JavaLand Top-Speaker Check: Jochen Mader

Jochen, at this year's JavaLand, participants can look forward to your talk on supply chain security. Why did you choose this particular topic? 

I would like to say that I have always focused on security. The truth is that I often only looked at security from a compliance perspective. It wasn't until cloud infrastructures became more important, architectures more complex and supply chains longer that I could no longer see the issue as an unpleasant afterthought. Then came SolarWinds, Colonial Pipeline and a war involving drones and infrastructure attacks. Supply chain security is an important component for protecting IT, which has become a central part of our everyday lives. Supply chain security starts with us developers and I wanted to make it easier to get started. 

What developments or trends are you currently following in the Java world? 

The new features in the JVM are at the top of the list, of course. My personal favorite is the Foreign Functions and Memory API, as this is a topic that is becoming important in my current project. 

Where do you live and how do you travel to JavaLand? 

I live near the beautiful city of Regensburg. I will be traveling by train. I love traveling by train, even if it has unfortunately become a game of chance whether you arrive on time. Nevertheless, the train is the best place for me to code. 

How do you pass the time on the journey? Do you have any recommendations for reading or podcasts? 

Even after all the years I've been giving talks, this time it's once again a case of my talk being created during the journey. When it comes to tech topics, I'm a research person. I find a topic, look for relevant posts and put together a reading list that I then work through. That's why I don't follow any fixed blogs or podcasts. I'm currently working my way through the topic of databases again and am working my way through the book "Database Internals" by Alex Petrov. It's not an easy read, but I've been fascinated by databases for a very long time. 

What are you most looking forward to at this JavaLand? 

JavaLand is a great place to meet new people and exchange experiences with them. I've spent many a night discussing software architecture, Java features and Lego kits and I'm looking forward to some heated discussions again this year.