sebastiandaschner news

Hello and welcome to newsletter #65!

In October, I was speaking at the ByteMyCode conference in Krakow, on the topic of state-of-the-art Enterprise Java with Quarkus. I enjoyed giving the session and the many conversations around the conference day, and we were really lucky with a sunny weather in an apparently otherwise gray Polish autumn :) In November, I’ll also speak at Øredev in Malmö, and Java Summit-IL in Tel Aviv, so there will be a bit more traveling again these days.

Mastodon — the New Twitter?

And of course, these days everyone seem to create Mastodon accounts to have alternatives to Twitter, so myself as well (@daschners@mastodon.social). My first experience is a bit sceptical, on the one hand it’s nice to have a clean timeline that only shows the tweets (or toots) from folks you follow or retweets thereof in chronological order — I know sounds obvious but we’ve seen into what the Twitter timeline evolved. On the other hand, on Twitter there are still much more people to find and connect, it seems easier to search, and some Mastodon servers seem to have struggled a lot from the sudden extra load — although, as of writing this it, the response times seem to have improved a lot, already.

For now, I’m using a cross poster to post my Tweets on Mastodon as well (this one to be precise). I still think it’s easier to connect on Twitter, and in case you want to reach out, my DMs are open and I’m more likely to see messages there.

I’m curious how this whole thing evolves, also what some potential changes in the Twitter services might be. My prediction for Mastodon is still that either it turns into a new Google Plus, or that we’ll have a similar WhatsApp-Telegram-Threema-Signal mess that we have with messenger apps, but let’s see, I’d be happy to see a free, open-source alternative move forward :)

What’s New

Using Gmail More Effectively

It seems that a lot of people struggle a bit implementing an effective email workflow, especially with regards to INBOX Zero. I’ve overheard many conversations and read articles about how people manage the flood of emails.

I found this quite interesting since for me email really isn’t an issue or something I actively think about, so I’ve recorded a video in which I’m showing how Gmail can help you being more effective in handling your emails. Mainly I’m showing which keyboard shortcuts are there in the Gmail client, how INBOX Zero can be achieved realistically, and how to handle folders and labels, and automation.

Chances are that you’re using your email client every day, so it really pays of to invest some time in learning keyboard shortcuts and setting up a bit of automation.

Using Gmail More Effectively

jwebserver in JDK 18

A handy tool that is included with Java since JDK 18 (in case you needed more reasons to migrate to a recent version) is jwebserver. jwebserver serves the contents of the current shell directory on localhost, or alternatively all network interfaces.

This comes in very handy for web development or quick tests where you need to serve something via HTTP, e.g. JSON responses for microservices.

Quarkus Workshops in December 2022

This is to remind that in case you or your teammates want to learn about modern development with Quarkus, I’ll be holding full-day online workshops on December 12th & 13th.

These workshops aim to boost your knowledge, skills, and productivity for developing and testing modern enterprise applications. We’re going to spend all of these days coding and discussing important Quarkus concepts, in a virtual workshop conducted via Zoom. The advantage of these workshops over watching a video is that you can ask questions live, and that the agenda can be shaped by attendee interest.

Have a look at the individual workshop pages and their agendas, for details:

Thanks a lot for reading and see you next time!