Amsterdam JUG Meetup at Doctolib

Join in with the latest Amsterdam JUG Meetup at Doctolib in central Amsterdam.

Agenda

18:00 - Doors Open
18:30 - 19:15 - I Lost a Day to @Retryable — When Spring AOP's Rules Quietly Don't Apply—Katherine (Kath) Alfaro Ramirez
19:15 - 20:00 - Instrument Once, Observe Everywhere: OpenTelemetry and the Power of Open Standards—Aakansha Priya
20:00 - 20:45 - AI’s Impact on Engineering Teams—Paolo Brunasti
20:45 - Networking drinks

Abstracts

I Lost a Day to @Retryable — When Spring AOP's Rules Quietly Don't Apply—Katherine (Kath) Alfaro Ramirez

You've heard the rule: in Spring, methods annotated with @Transactional or @Async only work when called from outside the class. Call them via this. and you bypass the proxy. Standard Spring 101.

But what if your codebase uses AspectJ compile-time weaving? Then @Transactional, @Async, and @Cacheable self-calls do work. The aspect is woven straight into the bytecode at build time; there is no runtime proxy to bypass. After a few months in that environment, you stop worrying about self-calls altogether.
Then you reach for @Retryable to harden a real production race against an OptimisticLockingFailureException... and it silently does nothing. No retries. No exceptions. No warning. Your tests pass; production still fails the same way.

This talk is the story of why. We'll look at how Spring AOP actually works under the hood, the difference between proxy-based AOP and AspectJ compile-time weaving, and the one annotation — @Retryable — that cannot be configured to use AspectJ mode (an open feature request since 2017).

We'll walk through the production fix, and you'll leave with a mental model of which annotations work in which contexts — and how to spot the trap before it costs you a day.

Instrument Once, Observe Everywhere: OpenTelemetry and the Power of Open Standards—Aakansha Priya

Modern systems are distributed, polyglot, and constantly changing and the tools we use to understand them shouldn't lock us in. Enter OpenTelemetry: the open, vendor-neutral standard for collecting traces, metrics, and logs across any language, framework, or backend.

In this talk, we'll go from zero to hero. We'll start with the why: how observability got fragmented by proprietary agents, and how open standards are putting developers back in control.

Then we'll unpack how the core building blocks of OpenTelemetry, how the SDK and Collector fit together, and the patterns that keep your telemetry portable across any backend you choose, today or five years from now.

AI’s Impact on Engineering Teams—Paolo Brunasti

AI is reshaping how engineering teams design, build, and deliver software—but does it replace engineers, or amplify them?

In this talk, we'll explore AI's growing influence on JVM teams, system design, and business outcomes, drawing on hands-on experience with Java-based architectures.

Expect practical insights on integrating AI into engineering workflows without compromising code quality, architectural integrity, or long-term strategy.

You'll leave with a clearer sense of how the craft is evolving and concrete ideas to apply in your own work.

Bios

Katherine (Kath) Alfaro Ramirez is a Senior Software Engineer at Doctolib with 12+ years building robust, scalable applications in Java, Kotlin, and Spring Boot. Experienced in cloud environments and microservices architecture, with a track record of integrating third-party systems and collaborating across departments. Passionate about mentorship, knowledge sharing, and delivering secure, efficient solutions.

Aakansha Priya is a Solution Architect at Dash0 and a CNCF Ambassador. She loves championing her customers and serving as a bridge between them and engineering, ensuring technology delivers real value. She has spoken at conferences on DevOps and the human side of tech, and is passionate about helping teams unlock the value of observability with OpenTelemetry. Beyond work, she enjoys painting, singing, reading, and spontaneous travel, and you’ll often find her at meetups and conferences.

Paolo Brunasti is an experienced engineering leader with a strong background in Java-based architectures and system design. He now focuses on AI, sharing practical insights on integrating AI without compromising quality or strategy.