Java Evolutions with Badr Kacimi and Simon Ritter

For the December edition of BeJUG, we're heading to Colruyt Group, Zwijnaarde with two speakers, Badr Kacimi and Simon Ritter, who are looking into the improvements of the Java language and runtime.

Schedule

• 18:00: Doors open + Food and Drinks
• 18:45: Intro and BeJUG updates
• 18:50: Session 1 (Quicky)
• 19:05: Little break
• 19:15: Session 2 + QA
• 20:45: Mingling + Drinks

Topics

Badr's Topic: Exploring Project Loom in Java: The Future of Concurrency
This Quickie session will focus on the technical advancements of Virtual Threads, providing engineers and developers with insights into how Java is evolving to support high-performance, scalable applications with simpler concurrency models.

About Badr
Badr Kacimi (LinkedIn) is a Senior Software Engineer at Blue Harvest Belgium. He has contributed to impactful projects across finance, travel, and other industries. He specializes in Java and AI-driven solutions, is passionate about tech innovation, and writes insightful articles. In his downtime, he enjoys football and e-sports.

Simon's Topic: The Art of Java Language Pattern Matching
The goal of project Amber within OpenJDK is to explore the inclusion of smaller, productivity-oriented Java language features. Pattern matching is one part of this that has delivered new functionality in recent versions.

Pattern matching combines application code logic to test if an expression has a specific type or structure and extract components of its state for processing.

Pattern matching is now well embedded in the Java language using the following features, defined by JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs):

· Pattern matching for instanceof (JEP 433)
· Pattern matching for switch (JEP 441)
· Record patterns (JEP 440)
· Unnamed patterns and variables (JEP 456)
· Primitive types in patterns, instanceof and switch (JEP 455)

In this session, we’ll look at the details of these new language features and a more general look at pattern matching.

We’ll also have some fun with several Pattern Puzzlers that show how you need to be careful with some edge cases.

The session will hopefully both be informative and fun!

About Simon
Simon Ritter (Twitter, LinkedIn) is the Deputy CTO of Azul. Simon joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. He has been presenting Java technologies to developers since 1999, focusing on the core Java platform as well as client and embedded applications. At Azul, he continues to help people understand Java and Azul's JVM products.

Simon is a Java Champion and a two-time recipient of the JavaOne Rockstar award. In addition, he represents Azul on the JCP Executive Committee, the OpenJDK Vulnerability Group as well as the JSR Expert Group since Java SE 9.

Additional notes:

• This meetup includes food. Please keep your RSVP status up to date so we do not waste any of our food.
• Some pictures might be made. If you feel uncomfortable about this, please mention this to the organizers (or anyone with a camera).