumentation,
the influence on the C++ ISO standard,
the path to writing the POSA (Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture) book in 1996 in parallel with the Gang of Four book,
coordinating with Erich Gamma to avoid overlap,
finding patterns in middleware platforms like COM,
DCOM,
CORBA,
and RMI rather than inventing them,
broker,
microkernel,
pipes and filters,
blackboard,
layers,
publisher-subscriber,
forwarder-receiver,
client-dispatcher-server,
and whole-part patterns,
learning Java from Java in a Nutshell by David Flanagan,
skepticism about Java replacing C++ that proved wrong,
Java Competence Centers at Siemens and Sun Microsystems,
Java mobile edition for handsets and the rise of enterprise Java,
Siemens application server limited to stateless EJBs,
embedded systems at Siemens written in C++ and rust for ICE trains and medical tomographs,
Java for enterprise services and monitoring,
LLM disillusionment on the Gartner hype cycle,
the plateau in transformer-based models,
the brute-force compute investment vs specialized models,
AGI skepticism rooted in transformer architecture limits and missing context memory and consciousness,
physical AI cooperation between Nvidia and Siemens,
the n times square root of n attention scaling,
the practical context window limits below the advertised million tokens,
errors during code generation with Claude Sonnet 4.5,
the keep-it-simple principle and Occam's Razor,
simplicity as an art,
the role of naming,
applying patterns to existing systems rather than coding them as building blocks,
over-abstraction of HTTP behind custom adapters as an anti-pattern,
Convention over Configuration in Quarkus with JAX-RS and Model Context Protocol annotations,
grounding LLMs with publicly available Java and Jakarta EE specifications written in normative RFC 2119 language,
the Ivar Jacobson BCE (Boundary Control Entity) structure as a stable scaffolding for code generation,
vibe coding limited by specification coverage
Prof. Dr. Michael Stal on LinkedIn: /in/drstal/

An airhacks.fm conversation with Ian Rogers (@Ian Rogers) about:
ZX Spectrum 128K with rubber keys and a burning side grill,
Basic programming competitions,
REM commands as ASCII art,
PC versus Amiga and Archimedes era in the UK,
fractal landscape generators for Wing Commander 4 cut scenes,
Ocean Software in Manchester and the Head Over Heels game,
Manchester Baby and Williams tube as the first stored-program computer,
Steve Furber and ARM origins at the University of Manchester,
Cosworth and Pi Research Formula One telemetry,
transputers and embedded PowerPC data loggers,
dynamic binary translation with the Dynamite simulator,
ICL 2900 emulation for the Israeli tax system,
MIPS to Itanium binary translation for SGI machines,
Transitive Corporation and the PowerPC to x86 product that became Apple Rosetta,
the Steve Jobs era at Apple,
Spark to Power binary translation and the IBM acquisition of Transitive,
JDBC versus ODBC API design observations,
java.util.Vector and java.util.Hashtable synchronization decisions,
StringBuilder array copying overhead from removing synchronization,
DARPA HPCS languages Fortress,
Chapel,
X10,
just-in-time parallelization from Java bytecode,
LCC compiler from Princeton and the iBerg backend,
JikesRVM as a metacircular Java VM written in Java,
GNU Classpath and Sable VM by Etienne Gagnon,
Apache Harmony port of JikesRVM to Windows,
Maxwell and Maxine VMS as GraalVM precursors,
Bernd Mathiske and the Sun acquisition by Oracle,
GNU Classpath impact of the openJDK GPL release at FOSDEM 2006,
Mark Wielaard and Rémi Forax FOSDEM stories,
trace compilation and de-optimization parallels with JIT,
Azul Systems Vega hardware and concurrent garbage collection,
C4 collector design influencing ZGC and Shenandoah,
Gil Tene's telephone exchange mentality for JVM responsiveness,
page unmapping and signal handler memory pressure problems in HotSpot,
Cliff Click and Modular,
Google Android Runtime (ART) replacing Dalvik,
transactional memory for class initializers in ART,
ELF files and OAT format for ahead-of-time compilation,
WhatsApp bytecode obfuscation breaking the ART verifier,
lock balance verification for speculative lock optimizations,
D8 and R8 Android compilers,
Goit internal Google bytecode optimizer,
Jeremy Manson and Google's OpenJDK variant,
Linux kernel performance work and perf tooling,
JikesRVM stack trace format making exception-heavy DaCapo benchmarks faster than HotSpot,
Energy Efficiency across Programming Languages study comparing Java and Go,
Ian Rogers on twitter: @Ian Rogers

An airhacks.fm conversation with Manik Surtani (@maniksurtani) about:
programming on the BBC Micro with Basic and writing a Trojan horse,
GW BASIC and Turbo Pascal on PC,
Space Invaders-style games,
C++ neural network simulating bat learning behavior at university,
PHP e-commerce startup Silk Road Software competing with Intershop in the late 1990s,
multi-tenant web shops for UK customers,
the dot-com crash and startup failure,
first Java job building Virgin Atlantic online check-in and airport kiosks on WebLogic and Oracle,
demonstrating a JBoss and MySQL and Linux open source stack to the Virgin Atlantic CTO,
contributing to JGroups at the Financial Times and meeting Bela Ban,
JBoss Cache tree structure limitations and concurrency issues,
rewriting JBoss Cache into Infinispan as a HashMap-based distributed cache,
removing reflection overhead and pluggable serialization with Protocol Buffers support,
the Hot Rod client-server protocol,
joining Square via Bob Lee to migrate a Ruby on Rails monolith to Java microservices for Starbucks payments,
multi-DC high availability architecture with red-green deployments,
shutting down the Rails monolith with zero downtime using double writes and gradual traffic migration,
Block as a polyglot environment with Java and Kotlin and Ruby and Go and python,
the Head of Open Source role at Block and establishing an Open Source Programs Office,
inner sourcing practices,
co-designing gRPC with Google,
building and open-sourcing Goose as a coding agent predating Claude Code and Codex,
co-designing MCP with Anthropic,
founding the Agentic AI Foundation with Anthropic and OpenAI and AWS and Google and Microsoft and Cloudflare and Bloomberg,
Block Open Source projects including OkHttp and OkIO and Retrofit,
LLMs generating better code with type-safe compiled languages like Java,
grounding LLMs against Jakarta EE APIs to reduce hallucinations,
Block business units including Square,
Cash App,
Afterpay and Tidal
Manik Surtani on twitter: @maniksurtani

An airhacks.fm conversation with Christofer Dutz (@christofer-dutz) about:
discussion about Apache PLC4X as the JDBC of industrial automation,
the API and SPI architecture with Java service loader for driver discovery,
Modbus protocol for HVAC systems and heating devices,
PLC4X core API operations including discovery and browsing and reading and writing and subscribing and publishing,
multi-language support with PLC4J for Java and PLC4Go for Go and PLC4Py for python and C#,
code generation from protocol definitions using language-specific templates,
XML-based cross-language unit tests,
OPC UA as the Esperanto of industrial protocols versus PLC4X speaking native device protocols,
OPC UA overhead causing PLC strain and network congestion,
comparison of OPC UA to CORBA and grpc,
CORBA IIOP protocol on devices,
bidirectional communication for reading sensor data and writing control flags,
subscription-based event-driven data collection to reduce PLC polling load,
founding ToddySoft to provide commercially supported open source industrial products,
the gap between open source libraries and industrial consumption,
ToddySoft Connect as bubble-wrapped PLC4X drivers for platforms like Inductive Automation Ignition,
eliminating edge gateway boxes on shop floors,
native protocol communication reducing network load on 100 Mbit industrial networks,
unified namespace concept as JMS for industrial automation,
Apache IoTDB as time series database with push queries and callback features,
Apache TsFile storage format for writing time series data directly on PLCs,
shifting from polling to pushing in industrial data collection,
ToddySoft File as C libraries compiled for PLCs,
ToddySoft DB as embedded stripped-down IoTDB for edge devices,
ToddySoft Edge as the combined platform resembling an application server for industrial automation,
Industry 4.0 definition and evolution from manual labor through steam power through PLC automation to connected production,
compressed air as a service business model,
early failure detection in multi-step production lines,
OSGi runtime driver loading,
Eclipse Tycho build system difficulties,
Kafka Connect PLC connectors,
SPS fair in Nuremberg as one of the largest industrial automation fairs,
signal theory and Nyquist sampling rate in PLC polling
Christofer Dutz on twitter: @christofer-dutz

An airhacks.fm conversation with Holly Cummins (@holly_cummins) about:
discussion about Quarkus energy efficiency and performance benchmarks,
comparing Quarkus throughput and energy consumption to Spring Boot,
the Quarkus Benchmarks repository and Spring-Quarkus performance comparison repository on GitHub,
three times throughput and half the energy consumption with Quarkus,
Quarkus build-time optimization and tree shaking,
monomorphic vs megamorphic dispatching in the JVM,
removing reflection at build time,
the reactive core built on Vert.x enabling blocking APIs with reactive scalability,
Quarkus dev experience and fast reload,
build duration comparison between Quarkus and Spring Boot,
the Writing Greener Java Applications white paper,
the Energy Efficiency across Programming Languages study,
Java ranking among the most energy-efficient languages,
carbon-aware dispatching and Electricity Maps,
zombie deployments and kubernetes cluster waste,
serverless architecture with Quarkus on AWS Lambda,
SnapStart for sub-second cold starts,
Provisioned Concurrency cost savings,
GraalVM native binaries vs JVM mode in serverless environments,
CycloneDX SBOM generation in Quarkus,
build-time vs runtime configuration for ISO 27001 security certification,
Kruize Autotune for JVM hyperparameter optimization,
JVM tuning folk wisdom and the copy-paste typo anecdote,
Francesco Nigro's performance optimization work across the stack from assembly to JVM,
Jeff Mesnil leading JBoss energy efficiency efforts,
cheese fondue recipe,
UK chocolate and Cadbury Roses
Holly Cummins on twitter: @holly_cummins