New paradigms for Java developers & A better way to measure software dev skills

We're excited to announce our next meetup! As usual, we'll take care of food, drinks and awesome sessions - you just need to bring you ;-)

This meetup will feature two talks aimed at (Java) developers:
Piet van Dongen will kick off, sharing how software teams can become more valuable leveraging new paradigms like infrastructure-as-actual-code, serverless, and AI pair programming.
Next, Roy Wasse and Bert Jan Schrijver will share their journey to find a better way to measure software development skills, based on scientific research.

All sessions will be presented in English; RSVP now for an evening of learning and fun!

The meetup will be at the OpenValue office in Utrecht (directions: https://route.openvalue.eu), enough free parking spaces available.

Agenda

17:30 Walk in
18:00 Food
18:30 Talk 1 (see below)
19:30 Break
19:45 Talk 2 (see below)
20:45 Drinks

First talk: "5 hard to swallow pills for Java developers" by Piet van Dongen
In an increasingly unpredictable world, predictable software development and deployment methodologies are losing their value quickly. To become more valuable to their users, software delivery teams need to learn how to leverage new paradigms like infrastructure-as-actual-code, serverless, and AI pair programming. In this talk, Piet will explain how Java software engineers can learn to move from slow and predictable to agile and competitive.

About Piet
A Senior Cloud-native Software Engineer at OpenValue, Piet helps organizations rapidly create value through software. Sometimes he’s the architect, other times, the engineer, the analyst, or the teacher. He loves people as much as technology and believes you cannot separate the two.

Second talk: "How good of a developer are you?" by Roy Wasse and Bert Jan Schrijver
Are you a good Java developer? What makes a good developer? And how can we measure this?
If you ask Oracle they'll say OCP (Oracle Certified Programmer), which means that you know when the compiler makes those red squiggly lines in your IDE disappear.
If you ask FAANG companies it means you can balance a binary tree on a whiteboard.
All of these methods involve some knowledge and memory, but have very little to do with actual day-to-day programming, technical skill, problem solving and creativity. And.. don’t you think it’s annoying you have to take all these technical tests even though you’ve been coding for many years?
In this talk we'll describe our long journey to find a better way to test software development skills; a model based on scientific research, to measure actual coding skills, in a realistic environment. Demo & code included. We're currently working with the (international) Foojay.io community to use these measures and set up a more realistic certification process.

About Roy
I love the constant challenge of staying on top of the latest IT & Java technology. It’s incredible how much innovation there is and how it improves the world around us. Sharing and applying these insights is what drives me and what we do at OpenValue where I work as a director. I’m also a former JUG leader at NLJUG, program lead for Codemotion and active member at Foojay. You can easily reach me on Twitter at @roywasse.

About Bert Jan
Bert Jan is CTO at OpenValue and focuses on Java, software architecture, Continuous Delivery and DevOps. Bert Jan is a Java Champion, JavaOne Rock Star speaker, Duke's Choice Award winner and leads NLJUG, the Dutch Java User Group. He loves to share his experience by speaking at conferences, writing for the Dutch Java magazine and helping out Devoxx4Kids with teaching kids how to code. Bert Jan is easily reachable on Twitter at @bjschrijver.