Ben Evans — Java expert, educator, and author — looks back at 2018
A leading figure in all things Java, Ben Evans maintains a busy life juggling education, writing, consulting, speaking, software development, mentorship and more.
Co-founder of jClarity, a performance startup, and a previous representative of the user community as a voting member on Java’s governing body — the JCP Executive Committee (for 6 years) — Ben is regarded as an authority within the Java community. He is the author of five books (‘The Well-Grounded Java Developer’ and the new editions of ‘Java in a Nutshell’, ‘Java: The Legend’ and ‘Optimizing Java’) and writes regularly for industry publications.
We asked him what his 2018 was like and after taking a 30-second breath inwards, Ben shared the sort of schedule that would make Jeff Bezos cry.
2018 was a huge year for me personally. I think I wrote more articles and posts about Java and the JVM than in any previous year.
Some of my favourites included:
- Getting to Know Graal, the new Java JIT Compiler
- Real World ASM — Oracle Java Magazine July / August 2018
- Java 11 Released
- Escape Analysis in the HotSpot JIT Compiler — Oracle Java Magazine March / April 2018
- Lock Elision in the JVM — Oracle Java Magazine May / June 2018
As well as these shorter pieces, somehow I also managed to deliver two whole books:
- Optimizing Java (O’Reilly, 2018) and its accompanying videos; and
- Java in a Nutshell, 7th Edition (O’Reilly, 2018)
But I think the projects that were dearest to my heart in 2018 were about teaching and mentoring young engineers:
- Global Code summer school at the University of Ghana in Accra; and
- Teaching my Spring and Autumn classes of fresh graduates for a banking client
Meeting enthusiastic newcomers to the profession is always energising and challenging — the fresh perspectives of a new generation help to keep us old guys on our toes and make sure we can’t rest on our laurels. The endless intellectual challenge and constant adaption are absolutely some of the most important parts of the profession, and what helps keep us all fresh.
Looking ahead at 2019, the key events I’m looking forward to are:
- FOSDEM (the Free & Open-Source Developers European Meeting)
- Teaching my brand-new Migrating to Java 11 course
- Introducing some new people to some secrets and dark magic in my Deep Within the JVM course
- The jBCN conference in Barcelona (May 27th-29th)
- Java 13 — will we see some major new features arrive?
- The jCrete conference in Chania, Crete
- Returning to Ghana to teach for Global Code 2019
These are only the ones I can predict, of course. I have put some of my predictions for Java in 2019 here, but I’m sure there’ll be a load of surprises and unexpected great events along the way — there usually are!
💥Watch Ben Evans’ most recent talk at Skills Matter: Fantastic Bytecodes & How To Interpret Them. 👍 For news and articles from Skills Matter, subscribe to our newsletter here.
