As we work more with distributed systems, microservices and legacy services, we introduce a web of inter-service dependencies that cause us to face many challenges across our development and deployment pipeline. Resource consumption, deployment time, our testing feedback cycle, third party service flakiness and costing can cause problems. We talked to Andrew Morgan, Consultant at OpenCredo and speaker at the upcoming JAX London about how the technique of ‘API Simulation’ (modern service virtualisation) can be used to overcome these issues.

Admittedly I’ve seen this one in use only one time, but it was one time too many. For some reason I keep seeing clients come up with this during design discussions and reviews, therefore it makes it into the list of Akka anti-patterns.

I couldn’t attend this year’s JavaOne opening keynote because my schedule didn’t allow me to travel to San Francisco this time. What a pity. Luckily, the keynote was broadcasted via live-stream. Therefore I made myself comfortable in front of my home office screen — after all, 2.5 hours of news from the Java World were waiting for me…

No software architect can resist the temptation to talk about their experience with microservices. We launched an interview series with experts who talked about the benefits and challenges of microservices, when people should not use them and what impact they have on an organization. Our third interviewee is Daniel Bryant, Chief Scientist at OpenCredo and speaker at the upcoming JAX London.

This is it. The voting will close on Thursday as we are rapidly approaching JAX London, so here’s the last round of nominees. If you want to know what RISC-HTML, Quasar, H2 Database, MapStruct and Habitat are all about, you’re in luck. Here’s a sneak peek at the final round of nominees.

Last week was the annual JavaOne conference in San Francisco. I had the opportunity to attend the conference and even had a chance to speak in a session — my session was titled “Java EE, Beyond the Basics.” This article summarizes what was presented at JavaOne regarding what’s coming in Java EE 8 and 9. Every single speaker made it a point to state that Java EE’s 8 and 9 plans are in early stages and this is all subject to change.

The concept of universal workspaces, championed by Eclipse Che, gave Red Hat the ability to easily replicate and distribute the entire development workspace. Red Hat and Codenvy have integrated Che with OpenShift, providing an easy way to copy both your runtime, and your development workspace.

Kotlin already looks like a tool that is going to improve productivity significantly. We anticipate that it is definitely going to reduce the pain points faced by Java developers. Here is why we think Kotlin will be the next big thing for the Java community.

Kotlin 1.0.4 brings JavaScript support, as well as many improvements related to the IDE and build tools. Let’s see what else is new!

I’m sure by now everyone reading this has heard a great deal about Continuous Delivery, which I’ll refer to as CD from here on. In short, you do it to accelerate the process of software delivery – which means you can see the value of coding more quickly.

DevOpsCon 2016 will take place in Munich between 5-8 December. What is the idea behind DevOpsCon? How does this conference bring together a broad range of topics such as Continuous Delivery to Microservices, Cloud, Container and Corporate Culture? Program-Chair Sebastian Meyen will give you some insights in this article.

Machine learning may sound futuristic, but it’s not. Speech recognition systems such as Cortana or Search in e-commerce systems have already shown us the benefits and challenges that go hand in hand with these systems. In our machine learning series we will introduce you to several tools that make all this possible. Next stop: MOA, an open source software specific for machine learning/data mining on data streams in real time.

There are many types of programmers you may encounter in a team, starting with those who think they know it all and ending with the lone wolves who hate the idea of working with others. Some may spend too much time thinking about unnecessary details and all the backup plans the project does not need while others may ignore every guidance, process or discipline possible. But does this mean they don’t have anything in common?

September saw the launch of the Blockchain Alliance for Good (Bisgit.IoV) – a free membership organization aimed at boosting the usage of blockchain technology to generate good social and environmental solutions. The Alliance unites blockchain enthusiasts from around the world and provides them with a springboard for “good” innovations. We talked to Barbara Mellish, president of Blockchain Alliance for Good, about the future of blockchain, the industries where blockchain activity may flourish and the need to revolutionize this technology.