A Java geek

Automating a conference submission workflow: the setup

Even given the current situation, part of my Developer Advocate job is to talk at (virtual) conferences. Sometimes, organizers invite me. Yet, most of the times, I need to take part in a CfP. With the sheer numbers of conferences I submit to, I need a tool to manage the status of each submission. Since I started, Trello has been my tool of choice. I’ve a dedicated board with several defined columns: backlog, abandoned, submitted, rejected, submitted and done.

Development

Assessing projects' sustainability on GitHub

Before the quarantine, one of my former students asked me an interesting question: does GitHub sens an email to the owner of a repository, if an issue is opened on this repo? The answer is not important. As a former consultant, I tried to understand the root question. After digging a bit, I understood it: the student was using a project he found on GitHub. That project was lacking a feature, and the issue was to request it.

Java

An introductory guide to annotations and annotation processors

In Java, annotations and annotation processors are surrounded by a shroud of mystery for most. They seem like a subject reserved for 'experts''. On top of that, I believe there’s also some FUD around them. This post aims to dig into the subject, in the most neutral way possible. This way, everybody can take enlightened decisions based on facts, not by listening to people full of misconceptions or hidden agendas.

Java

Logging additional metadata

In February, before the lockdown, I presented my Fast logs talk at ConFoo. At the end, I had an interesting question I had to cut short because of the timing. This blog post aims to describe the relevant points of the talk, the question, as well as some possible answer. One improvement to have faster logs In this talk, I highlight different ways to make logs faster. Nowadays, most logs are aggregated into a single place for later usage.

Miscellaneous

On teaching remotely

I started teaching in higher education organizations when I was still a student. That was more than 20 years ago. I’ve never stopped since then. I’ve taught in different kind of organizations (i.e. engineering schools, universities, and applied science schools) and two different countries, France and Switzerland. A common trait among all those jobs was the requirement to teach on-site. In fact, my current employer goes to the point of specifying it explicitly in its regulations.

Development

Your own Kubernetes controller - Improving and deploying

In the first post of this series, we described the concept behind a Kubernetes controller. In short, it’s just a plain control loop that reconciles the desired state of the cluster with its current state. In the second post, we implemented a sidecar controller in Java. This third and last post will be focused on where to deploy this Java controller and how to improve it to be on par with a Go one. Running outside the cluster or inside?

Java

Coping with incompatible code in Graal VM AOT compilation

The last two blog posts were focused on how to write a custom Kubernetes controller in Java. As usual, I’m writing a demo along with the posts: that allows me to face real issues, and be able to detail them. In this context, I had to handle a couple of them when implementing the demo code. This post is dedicated to one of them: the compilation of not-compatible Java code with Graal VM’s native image AOT compilation.

Development

Your own Kubernetes controller - Developing in Java

In the previous post, we laid out the foundations to create our own custom Kubernetes controller. We detailed what a controller was, and that its only requirement is to be able to communicate with HTTP/JSON. In this post, we are going to finally start developing it. The technology stack can be Python, NodeJS or Ruby. Because this blog is named 'A Java Geek', it’s normal to choose Java.

Development

Your own Kubernetes controller - Laying out the work

It’s hard nowadays to ignore Kubernetes. It has become the ubiquitous platform of choice to deploy containerized applications. In a few years, Kubernetes has entrenched itself deeply in the DevOps landscape under the tutelage of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. One could speculate about the reasons. IMHO, one very compelling argument is that it allows users to be independent of the API of a single cloud provider.

Nicolas Fränkel's blog