Foojay.io, the Friends Of OpenJDK!

In this episode of the Foojay Podcast, we're bringing you something special: a full batch of hallway-track conversations recorded live at VoxxedDays Amsterdam.
Fifteen guests, one conference, and one theme that kept coming back, whether we planned it or not: Java has grown up quietly, steadily, and in ways that still surprise people who haven't looked lately. We talked about migrating between versions, new features in the latest Java releases, authorization done right, AI-assisted coding, cryptography, containers, open-source contributions, GDPR data experiments, and, yes, the things people hate about Java but secretly love.
I spoke with Ko Turk, who organized this very conference, Johannes Bechberger, Lutske de Leeuw, Aicha Laafia, Marit van Dijk, Adele Carpenter, Patrick Baumgartner, Sohan Maheshwar, Jeroen Egelmeers, Erwin Manders, Alexander Shopov, Maarten Verburg, Arjan Tijms, Joost Kaan, and Stephan Janssen.
That's a lot of people. That's a lot of opinions. And somehow, they mostly agree: update your JDK, read your code, and please talk to your actual users.

Content

00:00 Introduction
00:30 Ko Turk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ko-turk-b271b929/
Organizer of VoxxedDays Amsterdam
Migrating between Java versions
02:25 Johannes Bechberger
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannes-bechberger/
Java is boring, and that's why it's brilliant
Java 26 test it, but not in production
JFR improvements in the latest versions
06:28 Lutske de Leeuw
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lutske/
Volunteer at the conference
Java is boring, and that's why it's brilliant
Java 5 till 26 evolutions
10:35 Aicha Laafia
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aicha-laafia-0266a6126/
Lambda stream gatherers in Java 25
Simpler and more fun code
Update your JDK!
16:16 Marit van Dijk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maritvandijk/
Fun in coding, write Java the playful way
Java evolutions and how writing code has evolved
Importance of code reading with AI-assisted coding
22:04 Adele Carpenter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adele-carpenter-a988623a/
The things I hate about Java, but actually love it
27:37 Patrick Baumgartner
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patbaumgartner/
Organizing VoxxedDays Zurich
Spring Boot optimization
Using Buildpacks to create better containers
35:02 Sohan Maheshwar
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sohanmaheshwar/
Authorization, the good way
JWT is a bad idea
38:34 Jeroen Egelmeers
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jegelmeers/
https://craftingaiprompts.org/documentation/se-framework/craft-framework
AI, prompt engineering, agentic programming
The CRAFT Framework: Orchestrating Agentic Flow
The importance of interacting with your end-users
43:32 Erwin Manders
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erwinman/
Cryptography, digital signatures, and securing data and messages
Comparing Kotlin and Java
45:12 Alexander Shopov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alshopov/
Developer at Uber
Comparing different languages: Java, Python, Go
How Java is modernizing by learning from other languages
49:18 Maarten Verburg
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartenverburg/
Using your own GDPR data for fun experiments
Comparing early Java with the current status
Java Streams the most important change
52:35 Arjan Tijms
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjantijms/
https://omnifish.ee/
Jakarta Faces, Security, Authentication and Authorization, EE,...
Jakarta specs are used in Spring
How Java evolved and is still evolving
How can you contribute to opensource
59:55 Joost Kaan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joost-kaan/
What you can learn at a conference, besides the expected language-related talks
AI influences on the developer work
Contributing to the Java community, AI user group
01:03:52 Stephan Janssen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanjanssen/
https://geniebuilder.ai/
The importance of the "Hallway Track" where you can chat with like-minded people
Using AI-assisted spec-driven coding
Talking to your end-user becomes more important than ever
01:09:00 Conclusion

Welcome to another episode of the Foojay Podcast! In this episode, we're talking about Java 26, released on March 17 in the year 26. Again, right on schedule with Java's six-month release cadence.
Now, Java 26 is not a Long Term Support (LTS) release; that was Java 25. But don't let that fool you into thinking there's nothing interesting here. This release brings ten JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs). They cover everything from performance improvements to long-overdue cleanups. Of those ten JEPS, five are new features, and we also get five preview/incubator features.
Guests
Simon Ritter
https://www.linkedin.com/in/siritter/
Loïc Mathieu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lo%C3%AFc-mathieu-475b144/
Content
00:00 Introduction of topic and guests
01:35 Differences between Long and Short Term Support
05:10 Which Java versions are used by companies
https://foojay.io/today/foojay-podcast-90-highlights-of-the-java-features-between-lts-21-and-25/
07:54 Internal changes and improvements in release 26, highlighting UUIDv7 support
https://foojay.io/today/java-26-whats-new/
12:02 JEP 500: Prepare to Make Final Mean Final
13:24 JEP 526: Lazy Constants (Second Preview)
16:12 JEP 517: HTTP/3 for the HTTP Client API
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC
18:48 JEP 504: Remove the Applet API
20:52 JEP 524: PEM Encodings of Cryptographic Objects (Second Preview)
21:59 JEP 516: Ahead-of-Time Object Caching with Any GC
https://openjdk.org/projects/leyden/
https://docs.azul.com/prime/analyzing-tuning-warmup
https://foojay.io/today/faster-java-warmup-crac-versus-readynow/
25:30 JEP 522: G1 GC: Improve Throughput by Reducing Synchronization
Trash Talk - Exploring the JVM memory management by Gerrit Grunwald
28:04 JEP 525: Structured Concurrency (Sixth Preview)
https://openjdk.org/projects/loom/
31:09 JEP 529: Vector API (Eleventh Incubator)
https://openjdk.org/projects/panama/
https://openjdk.org/projects/valhalla/
34:59 When do JEPs get selected to be included in a release
https://openjdk.org/projects/jdk/26/
https://openjdk.org/projects/jdk/27/
38:03 JEP 530: Primitive Types in Patterns, instanceof, and switch (Fourth Preview)
https://openjdk.org/projects/amber/
Java Puzzlers talk by Simon
42:14 Do we need "Carrier Classes"?
Amber mailing list: Data Oriented Programming, Beyond Records
JVM Weekly newsletter by Artur Skowroński
44:38 What changes does Java need for the AI world?
JEP DRAFT 8361105: Code reflection (Incubator)
https://openjdk.org/projects/babylon/
https://www.tornadovm.org/
47:53 Remarkable numeric facts about releases
48:30 Conclusion

In this Foojay Podcast, we're celebrating a major milestone in Java development history: 25 years of IntelliJ IDEA.
Think about it: IntelliJ IDEA launched in 2000, and since then, it has become the go-to IDE for millions of Java developers worldwide. From its revolutionary code completion and refactoring tools to AI-powered features and the recent unified Community and Ultimate release, IntelliJ has shaped how we write Java, and keeps reinventing itself to stay ahead.
For this episode, I'm joined by three people from the JetBrains team who know this story inside and out. Marit van Dijk, developer advocate and contributor to the Foojay community. Anton Arhipov, also a developer advocate at JetBrains. And Dmitry Jemerov, who has been part of the IntelliJ IDEA story for a very long time.

Guests
Marit van Dijk
https://foojay.io/today/author/marit-van-dijk/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maritvandijk/
https://mastodon.social/@maritvandijk
Anton Arhipov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonarhipov/
Dmitry Jemerov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitry-jemerov-3a59b43a5/
Links
Website
Documentation
Blog
YouTube
LinkedIn
Bluesky
Twitter
Foojay Podcast #81: Maven 4 – The Future of Java Build Automation
Video: IntelliJ IDEA: The Documentary | [OFFICIAL TRAILER] | Coming March 5th
Introducing Mellum: JetBrains’ New LLM Built for Developers 
Mellum: Explore code-intelligent large language models for IDEs, AI assistants, research, and education
Birthday game website
Game plugin in IntelliJ IDEA
You’re Invited to IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2025!
The Unified IntelliJ IDEA: More Free Features, a Better Experience, Smoother Flow
Video: Troubleshooting Spring Boot Applications with the Spring Debugger
Spring Debugger plugin
Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (and other IDEs) created by Frank: Recent Projects Organized

Content
00:00 Introduction of topic and guests
01:36 Now JetBrains started
02:31 Licensed software in an open-source world
06:37 Other JetBrains IDEs
07:46 Why Kotlin was created
08:50 The challenge of maintaining all the tools
10:36 How the guests joined JetBrains
14:03 IntelliJ versus IntelliJ IDEA, history of the name
15:10 Most important ongoing changes in IDEs
17:55 Unified distribution of IntelliJ IDEA and the history of the open-source version
21:28 The number of people at JetBrains
23:31 the "business model" behind Kotlin
24:39 The impact of AI, LLM, Chat interfaces,...
35:49 Upcoming evolutions in IntelliJ IDEA
38:07 About shortcuts and the many features and plugins in IntelliJ IDEA
46:36 Announcements: IntelliJ IDEA Conf 2026 and Documentary Trailer
48:35 The IntelliJ IDEA Birthday Game
49:24 Conclusions

Every six months, we get a new version of Java. Java 26 is just around the corner and will be released soon. But most companies stick to LTS (Long-Term Support) versions, which are maintained and receive security updates for many more years. Versions 8, 11, 17, 21, and 25 are such LTS versions. Hopefully, most of your systems are already on the latest versions and you are not stuck on 8 or earlier. As a reminder, 8 was released in 2014, so much has changed since then.If you are doubting moving from 21 to 25, or even from an earlier version to the latest LTS, this podcast is for you! Together with Jakob Jenkov, we discussed the most important changes, and this episode includes a few quotes from interviews recorded at conferences last year.
Guests
Jakob Jenkov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakob-jenkov-4a3a8/
Jonathan Vila
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanvila/
Ryan Svihla
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-svihla-096752182/
Mary Grygleski
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-grygleski/
Anton Arhipov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonarhipov/
Ronald Dehuysser
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronalddehuysser/
Jonathan Ellis
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbellis/
Content
00:00 Introduction of topic and guest
Tutorials by Jakob
Podcast #89: Quarkus and Agentic Commerce
03:30 Bugfixes and performance improvements "under the hoods"
Quote Jonathan Vila
08:00 Java as a scripting language
Quote Ryan Svihla
Compact Source Files and Instance Main methods
Launch Multi-File Source-Code Programs
https://www.jbang.dev/
Quote Mary Grygleski
15:03 GC Improvements
Generational Shenandoah
Trash Talk - Exploring the JVM memory management by Gerrit Grunwald
What Should I Know About Garbage Collection as a Java Developer?
19:44 Project Loom: Virtual Threads and Structured Concurrency
Quote Anton Arhipov
29:44 How Java evolves
6-months release cycle
How incubator and preview features are used to get feedback from the community
Long-Term Support Short-Term Support versions
Foojay Podcast #28: Java 21 Has Arrived!
Foojay Podcast #45: Welcome to Java 22
Foojay Podcast #57: Welcome to OpenJDK (Java) 23
Foojay Podcast #68: Welcome to OpenJDK (Java) 24
Foojay Podcast #78: Welcome to OpenJDK 25!
32:15 Project Leyden: Ahead-of-time features
Ahead-of-Time Command-Line Ergonomics
Ahead-of-Time Method Profiling
Ahead-of-Time Class Loading & Linking
39:15 Project Babylon
Java on CPU, GPU, FPGA?
This is already possible with TornadoVM
Foojay Podcast #82: OpenJDK Projects (Leyden, Babylon, Panama) and TornadoVM
43:25 Class-File API
Quote Ronald Dehuysser
JavaFX In Action #22 with Matt Coley, diving into byte code and JARs with Recaf and JavaFX libraries
49:20 Foreign Function and Memory API
The FFM API: How OpenJDK Changed the Game for Native Interactions (And Made Pi4J Better!)
jChampions Conference talk 'Foreign Function & Memory (FFM) API on Raspberry Pi'
54:26 Vector API
Quote Jonathan Ellis + Ryan Svihla
59:59 Removal of String templates
01:00:26 Taking a look into the JVM of the future
01:03:08 Conclusion

For this episode of the Foojay Podcast, we invited the author of three recent posts published on Foojay. And he brought a colleague to get even more expert knowledge in this podcast! We talk about Quarkus, how it is "cloud-native", how it compares to other frameworks, the advantages for developers and managers, etc. We also discussed nano businesses and how they can serve as a model for paying creators of digital content, thanks to x402 and ERC-8004.

Michal Maléř
https://foojay.io/today/author/michal-maler/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michal-maléř-69344692/
https://www.mickeymaler.com/
Holly Cummins
https://www.linkedin.com/in/holly-k-cummins/
https://hollycummins.com/
https://noti.st/holly-cummins

Links
Quarkus: A Runtime and Framework for Cloud-Native Java
Optimizing Java for the Cloud-Native Era with Quarkus
Not a Lucid Web3 Dream Anymore: x402, ERC-8004, A2A, and The Next Wave of AI Commerce
J-Spring 2023: Five Tricks for Java - Holly Cummins: The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping?
JavaFX In Action #10 with Clément de Tastes about QuarkusFX, combining the strengths of Quarkus and JavaFX
Comparing a REST H2 Spring versus Quarkus application on Raspberry Pi
Open Source Collective
Commonhaus Foundation
A fun trick for getting discovered by LLMs and AI tools

Content

00:00 Introduction of topic and guests
01:04 Why contribute to Foojay as an author
01:33 What is Quarkus?
02:56 Quarkus compared with other frameworks
05:08 Quarkus a replacement for JVM?
06:40 Build time optimization versus Ahead Of Time (AOT) versus Just In Time (JIT)
12:53 Other important facts about Quarkus
18:13 Impact on Cloud financial and ecological cost
21:31 Vert.x reactive toolkit compared to Virtual Threads
24:14 New features in Quarkus
26:02 Is Quarkus more modern compared to other frameworks?
27:13 What are chain transactions
31:10 How can a (web) author earn from his content?
35:54 How this can impact open-source development
38:34 Will these open standards get adopted?
39:47 How opensource can be funded (Commonhaus)
43:00 How content creators could be funded and publish their content in the future
46:01 MCP as content distribution (with Quarkus)?
46:49 Conclusion