Milen Dyankov

on a mission to help developers build clean, modular, and future-proof software

Recent Posts

  • February 21, 2017

    All Those Little Things

    As developer advocate, I do a fair amount of traveling. Most of my journeys start with about an hour long drive to the airport. It’s nice highway, not a big deal, easy to do it without needless stops. Yet I like to make one stop, get myself out of the car for a while, grab a coffee, smoke, …

    One of the first times I drove there, I stopped at some gas station. It was my first time there. As I was getting out of the car, I realized they had a special place for pets, nearby the main entrance. There was bowl of water and another empty one next to it (presumably to be used to put some food in it). There was also a sign, encouraging pet owners to ask for any assistance they may need. I found this interesting, and proceed to the restroom. A somewhat strange hanger on the wall attracted my attention. It turned out to be a dedicated hanger for motorbike helmets.

  • September 30, 2016

    Developers about OSGi

    Some time ago I published a survey asking developers what they think about OSGi. It took a while to reach some reasonable amount of responses and then to process the results, but finally I’m ready to publish them.

    In a few weeks period there were 220 responses to the survey. Even though there was no question about the location, I’m pretty sure they come mostly from Europe. That is because I could see the responses coming in groups as the survey was promoted at particular local JUGs. Another thing to take into account is that the information about it reached way more than 10000 developers (based on the published number of members of the groups the information was published). With that in mind you can hardly consider 220 responses representative. Never the less it gives you some ideas and things to think about.

  • September 21, 2016

    Micro-services or μServices

    Yesterday someone very well known and respected in Java world (I didn’t ask him for permission, so I’m not mentioning his name), approached Liferay’s booth at JavaOne. He expressed his concerns about the word “μServices” in the message printed on our booth’s wall. I wasn’t there at the time this happened. I spoke with my colleagues few minutes later, as the non-developers were getting worried we made a terrible and embarrassing typo. As a non-native English speaker I wasn’t quite sure what the exact argument was, but it was clear to me the person believed we should have used “micro-services” instead. I urged to reassure my colleagues this is not a typo but an important differentiator in today’s buzzword driven world.

    Liferay booth at JavaOne 2016

  • June 13, 2016

    Java: 21 & Legally drunk!

    I’ve stated that before but allow me to repeat myself: jPrime is one of my favorite conferences. I’ve been there two years in a row and to quote Karol Kaliński “it costs about 80 EUR, but can easily compete with western Europe conferences in terms of quality”. This year, apart from great talks, fantastic atmosphere and the cute new Bulgarian JUG logo there was one more thing I was pleasantly surprised by, namely the conference’s headline “Java: 21 & Legally drunk!”.

    I have no idea how they came up with it but it surprisingly correlates with the spirit of my “What’s NOT new in modular java” talk. It also perfectly describes how Java appears to me these days and perhaps can explain some of the weird perturbation and confusion that seems to be having place in the Java community these days. As Internet seems to be bloated with technical articles addressing Java’s condition, I decided to have a look at it from slightly different (less serious) angle.

  • May 04, 2016

    Lessons learned from speaking at conferences

    Time has come to resurrect the blog (again)! I was never much of a blogger but 3 years is … oh well, almost a lifetime in software industry. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about (quite the opposite in fact), it’s just that I have always preferred more interactive communication. So for the last 3 years I was concentrating on presenting my thoughts and experience on various conferences rather than posting them here. A huge mistake apparently which someone pointed out to me recently. On the bright side - I learned a few things about being a conference speaker and I’ll share them here. If you think going down that road, here is what to expect.