BrabantJUG @ HighTech Innovators

On June 23th we will be hosting another BrabantJUG meetup. Our host HighTech Innovators in Den Bosch will be opening its doors for us.

With Rijo Sam and Jessica Siewert we have two awesome speakers who will share their knowledge!

Timetable:
17:00 Doors open
18:00 Food
18:50 Introduction
19:00 Java Beyond Frameworks: Avoiding Lock-In with Agnostic Design by Rijo Sam
19:45 Break
20:00 Help! I hate my teammate! by Jessica Siewert
20:45 Drinks

Java Beyond Frameworks: Avoiding Lock-In with Agnostic Design
The Problem: Modern Java apps often get stuck in their frameworks. Tools like Spring Boot and Quarkus speed things up, but they come with hidden costs such as vendor lock-in, heavy dependencies, and rigid architecture. So what happens when your app outgrows the framework or something better comes along?

The Solution: This talk introduces a layered approach to Java development, isolating framework dependencies while keeping core logic pure with Java and Jakarta EE. Through examples, you’ll see:
- Strategies for replacing framework-specific annotations
- Techniques to decouple business logic from frameworks
- Approaches to cloud integration without framework coupling

Trade-Offs: Yes, this demands more upfront effort, including writing custom persistence layers, rigorous tests, and meticulous documentation. But the payoff is code that’s adaptable, testable, and maintainable across frameworks, teams, and decades.

Key Takeaways:
- Practical patterns for agnostic design
- When (and when not) to adopt this approach

About Rijo
Rijo is a software developer and public speaker based in the Netherlands. He possesses extensive experience building applications in the payments and credit sector of the banking domain.

Outside of work, he’s usually on his bike trying to beat his cycling buddies.

Help! I hate my teammate!
Everybody now and then comes into a new team, or someone else comes into theirs. More often than not, cooperation does not go seamlessly straight away. Sometimes this evens out by itself along the way. But in many occasions, it does not. Ways of working could be different. Something one values a lot, may not be valued at all by another, creating conflict. One may criticise or get criticised and things get uncomfortable. Teams may split into "camps" or one person just never agrees with the others. Team members may feel stepped over, pushed aside or misunderstood. If this goes on for too long, team members start to feel generally disrespected and demotivated. Then there are
cases one member feels another is not qualified, or just a bully. This goes beyond forming and storming, this becomes a (team-wide) problem. In this talk you will see you are not the only one experiencing these challenges. You will hear experiences on solving these kind of cases (or not!), get an idea of how others deal with it and what your options are if you ever find yourself in the weeds (again). In any case, you probably will be surprised by yourself or your team mate in one way or another...

About Jessica
Jessica is a software engineer specialised in micro services in Scala and Kotlin. She has worked in Finance, logistics and since a few years, she has devoted herself to contribute to the Dutch Energy Transition. For this reason she joined Het ConsultancyHuis two years ago. Jessica has a great sense of team building and working relationships. To this end, during her 12+ years in the field, she has taken several training programmes and has fulfilled multiple roles as scrum master of teams. Even when she is not the scrum master, she takes pride in making significant contributions to the transcend of the team from the old team members to a team with all new members. In addition, in order to provide the users and people in The Netherlands a better experience regarding the enormous upgrade of the Dutch energy network, she takes joy and pride in working together with neighbouring teams. She likes to share her experiences in both engineering and working relationships with her fellow crafts(wo)men.