The Java Virtual Machine was initially perceived as slow. However, since the 90’s it has had time to evolve and mature its ecosystem, platform and the JVM itself. Being very popular, it is only natural that good tooling develops around it. Choosing Java as a language or the JVM as a platform brings way more advantages than only “running anywhere”.

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When someone thinks of buying a car, the first aspect taken into consideration is the body. Some want an SUV that will take them to the highest mountain peaks, some want a small car that can get through the smallest streets and fit into the tightest parking spots. Then, the next important aspects are the features that the car has: heated seats, parking sensors, cruise control and so on... but these are things that you can check online, reading a spec sheet. The aspect that really makes you buy the car is getting in the driver's seat and taking it for a drive. And here, we all must agree that the steering system plays a key role. Nowadays, most cars use an Electric Power Steering (EPS) that facilitates the driver in doing the steering maneuvers.

When using machine learning, the central point is the machine learning model. Whether you train your own machine learning model or you get one to consume in your production code, you have to know some insights about how it was trained, like the label (or target feature), the data models (input and output), and the scenario that was used for training. Along with these details, it’s very important to know the accuracy of your machine learning model. You can have tools like MLOps to take care of these details, but maybe you don’t.

Engagement a hype? At a first glance, it is a hype, for sure! If you google the word ‘engagement’, you get 51.200,00 hits. When googling ‘work engagement’ you get 82.200,00 hits. At a second glance, however, paying continuous attention to the *‘engagement’* of the people within an organization pays off, both for the employee and for the employer. Allow me to prove my point.

How does electronic trading look like after more than one year of pandemic crisis, considering the shift to online platforms? As our core business is fully electronic, the impact was rather on a personal level. Business was not really affected from a technical POV. The traders could not work from home because of compliance/regulation. For all supporting teams, we have seen, after a 2-3 week adjustment period, very little to no impact.

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Has the pandemic time changed the direction of your Voxgig startup ? Yes! Completely. Our original business was an events platform for technology companies, to help them manage their speakers and exhibits. Exhibits really need physical events to work properly - you need to be able to take sales prospects you meet at an event out to lunch etc. I know there are experiments now to do this online, but the problem is that all the previous exhibit activity is way down, and will take years to build back up again (as far as we can see). 

What triggered you to write (and successfully launch on Amazon) a book about product ownership? We are both senior instructors at the University of Toronto. During one of our collaborations for course development, we started talking about some major challenges organizations have: executing their strategy and adapting the product development to the constant changes in the market. Everything circled back around the role of the product owner. We believe the product owner role is key in changing business mindsets and focusing the organization on strategic priorities. So, we decided to write about it. We built these arguments in what was to become a best-selling book Gen P: New Generation of Product Owners Who Care About Customers. It is a book that aims to inspire the new generation of professionals, to transform their ways of working and the customer-centric mindset.

How do you see the difference between SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and Microservices ?

Sam Newman: They are not different things. Microservices are an opinionated subset of SOA. SOA just describes a system built out of collaborating services. Microservices is a type of SOA, which is more opinionated - it's "prime directive" if you will is that microservices are independently deployable. So think of microservices as a type of SOA, in the same way that XP is a type of Agile.

AIoT is an acronym that stands for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the Internet of Things (IoT). The Internet of Things is not a new concept anymore. More and more intelligent products and services are being connected in order to create added value for their users. For example, 92% of all Bosch product classes are connectable. It is believed that there will be around 25 billion connected things by 2025 compared to only 14,2 billion in 2019.

Your latest book, Fundamentals of Software Architecture, is providing a good framework for software architects. Which is a normal path for someone to become a software architect?

Mark Richards: The advice I usually offer people about becoming a software architect is make sure you are prepared before jumping into the role. Becoming a software architect is much more than having strong technical skills. An architect must also have a passion for creating solutions for business problems, an interest in developing strong people skills, and a desire to mentor, coach, and lead teams.