Peter Pilgrim :: Java Champion :: Enterprise Blog

I remember the year 2010 for the FIFA World Cup Final in South Africa watching the amazing tournament matches on BBC TV. Sadly, 2010 marked end of the JAVAWUG, I stopped leading the Java User Group, because attendance to the monthly talks nosedived in the summer mouths. I had had enough of running a user group, even though creating the entity was one of the best decisions I ever took.  So I personally invested money in my own training, Scala Object Functional Programming with Martin Odersky in London.

The misery of Lloyds Banking Group with Halifax Bank of Scotland really reached it’s pinnacle in 2010. LBG had wasted an opportunity to innovate in the 2008 and 2009, whilst UBS had written off 40 billion Swiss Francs in the credit crunch, it had survived market dislocation of 2007 to 2008, and subsequently wrote off  less than a billion pounds. The government and the chief executive on 2009 forced through a unsatisfactory merger with HBOS, claiming that they were going create “one bank”, and then I knew the truth. Now everyone in the world knows the truth. They decided, in 2010, to invest in Microsoft Silverlight and deprecate / divest in any Java enterprise involvement. It was a punch in the face for me personally. I desperately tried to get out of the bank into another bank before the inevitable happened.  It would have been much better to be one punching out first than be the one who felt punched … Too late was the cry, then when I heard the news shortly after arriving back to work after JavaOne 2010. I left Lloyds, I laughed out loud, then not long afterwards, I read a blog Microsoft had then deprecated Silverlight itself, such is life, some say.

I really have bittersweet memories of 2011, like Adele, my relationship with software development, my career was over. I thought I would hold out for a Scala position inside investment banks in London. I only ever met one person in a bank who was actively developing with new Scala technology. To my own mind, all I found was lies, damned lies and recruitment marketing *noise*.

I almost quit software engineering with Java, because of stupidity, and personal distress, around the time of early Summer 2011, I wanted to just stop right then. I could have chosen a completely different path, but I was saved by fate. Ironically the riots in England happened two months later (August 2011), which meant it showed also that some of our young English people were just as upset, frustrated with their lot, circumstances and life and worries about the future. The economy was shot, we all knew it. I was young in the 1990s and suffered and rose through the downturn. Boom and bust then and it is still going on.

Companies were laying off more and more people in 2011. Listening to the news or watching the TV, we were constantly reminded of the pain, suffering of society. All of this, the very real lack of confidence, the downgrade of social expectations, reached a peak with a dwindling pool of disposable incomes, the worry of getting into ever increasing debt, a lack of vision from the main political parties, and missing solutions. I wonder just what it was going to take to get through. I had just become a JavaOne 2012 paper reviewer, which was a massive positive. I was going to JavaOne 2012, another positive, my talk was accepted. I received invitations to talk at the Silicon Valley code camp and JavaFX User Group, which more positives.  These were balanced by the negatives. I noticed empty buildings in the city and the interviews had dried up. I also observed the pained expressions of people really going through an economic downtown in London, as I was out and about, and then it took just one unsightly social event in Tottenham (ironically Adele’s hometown), to tip the balance.

Chasing Pavements for me meant also searching for a full time job and/or hunting down a lucrative IT contract. Adele’s song transposed itself in to juxtaposition of contemporary thoughts, about the compromises that anyone may make in their lives, and I found my asking the same questions over and over. Am I worth it? I hated this job-search-contract-win-thing, this constant thought at the back of my head, of introspective and retrospection. I hated it so much that almost stopped about thinking about what is so important. What is it about Java and Software development that I really like? Who am I? What am I about? What do I want to next? If that is the plan, how can I get there? So how will I live, survive and support a family?

At the beginning of the year, I thought it would be fantastic chance to get into Scala development role, whilst I still added my long hard worn experience in Java EE, Spring Framework, enterprise middle office development. I actually thought Scala professional development would have been some catalyst, an injection into the phase. With being out of work, I was free of the constraint of silos now could I get a role that uses Scala in some great project, probably in a financial role. What I found in the job market of 2011, was fire fighting roles mostly, just business-as-usual, keeping the engine fire going, and no chance to add a new technology or change. In other words, I found inflexibility, doubts and boredom. The amount of contract and job interviews that I attended where the interviewer wanted me to program Java like if the language was C/C++ was shocking. I learnt pretty fast to ask up front before going there. If I noticed multi-thread in the specification, I thought this is serious, I had better ask. In the end, I had to quickly blow out my Scala dreams in London and re-market myself [again] as a credible Java enterprise engineer again. It did not help at this time, that Scala was getting the wrong type of news on the Internet wires, people started to complain about Scala’s complexity, and there was suddenly a slug contest starting for the next language beyond that of Java. The final nail in the innovation coffin, at least for banking IT ,were the consistent questions. Do you know Java performance tuning or how to tune a JVM? Suddenly squeezing the last ounce out of Java was the name of the game, as well as, trying to tell them first, Java EE should take care of threads and two that they still not put business logic inside stored procedures in PL/SQL and a database. Ah well, I said. I did try.

There were even so laughable attempts to pair-program or show off just how supremely agile certain teams were operating inside of bank’s in my experience. I had a bad feeling practising agile or wounded version of SCRUM. I know because I attended many interviews where they wanted me to pair program as part of the recruitment process. In my view, investment banks, are the most dysfunctional areas in where to introduce XP programming or SCRUM. I wish you sincerely very good luck finding and retaining the very best and greatest of developers. This is because the idea of self-managed teams goes against the traditional financial IT project management grain of wood and the inflexible silo environment that the Agile manifesto sets out to improve. Luckily, there are better approaches at being agile, which could work inside a bank.

I began to see the word Agile as a severely crippled in 2011 and now cringe-worthy in 2012, and maybe because I listened and had been in the privilege company of one certain Barry Hawkins now. The word Agile by itself is now meaningless. I was so pleased, by the way, to have attended JavaPosse Round Up three times in a row (2009, 2010, and 2011) and yes I say to Barry, we should shoot Agile in the head and reinvent software development processes now.

In 2011, there were happy times and I have to say it was the great people at QCon London, the JavaPosse Round-Up, the ACCU Conference Oxford UK, JavaOne Review Selection Committee, JavaOne and Java-dot-net presentation team, Kirk Pepperdine and Heinz Kabutz, Stephen Chin, Silicon Valley Code Camp, and the entire Devoxx team associates and some cool friends in Menlo Park California who really made the year positive for me.

I am badly affected by the year 2011, I think. It is going to take me a while to get over it, despite the many successes that I happened to achieve. It still feels now, in January 2012, that I am glad to have escaped that one, I felt that I was just treading water in my own mind, and my own confidence has taken a severe low blow. Don’t get me wrong, of course, I know there are lots of people out there who are feeling worse than I do and have much more pressing worries. Hey, nothing feels like it, until it happens to you.

Also when you are searching for work that itself becomes unpaid work too. So bang goes my time investigating or researching interesting topics like Play Framework, Scalate, JavaFX or Scala or something distinctly completely non technology like learning a new language or playing a musical instrument. I hate job search for this sole reason alone, because it consumes all of your valuable quality time. When you are job hunting there is always thought running at the back of your head wondering if you are not doing enough of it, especially when you need to provide income, for your family and loved one, and soon.

The year 2011 has made me more guarded about communicating outside of cliqué of respected people. My desire to self-promote is weakened to point now where I do think hard – do I need to write that tweet? should I upload that photograph? I am more sensitive in 2012 than in 2010 when I was freely enthusiastic about running a Java User Group. Now, I tend to keep mum, clam up for a bit during a heated discussion, I observe the participants instead, actively watch and listen to the others before jumping up with my view. The benefit being that I have more quality control rather than an out pouring of quantity, especially when most of the stuff I see is everyone else’s rubbish. Besides nobody I know or who I am connected with tweets depressing psychological bullshit or downbeat personal vibes, like “I going to kill myself tomorrow morning” or “OMG my man has cheated on me! I found out he has just slept with another woman!”. It is all deeply impersonal, self-gratification mockery and it reeks of indiscipline, when sometimes all you should say is the real personal stuff in the time of need. Therefore, I predict I will continue to be reticent in my out-going communication well into 2012.

This week we heard about 3500 people to go, face the axe at Royal Bank of Scotland, inside the corporate investment banking division. The economic downturn has made fools of all of us. If it has not happened to you (yet) or you don’t happen care (too bad for you then), just pray it never ever does (death may take you first) and also lucky you.

January	February	March	April
Planning Bathroom InstallationInterview w/ Blackrock, HSBC, BarCap, JP MorganPlanning Java Posse RoundUp 2011 and vacation rental	Bathroom installation (1st half of the month)Attended interviews for various investment banks including RBS and Black RockJava Posse Round-Up 2011	QCon Conference 2011 JCP Panel Discussion Won a Kindle Wi-FIOutplacement StartsSkills Matter Functional Exchange, Cuke-Up! Guest VIP pass courtesy of Wendy;-)Created my “Scala Adoption” talk with my JVM language and  knowledge predictions, uploaded it Linked-In.comTerry’s B-Day	Attended ACCU Conference 2011 OxfordPerformed my “Introduction to Scala talk” at the ACCUMy B-Day Interviews dried up for a while. I did not know why, but I started to worry about the prospects.
May	June	July	August
Interview w/ Black Rock Interview w/ CitiGroup, Interview w/ Credit SuisseRumours of Morgan Stanley Scala development interestKohsuke Jenkins SkillsMatterMy outplacement continued Start your own Internet Online  business with Linked-inc.om Catastrophe!	Clojure at CitiGroup (seriously)?! Yes CitiGroup were recruiting for functional programmers for their Risk Front Office divisionInvitation to JavaOne Selection ReviewScala Exchange at Skills Matter. Guest VIP pass courtesy of Wendy A series of Mizuho Interviews – perhaps they should have been using Apache Camel or ServiceMix(?) Clojure Dojo End of Scala adoption my attempt at investment bank in London Re-marketed myself as Java EE engineer – This Scala adoption did not panned out at all. It seemed me to be a lot of fear, uncertainty and deception to me. Invitation to be 2011 JavaOne reviewer for call-for-papers ;-D Thank you Simon Ritter	A London consultancy interviewAttended Job outplacement workshops on Networking and Linked-In Interviews now dried up for the Summer Reviewing JavaOne 2011 call-for-papers JavaFX Session accepted for JavaOne ;-D Booking travel for San Francisco in October! Personal disaster recovery started with some real retrospective ;-/	Prepared my JavaFX 2.0 talk by writing demos for JavaOneTLC Presentation Pronto released on Android MarketConfirmed attendance to Kirk Pepperdine’s Performing Tuning Course in Crete next monthStructuring my own Progressive JavaFX talk outline for JavaOne 2011 in October Aborted Collective Code-Camp event in London, I concluded the UK is not Crested Butte, Colorado. Holiday in Lanzarote – quiet area, drives inland and site seeing (much do something like this together next year)
September	October	November	December
Decided to look outside of banking IT for contracts and Java development roles Find new recruitment agentsKirk Pepperdine’s Java Performance Tuning Course Enjoyable course and time in Chania Greece, a real highlight!Attended a couple of ThoughtWorks interview – a lot of brain and intelligent tests	Attended JavaOne 2011 (Thank you again Simon Ritter!) Performed “Progressive JavaFX 2.0″ talk ;-DAttended Silicon Valley Code CampJavaFX Sillicon Valley User Group, performed  talk for Stephen Chin and bay are community Stayed with my friends Larry and Patti at their lovely house Initial Interview with IB Boost Ltd Interview with two “cloud” computing companies – 100+ JVMs on 32+ servers End of personal disaster recovery for now Interview with household-name broadcast TV company on Java and Agile Interview with two Gaming Betting companies ThoughtWorks UK interview process took far too long for my liking that I had to bail on them Disastrous non-interview outside of banking that caused me to come to my senses!	Preparation for Devoxx University session w/ Stephen ChinInterview with IB BoostAccepted job offer IB BoostDevoxx 2011 University Session w/ Stephen Chin”Happy is a cigar called Hamlet” Started work at IB Boost Limited Regarding wider community Java stuff, I decided on non-involvement for a while at least.	Getting into IB Boost Ltd Returning to private life with no regrets, mulling my thoughts about my lucky escape.Family life, buying presents, gifts and enjoying festivities.Xmas at homeLooking forward to the next year 2012

IMHO the best recruitment agencies are ____  TBD  ;-)

IMHO the worst recruitment agencies of all time are  ____  “ballleeetttted!”

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In order to get JavaFX 2.0 to work with a Maven Repository, requires some fudge factor. Because one cannot simply redistribute JavaFX Library, you have to install the libraries manually into a local Maven repository.

This is my MSDOS command script to do it:

REM Installing Oracle JavaFX 2.0 Runtime into a Local Maven Repository
REM Based on the information from JFXtras 2.0 Project
REM http://code.google.com/p/jfxtras/wiki/ContributorGettingStarted
REM Peter Pilgrim 12th September 2011 in Crete

REM set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_27
REM set javafx.home=C:\Program Files\Oracle\JavaFX 2.0 SDK
REM set JAVAFX_HOME=C:\Program Files\Oracle\JavaFX 2.0 SDK
REM set javafx.home=%JAVAFX_HOME%
REM set USERPROFILE=C:\Users\Peter

REM Install the JavaFX Java Library
call mvn install:install-file -Dfile="%javafx.home%\rt\lib\jfxrt.jar" -DgroupId=com.oracle -DartifactId=javafx-runtime -Dversion=2.0 -Dpackaging=jar



pushd "%javafx.home%\rt\bin"
del /f /q %USERPROFILE%\Documents\javafx-dll-temp-bin.jar
"%JAVA_HOME%\bin\jar" -cf  %USERPROFILE%\Documents\javafx-dll-temp-bin.jar *.dll
popd 

REM Install Native libraries
call mvn install:install-file -Dfile=%USERPROFILE%\Documents\javafx-dll-temp-bin.jar -DgroupId=com.oracle -DartifactId=javafx-runtime -Dversion=2.0 -Dpackaging=jar -Dclassifier=windows

REM Copy the binaries to the Maven Local Repository
copy "%javafx.home%\rt\bin"  %USERPROFILE%\.m2\repository\com\oracle\javafx-runtime\bin

REM End.

Once you have the local repository set up, once include a Maven dependency into a project like this:

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.oracle</groupId>
            <artifactId>javafx-runtime</artifactId>
            <version>2.0</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.8.2</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

Thus the group is com.oracle, the artifact id javafx-runtime, and the version is 2.0.

There you go.
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Hello there!

This is a blog entry is just an embedded Vimeo Plug-in. It is my video recording of the JavaPosse Round-Up 2011 closing session. I edited it a couple of months ago and locked it privately and now it is time to unlock it.

I always take a video camcorder to Colorado for the Round Up and it was my third time in a row of attending this fantastic open space conference since 2009. I was very proud and fortunate to be able to go, organise yet another vacation rental house, meet all the house mates and the conference attendees, who were all nice to meet and greet. If you looking for deep Java related technology discussions with bright developers, designers and architects, then the JPR is the place to be. I am into snow boarding and you might be too. Crested Butte was one of the best half pipes and free style parks anywhere in the world, just make sure you invest in a decent helmet.

Fellow Java Champion, Bruce Eckel, deserves all the plaudits for organising such as splendid venue. It was the fifth round up for the JavaPosse.

I think Dick Wall has been very busy with doing this, that, and the other and may be this closing session episode got lost in the ether. So this is Episode 343.5. Note this the point five in the episode number as it could have been inserted in my opinion between 343 and 344.

Also I would like to tell you about the Scala Programming Summer Camp that is Bruce Eckel is organising in Crested Butte. Sadly, I am unlikely to make over to USA, in late July, and I would love to go and chew the Scala programming language fat. The cost of the open space Summer Camp is extremely low, only 200.0 USD! The biggest travel cost are the flights and the accommodation stay, but if you go, I think you find it was the best experience of technology / activity balance that you will ever have.

Enjoy my video and I gladly receive any feedback that you the reader/viewer may have.

JavaPosse Round Up 2011 Closing Session Episode 343.5 from Peter Pilgrim on Vimeo.

Thank you all!

PS: Hopefully I will find that future tech job and then also make to JPR12

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@peter_pilgrim: Ow! I watched panorama via the iplayer finished at fifty http://tinyurl.com/3dm2yzn and the future  prospects were bleak

@imccaffery: @peter_pilgrim i know the future is bleak i was on the programme

British Television viewers are probably very familiar with Panorama, the investigative journal program on the terrestrial  BBC ONE TV. I watched this program using the iPlayer [sadly only available to the UK - This is the UK link to watch the episode on BBC iPlayer site]. The episode was called Finished at Fifty, and followed four individuals who were aged 50 or over as they attempted to find employment. The 30 minute programme included Lord Digby Jones, a former business leader, who volunteered his advice for free to the four individuals. Some of the advice was about changing career, other advice was to refresh the approach to job hunting, the other bits were uncompromising.

I found this report, Finished at Fifty, to be one of the most alarming looks into UK job market. I found it difficult to understand why people are labelled by business and society finished in their middle ages. I am not old enough yet to be in this upsetting age bracket, but I know plenty of people who are, and also the future prospects for all are being squeezed.

On the one hand, we have young graduates from university, who are struggling to find that very first job and with the other hand, industry is behaving in ageism way. Hence the twitter call in the first section of the article. I tweeted my feelings and empathy about prejudices against older people, and it was Ian McCaffery, one of the individuals from the Panorama report, a former bar manager, who lived in Salford, near Manchester, who got back with a response.

I know the future is bleak, I was on the programme – Ian McCaffery,

You may wonder what this article has to do with information technology. It all has to do with future technology (#futuretech) and I think it is just plan wrong.

• Our industry is based on information processing and knowledge workers, if we start to prejudice against older and younger workers, then ultimately we are going hurt our future innovations. We are focusing on a select band of population and that is not morally right or fair.
• Our information technology is relatively young in comparison to the field of modern civil engineering and even younger than to architecture and medicine, which have been going for thousands of years.  We still do not know exactly how and what we can do yet. Why should we cut our nose off to spite our face? Surely good wisdom and experience has to be great for IT.
• If older people are going to be treated this way, then it probably means we need to look back to the bad practices of the early industrial revolution of 200 – 250 years ago. Workers had poor rights, conditions and guarantees of employment. Are we in a democracy not repeating this troublesome path with information workers?
• As science progresses and we are living longer, I think we need to find a way to value experience and older engineers, developers and designers as a asset and not a liability. Our society has to support sustainable employment for all of its people and not just the few.
• The idea of an exclusive set of only the privileged is a partial reason why so much of the contemporary world is upset with the banking industry in general and the idea of banker’s bonuses for the only very top performers. (Not all employees who work for investment bank get huge bonuses.) Knowledge should not be exclusive to the few, that is why our industry invented open source software and consistently values it
• On the other hand just getting older is not guarantee for future employment, it should be about continuous professional competence, belief in continual learning and assured delivery of products to stakeholders. I believe those people who want the former should be rewarded. There is nothing in that latter sentence that suggests that younger or older people cannot deliver value.

I believe you can be software developer until you are late in life. Our industry is about learning, let it remain that way please.

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On a much happier note – Yes. You can breathe a sign of relief at this blog entry – I have time to tell you about Episode 347 of the JavaPosse podcast. This was record at the Round-Up 2011, in Crested Butte, Colorado in February. This was the session that I hosted and shared, called Technical Leadership. Jim Hurne, Tomas Stechly, Brian Gray, Guy Pascal-Gascoigne and a few others.

You can go and listen to Episode 347 online at the iLounge or try this German podcast website if your enterprise net-nanny-state thingie at work blocks you. [Businesses should not block twitter any more. Give it up! Everyone is going to be carrying a slate by 2016 so they are going to lose you to social networking no matter what they think they are saving you from. Ah well!]

This session is about:-

• What is technical leadership?
• Motivating other developer
• Coaching
• Mentorship
• Brown paper bag sessions
• Google IO videos
• Virtual learning in groups
• What happens if everyone in your company is a senior developer? Huh? How do you technical lead that situation?
• Getting off my bum (or USA "Getting off your ass!") going to speak to junior engineers or new starters or new project starters
• How on earth do we build the next generation of great developers?
• Community leading
• Delegation of the technical lead position – rotation
• Organic "event stimuli" leadership versus linear "threat/reward" leadership
• Collaborating within teams
• Motivation – how to motivate developers and other team members
• Difference between a technical leader and a line manager
• Buffering between the development team, the team lead and senior management, stakeholders

Thanks Dick Wall, for delivering this #JPR11 session earlier to us, and Happy Birthday week!

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