jOpenSpace 2017

Who still remembers jOpenSpace 2008, when we wondered whether Google would win in the cloud with its supercomputer, which we may not have known was called Borg, or whether AWS would win with its virtual machines? Mostly we were talking nonsense and sounding clever outside the Jizerka chalet. That's the experience I'll always associate with jOpenSpace. Almost nobody knew anything about the cloud then, but most of us were talking about it. Every year I attend jOpenSpace, I expect to learn something groundbreaking and experience something unexpected. I'm not talking about the legendary drinking sessions, of which I vaguely remember potato chips floating in the hot tub at Žďákova Lhota.

This year's talks were summed up for me by my roommate Luboš ‘Banter’ Račanský. jOpenSpace is special, and this year reminded me of that again. I stirred up some controversy about Kotlin, which I'll get to, but mainly I came across several interesting things. Or rather, they clicked as I listened to the guys talk. Gradle, for example, might help us optimize builds if we go with a monorepo. There was also Ferš's five-minute introduction to his startup dativery.com.

Poor Leoš Přikryl caught it from me over Kotlin. First I torpedoed his presentation when he compared Java and Kotlin on a slide, then I had another go at Kotlin in my own talk. It all started with Lukáš Křečan and his analogy about cabbage shredders, which he used to explain the theory of constraints.

I'll try to retell it. You work as the cabbage shredder at a hipster bistro in Karlín that serves a single dish: pork, dumplings and cabbage. You do your job as well as you can and shred the cabbage. But your work is useless because the dumpling makers can't keep up. The bistro sells a measly few portions even if you shred until your fingers bleed.

I take the stage and let the esteemed geek audience, packed with programmers, choose the subject of my ten-minute talk. They pick Why I stopped programming and don't regret it, subtitled Lead or Follow. Incidentally, I recommend Scott Berkun's excellent article You Have to Lead or Follow. It was natural to pick up on Křečan's talk. I explained that I didn't want to be the shredder optimizing his grater and chainmail gloves while the product was worthless. What's the point of heaps of cabbage if nobody buys the pork, dumplings and cabbage? I went on to say I was too old to build my 153rd data access layer. And when we meet there again in ten years, nobody will give a damn about programmers that age, fifty. I dealt the last blow to bruised programmer egos by saying how ridiculous it seemed in that context to debate Kotlin, which was already six or however many years old. Forget perfect cabbage shredders if you want to change something. They're just one piece, often the least important one, as in my article Why technology doesn't matter, or the technical mind's bias. I delivered it like an eighteen-year-old punk who's just fucked your daughter, opened your last bottled beer and is now laughing in your face. Unfortunately the only person cracking up under the bench was Jiri Fabian ☢. I couldn't tell whether he was laughing at me, at the audience or because he liked where the Bitcoin price was going.

The controversy was worth it, because only dead fish go with the flow. I listened to a few talks. I particularly liked Novoj's, inspired by Wait But Why on Elon Musk's Neuralink, and Satai's reading recommendations hit the mark too. Then it was time for the traditional run. Banter, Novoj and I ran together and talked books, history, military affairs and sports. The hour flew by. A quick shower and dinner was served.

To cut it short, beer and shots were flying, Petr Jůza laughed at my Ironman ambitions and casually mentioned that he'd finished one in under twelve hours without training, and then Filemon and I bet one Bitcoin. The bet is somewhere on YouTube. I said Bitcoin would be worth nothing in five years. We'll see. We'll announce the result at jOpenSpace 2022. Maybe I'll see you there. It'll be worth it as always.

I'd also like to thank Novoj and Zdenda Henk for organizing the whole event so well, and of course the sponsors who contributed to this unconference.