Monthly Java/JVM Meetup

Agenda:

• 17:00 - Doors Open for Drinks and Snacks and Mingle
• 18:00 - Introduction
• 18:15 - Speaker 1: Mahlatse Charmaine Sekulane - Teaching Java OOP: A Self-Taught Developer’s Journey from Learning to Tutoring.
• 19:00 - Small break
• 18:15 - Speaker 2: Siyabonga Nkuna - Spring is Not Magic (It Just Looks Like It)
• 20:00 - 20:30 - More mingling and close.

Venue: BBD
We ask that you do not RSVP Yes if you are not sure you will be able to attend. We would not want somebody to loose out on the opportunity seeing that seats are limited.

Important Notes:
Parking is available at The Zone, Rosebank. Parking will be validated so you do not need to pay for it.

Details:
Speaker: Mahlatse Charmaine Sekulane
Talk: Teaching Java OOP: A Self-Taught Developer’s Journey from Learning to Tutoring.

Abstract:
This talk shares my journey as a self-taught developer learning and teaching Java Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). I will walk through how I approached learning core OOP concepts such as encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, and abstraction, and how I transitioned into tutoring other students.
Attendees will gain a practical understanding of how to simplify complex OOP concepts, common mistakes beginners make, and strategies for learning Java effectively without a formal background. This talk is especially aimed at beginners and aspiring developers who are navigating their own self-taught journey.

Speaker
Mahlatse Charmaine Sekulane is a self-taught developer currently tutoring students. She's passionate about making tech more accessible.

Social media links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siyabonga-nkuna-225819238/
GitHub: http://github.com/charmainesekulane232

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Details:
Speaker: Siyabonga Nkuna
Talk: Spring is Not Magic (It Just Looks Like It)

Abstract:
When you first encounter Spring, it feels like witchcraft. You annotate a class, and suddenly dependencies appear. You write a method, and somehow HTTP requests find it. Nobody told you how. It just works, and that's honestly a little unsettling.
This talk is the story of how i went from ""what is a bean?"" to building Zoltraak Gateway, a Spring Boot application that manages GPU infrastructure for self-hosted LLM workloads on Vast.ai and RunPod. Along the way, we pull back the curtain on the things Spring hides from you: Inversion of Control, Dependency Injection, the Dispatcher Servlet, auto-configuration, and why any of it matters.
The magic does not disappear when you understand it. It just becomes precise.

Social media links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siyabonga-nkuna-225819238/
GitHub: https://github.com/sudosf

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Social media links:
Twitter/X: @jozijug
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/jozijug/

The Jozi Java User Group (Jozi-JUG) is dedicated to a harassment-free experience for everyone. Our anti-harassment policy can be found here (https://github.com/Jozi-JUG/constitution/blob/master/anti_harassment_policy.txt)