It's October 10, 2022 and Devoxx Belgium (fka Javapolis) is about to start. In Antwerp, with the inspiring surroundings of movie theater Kinepolis, where over 3.000 Java-adepts crowd eight rooms to soak up knowledge on what's hot or becomes hot in their ecosystem.
This is 19th edition, which actually should have taken place in 2019 but, for well-known reasons, was postponed to this year. I had my eye on 2019 because I was curious about multi-day conferences. And this Belgian edition is given the distance to my home, the most obvious.
Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna get. (Forrest Gump, 1994)
Even though you plan your journey through those screening rooms carefully, deviations might happen. Maybe you want to be surprised, or the seat is just to comfy that you don't want to get up. If you look at the name of the speaker, you can probably guess if the accent is going to be French, Italian, Flemish, etc. But sometimes a Dutch or German sounding surname ends up belonging to a funny and knowledgeable native speaker.
I feel the need, the need for speed (Top Gun, 1986)
Are there a lot of differences between Devoxx BE and for instance, the ones from NLJUG, J-Spring and J-Fall? Other than the length, not much is my take. All parallel sessions with a variety of subjects. All evenly interesting, so it's like sprinting a marathon with welding eyes as a result.
Houston, we have a problem! (Apollo 13, 1995)
Logistical challenges are there as well because of the amount of people. Hold-ups during lunch and long lines at the toilets. Making your way through the exibitors and their stands produces interesting routes, so it feels like you've covered every inch of the venue.
Hands-on workshops are a welcoming change during a multi-day conference. However, if there are too many participants executing a mvn clean install both the Wifi and the connection to the internet suffer severely. More than once a download failed or did it take a while before the instructions came back on the screen. During live-coding demos, the speakers fortunately did not have any issues, so in the end we had a touchdown.
I see dead people (The Sixth Sense, 1999)
Java is dead, long live Java. The reputation of Java as a programming language, with regard to sexiness and progressiveness, is not very good. If you look at the release calendar (since 1995!) the dusty image becomes apparent. Luckily this changed the last couple of years and a new release is there every half year or so. Java is the biggest legacy, but it is still alive and kicking!
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. (The Godfather, 1972)
At a Java conference, a disdain look towards other programming languages is not uncommon. This time JavaScript was the target. According to one of the speakers, it is used at SpaceX. The conclusion: the further JavaScript is removed from earth, the better. Followed by a big round of applause.
Elementary, my dear Watson (The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, 1939)
If the subject is domain driven design, artificial intelligence, service meshes, container orchestration, cloud providers, distributed databases, virtual threads, native compilation, agile architecture, test containers, pact testing, zero trust security etc., as happy software developer you always take something with you in your backpack. Gathering knowledge at a conference that has the quality like Devoxx is very useful, even though you might not apply it in your daily work straight away.
My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you and I thank you. (Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942)
The 20th edition of Devoxx will take place in 2023, but slightly earlier (October 2nd - 6th) to be ahead of the expected COVID peak. If I will be there? Like always, IT depends. Knowing that the presentations will become available via the Youtube channel and you can watch them from the comfort of your own home? Or do I want a change of scenery and enjoy them live and have a Belgian beer afterwards? Then for sure!