Duke's Corner

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Carlos Obregón at JavaOne 2026. Carlos is a Java Champion and also the founder of Bogota's Java User Group, Bogotá JVM. Carlos has been running monthly meetups for over a decade, and he and his colleagues have built one of the most active developer communities in Latin America. In his session at JavaOne — Teaching Java as a First Language: Lessons from Three Years of a Real-World Bootcamp — he outlined a free, online, 13-week week program for learning Java. The bootcamp started in Colombia but then quickly expanded to include multiple JUGs in Latin American.
"Java is the best language for this" he said. The community, the tooling, the syntax, the readability of the language itself — everything pointed in the right direction. And the students in the bootcamp agree. "They love Java" he said. Carlos started out programming in C++ in school, but from the moment he finally picked up Java it was obviously different. "It was Love at first sight" he said.
Carlos also advises that developers embrace AI. "Think of it like your pair programming buddy," he said. But he said to go deeply into programming fundamentals first because if you can't evaluate what the AI produces then you may end up shipping bugs you don't understand.
JavaOne was an amazing experience for Carlos. It was his first JavaOne, but he'll be back for sure.

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Cristian Schuszter at JavaOne 2026. Cristian is a PhD in systems engineering and a Tech Lead at CERN in Geneva. He's been at CERN for 8 years, but he's been coding since he was eight years old. He loves working with and contributing to the Java community and other Open Source projects. This was Cristian's first JavaOne, and his session, "30 Years of Java Development: Keeping it All Together," covered how CERN keeps Java running across teams since 1998. Like any large company, CERN uses a lot of legacy code supporting systems that, in Cristian's words, "need to keep running." Java is not only used for business critical applications at CERN but also for accelerator system operations. On working at CERN among Nobel laureates, Cristian said, "I felt like I thrived in this kind of environment." Cristian also helped revive the Voxxed Days developer conference at CERN and started the CERN Java User Group.

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Martin Chalupa from Netflix at JavaOne 2026. Martin is a software developer with about eight years at Netflix and about twenty years working with Java. At Netflix, Martin works on the JVM ecosystem team, which grew from the build tooling team and now also handles broader JVM work such as tuning, garbage collection, and upgrading. In his session at JavaOne Martin covered Java ahead of time compilation and Project Leyden, and he shared what Netflix has learned from experimenting with the technology.
Just as many software developers, Martin found his way into engineering through this experience gaming as a kid. He built his first game in Java for the old Nokia phones as a school project. He has watched Java change a great deal over the years. The language keeps getting more comfortable and more approachable for young developers. His advice for students is to explore different options and find their own passion in the work. "With a little bit of work you can achieve some cool stuff," he says. So, get out there and "discover your passion."
Martin at LinkedIn
Jim at LinkedIn

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Luiz Real, an engineer and college professor from the SouJava Community in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Luiz came to JavaOne 2026 for the first time this year to build relationships, catch up on the latest technical features in Java, and to mix with the Java Champions. He says building those connections is something you can only do in person at a conference like this. "JavaOne for me is a career changing thing," he says. In this conversation Luiz also talks about teaching Java to students, the opportunities for Java developers in the world of AI, and the massive community of Java developers in Brazil.
Luiz Real, Lead Software Engineer, Oracle ACE, College Professor 
Jim Grisanzio, Oracle Java Developer Relations

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Henri Tremblay at JavaOne 2026. Henri is a Java Champion, Montreal JUG leader, and EasyMock lead developer from Montreal, Canada. Henri's session at JavaOne covered the Java Memory Model, which is a topic he believes every Java developer should understand well. He's been to six JavaOne's and had warm words for the conference, which represents a rare opportunity to meet the people whose code runs on systems and devices all over the world. He had clear advice for developers: read books, understand how and why your code works, and get out there and join the community. On AI, Henri sees real value for efficiency and learning, but at the same time he warns against laziness, especially when reviewing code. For students and junior developers, he says they should also leverage AI for learning, but he advises that they internalize the fundamentals of software engineering.
LinkedIn: Henri Tremblay, Jim Grisanzio.