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here's what i wanted to talk about ben today we might only have a little bit of time because you

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and i have just used a lot of time to catch up with each other it's always a pleasure this is

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the thing that that they you know you get about your uh your random coffee donut time what did

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they call that in zoom have uh remember in zoom in slack there was this movement among the the

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the nerdy people to have like you'd set up this slack bot and it would randomly assign someone to

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have a donut with or something wasn't because it was called the donut channel or something

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i don't know anyways it's good to have donuts with people uh and and to plan that out but i've

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been helping out you know we've got uh we we've moved our our SpringOne conference to a virtual

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conference so that more people can attend which i think will be great uh because it becomes very

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easy if you're interested in attending i'm not i don't even have a discount code because it's free

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now you can go to spring1.io now you could try to use the discount code i don't know where you would

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type it but if you want to you can use the code Coté free uh and i assume it will make it free

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since it already is free you see how that i have a philosophy degree so i know how to do uh you know

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if a then b and b then c then i can do logic i forget what the upside down es and a's mean uh but i

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could probably look at my notes from school anyhow i've been going through and helping out with some of

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the uh the kind of arranging the agenda and this thing keeps coming up over and over again called

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growl vm and i just can't help but say it that way and i know that's associated with spring native

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and this stuff has been going on for a while so i was hoping maybe you could educate me on what all

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of that stuff is because i know you keep doing these videos on python and dot net but i know you're a

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java person at heart right so you must be as you drift off to sleep at night dreaming of donuts

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you're probably like growl growl and just dreaming of this stuff because it sounds awesome so what's

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going on with this java native business yeah it's really quite cool it's um you know for folks who've

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been around java for a while they'll have heard the term java virtual machine for example and um they'll

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uh you know most folks are used to running programs on their on their computer uh you know if you

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imagine you're in the command line uh in windows if you want to see all the files that are in a folder

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you type dir that's a program right and that program executes really quickly gives you a full list of

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everything that's uh on on that particular folder in mac and uh you know uh linux and it's ls but

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essentially you know it's a program right all those things are programs java virtual machine and java

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programs though they work differently they need a virtual machine in order to operate so um you need

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this like um middle layer that takes the java code and turns it into something that can be run on the

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machine that you're on it's very flexible because it means that you can uh you know have a java virtual

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machine for mac os and for windows and for linux and you can um run that even on different um

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architectures arm or uh or intel or whatever but there's uh there's a problem with having all that

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stuff in the middle you know it can make things a little bit heavy and uh it can like my middle am i right

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no no no no your middle is just fine oh thank you but what yeah so you end up with this sort of extra

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layer and that can there are some use cases where that's a disadvantage right not many because

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obviously java is huge and it's been very successful but there are some use cases where that's a

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disadvantage so having something that works more like a a native program like that dir or ls where

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you know it's instant and it's quick and it has a low memory footprint it's very high performance

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that sort of native use of a program is quite attractive for certain use cases a good example

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might be something like serverless where in order to be able to react quickly it's really helpful if

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your workload can start very quickly so if you want really fast start times then starting a java

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virtual machine going through um the byte code and and compiling that so that it will run um on that

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machine takes a while um maybe you don't want that in that particular use case maybe you want

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something faster so that's what graal vm does so to to summarize it's basically i mean i feel like

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java has tried to do this over the years so many times but like it basically

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this is the wrong word but but well maybe it's not it basically it compiles down your java code into a

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single executable that doesn't have the java vm it actually makes it because the java vm takes your

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bytecode and does that for you kind of on the fly-ish sort of that's inaccurate but it does

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eventually you always get this this uh executable code that has to run but in this case it's like

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well why not just do it from the get-go and i you know it must have been very difficult to make that

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happen over the past 25 years is that how long it's been uh so and and the reason why that's valuable

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other than just being cool is like well sure it's good to have you know nice startup times but

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especially if you're looking to do like a cloud native style architecture especially if it's running

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in kubernetes where each component of your application has very little guarantee of living long

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i guess i guess you could always say you can tell kubernetes not to destroy it but

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the intention is that your application architectures will have a bunch of ephemeral components that come

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and go as makes sense to kubernetes so if if you're writing like a java application uh your little java

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bits are going to be coming and going all the time if you've architected it that way yeah and there's

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another there's another quite interesting use case there especially for folks running you know kubernetes

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at scale and that is that when you go through this process of creating a native image with graal vm

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from your java code um because you're sort of losing some of that um chunky middle that we were talking

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about earlier uh it means that you can sometimes also benefit from other impacts of that like lower memory

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footprint so if you imagine you've got a thousand containers and you manage to lower the memory footprint on

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those containers a little then your cloud bill will reduce so it's also sort of a cost saving measure in

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some cases as well it's not perfect because you if an application needs a lot of memory anyway naturally

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because it has a lot of data to work with or whatever it's not going to be hugely lighter but

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for some applications by sort of stripping away some of that stuff that's in the middle uh the the just

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in time compiler and all the other stuff that's in there you can um see a reduction in the memory

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overhead as well okay so it does have definite um cost implications for those who are running at scale

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as well i think okay okay and so then so the second part is like so so thus far we've mostly talked

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about like the concept of it and not concept as in it doesn't happen but like generically what it is

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but what what's up with like graal vm as its own thing right like are there many different like java

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native things out there and this is just one of them or like is this the only way of doing it or like how

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does that as a as a i don't know if you would call it a brand but how does it as a brand as a project

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as a product fit into all of this i definitely say it's the most well known i understand that there were

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other projects in the java community to also do um a similar thing and um i'm not sure what the status

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is of those projects so i probably shouldn't really comment on them but um but yeah i doubt it would be

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alone because it's such a big community there's always room for alternative implementations of similar

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ideas there's also um you know graal vm is is associated with oracle so so there's there's sort

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of a a paid version and a and a kind of a free tier if you like as well so there are different licensing

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implications sometimes with uh with with graal vm too so you need to sort of figure out if it's the

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right thing to do for your workloads probably it's the right thing to do for some workloads but perhaps

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not for all workloads there are other constraints as well right right and and then and then my

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understanding is they oracle contributed to the to like open jdk back in october now i i i know that i

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am not up to date enough on like community open java community open source stuff so i don't want to like

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step down that path maybe one day i'll go research that i remember way back when when i was still an

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analyst at red monk i i i knew all of that very well when sun was uh going to oracle and everything but

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nowadays i'm not really sure what the deal is but okay so so graal vm is basically oracle's uh

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implementation of doing um native java and and as i was just saying they've contributed to open jdk so

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if use open jdk i i assume that means it's in there which is great so essentially most any you know if

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you're doing java development you you have access to it now we and in the spring community they have

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spring native which which works with graal vm and um i mean i guess what i was wondering about that is

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like like what is what by the nature of doing native java would why does spring need to be involved in

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that like because it seems like it might be like you just do you just pass in this one it's always

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some hyphen uppercase x flag that you pass in or at least in my day it was but you just pass a flag

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into the compiler and you're done but like so what why does spring have to be involved with it

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right so remember we were talking about the java virtual machine the way that it works it is very

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flexible you can do things like modify the class path for something um which would add additional

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features into your application for example so oh that was very very well explained of what a class path

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does you really uh you really removed all the jargon out of it and just explained the outcome

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well anyone who's run a minecraft server and adds a modification right a mod uh they will be adding

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extra programs i guess that's true right so so you know it's so anyway so putting that aside for a

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second there's a problem and and the problem is that um in order for things like graal vm to be able

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to create your native application it does static analysis on the code base to find out which

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avenues through the code are used and then compile those into native machine code that can run natively

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right and and this may not be extremely accurate so maybe it's more of a metaphor but to put it the

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other way is it cuts out all the code that's not used it does and it needs to know ahead of time

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all the code that is used and that's a problem because java has quite a lot of flexibility here

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there are things like reflection there are external files that you might need to know about there's all

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sorts of other stuff that also comes along with a java application that you might not know about

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um and that graal vm might not know about just by having a look at your main class and then figuring

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out you know what it thinks are the code paths so that causes a problem for lots of um frameworks

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uh including spring so there's been an awful lot of work done in spring

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to um bring in some new um innovations that allow that particular style of static code analysis to work

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correctly with frameworks where where flexibility is the name of the game you know spring has been

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flexibility is one of its major benefits is um inversion of control and um ahead of time uh uh sorry um

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behind of time yeah yeah yeah there's probably some better phrase for it than that it's december

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i'm struggling i need to hibernate uh but yeah there's a whole bunch of stuff that you need to

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know about that that um that is done more um dynamically in in java and in frameworks that rely on java like

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like spring so there's been an awful lot of work done in spring to make it compatible with that style

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of static code analysis ahead of time analysis so that um that you can still write your code and use it in

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uh in your in your application but there are there are still some caveats there there are still some

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things that you um perhaps won't be able to do so it's not suitable for every application yet

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but the compatibility is growing and growing and growing and with spring boot three

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and spring framework six um the compatibility is at such a stage where it's generally available for

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everyone yeah and and i get you know i guess i guess to make try to make another example like

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uh if if you you know it's possible in java and definitely in spring to say like all right i have

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a a p i'm going to generate a pdf of this feature i want i want uh i want to generate uh ben's internet

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bill so he can file a reimbursement to get home internet reimbursement which i i probably need to go do

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before it gets too far behind so in in my program i need something that generates a pdf and you could

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at at building you know when you're writing the software you could decide that i want to use this

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pdf engine and so you just put it in there and then your java native stuff is just going to pick

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out what it needs from the pdf engine or you could also say like i don't know i might want to swap in

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and out pdf engines depending on whatever and so even though you've compiled the code you can use some

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the the the dynamic loading that java has to like bring new pdf things in and not and like so you've

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got uh i don't know if that example fits because maybe that's taken care of by like graal vm stuff but

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the point being that you can like actually change if if you're going to be doing things where you're

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changing the actual code that's running somewhere things get a little dicey if you needed to pre-compile

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everything by yeah there's no for example those mods we were talking about for minecraft they just

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wouldn't work in this scenario because it's uh it's statically compiled you have to reboot the server

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basically well i guess you did not only reboot it you'd have to recompile it you'd have to include

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all of that stuff from the start you couldn't just patch it on later as an additional jar right so the

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class paths are fixed for example so if you have a situation where you can't have a fixed class path

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then probably this style of compilation is not not for that particular work though there you go that's

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that's a good a good uh shorthand way of thinking about it in the java world is that like if you're

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doing not a native java you can't ever mod you can't modify the class path like and you can't even

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restart it you just got to recompile everything which which uh you can't modify it dynamically as you

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yes yes exactly as you can with regular java yeah you could you know with regular java it's just part

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of the command that you'd use to start the jvm but with um a graal vm image it's more like you can't

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modify the dir command right because it's fixed it's it's code is it's code and it doesn't change at

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runtime whereas java is more flexible but that flexibility causes it challenges in other

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other ways but the graal is great as well i mean in terms of you know speed up

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um i've seen from my own sort of messing about with it a while ago that if you had an application

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that maybe took three seconds to start you probably start it in 0.3 seconds so so like a

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at least a tenfold increase in start yeah that's crazy and that's conservative sometimes you know

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does does the uh does the compiling time take longer how does it affect that it does yeah yeah

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the compile time is longer and um one thing if you know for folks wanting to maybe scratch the surface

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a great way to do it is with spring boot because everything that you need is included in the uh tools

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that you use to build with spring boot so if you're used to maven for example and you normally use

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um you know spring boot colon run to run your applications you can use spring boot colon native

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image to build a native image and the documentation is fabulous the documentation for spring boot 3 i've

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just been looking through it this morning and it's really really good yeah so folks will find it very

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easy to get started if they want to give it a try well that's great i feel i feel as educated as i

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need to be which i think is uh that's not always like how you get an a plus but it uh it'll get

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you by in life i think but you know i i i don't know this for sure but no doubt at our SpringOne

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conference if you're interested in grawl and spring native i bet i bet hopefully maybe i should go check

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and suggest if we don't have this but we should have uh plenty of content going over this stuff uh

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which there is there is i've seen it already i think there is which uh yeah i'm being kind of

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facetious but uh hey are you doing are you doing a watch party do you know oh yes i don't know if

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that's if that's supposed to be some sort of like i don't know why it would oh is it super secret

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squirrel okay no no no way i mean i i if if it is i i should advise someone that like you know there's

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whatever uh yeah we have we'll have one in the uh i don't think there's a way for you to register for

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it or whatever no no no i'm supposed to be hosting one like in the amsterdam office uh to to watch the

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stuff which will be fun i'll have to think of some speeches to give uh maybe raise up i'll raise up a

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glass of coffee well do share i'm doing the i'm doing the london one so oh that'll be fun do share

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yeah yeah yeah that's good well well speaking of that if you're interested you can you can attend

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SpringOne for free if you go to SpringOne.io and uh you can find out about all of that stuff

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uh you know and you can tend it i forget which dates it is in january but it's it's kind of in

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the third week of january maybe yeah 24th i think yeah but it just go to SpringOne.io i'll put a link

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in the uh the show notes here and you can check it out and with that we have a bit of a short one here

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you gotta wrap it up to go meet an old colleague downtown uh but yeah uh you know if you're interested in

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the the show notes for this you go to tanzutalk.com you can subscribe to the podcast you can check out

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videos that we do there or uh if you've watched this and uh you know you can also watch us do it

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live and youtube and twitch and linkedin twitter all over the place we're everywhere you want to be

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wait that was a slogan for some company back in the 80s was that at&t maybe

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uh don't know they don't operate in the uk so what

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uh let's just go with yes yeah what what was what was the name of of bt's like logo didn't they have

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like a little mascot and and it's got some name oh i see you know you're giving away my age now but

190
00:19:59,120 --> 00:20:04,720
i think it was buzzbee i think it was buzzbee or something like you know give us a buzz oh that's

191
00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:11,440
nice something like that okay all right well with that we'll see everyone next time goodbye bye bye

192
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:11,720
Bye.