Confessions of a Rusty Java developer by Alex Snaps

Rust has been picking up momentum over the last few years. It started with being more prevalent in system programming or when targeting WebAssembly. But now in the meantime it has a vibrant ecosystem for asynchronous server-side programming, whether REST API, gRPC and other… Let’s you safely share code across other languages. Not to mention, the most loved programming language on Stack Overflow! But why? What does it bring to the table that you might care about? Java addresses many of your current needs, so why even bother? The language is constantly evolving, such as with records, sealed classes and pattern matching… In this session we will go through how Rust is different from Java and what it means. This will be a gentle introduction to a language that can be scary at times, because of its compiler error messages, showcasing some of its incredibly powerful features. We’ll see how these enable the use of development patterns when using common data-structures, such as a Map or a List. We’ll also look into the toolchain and all the new target platforms that become available when writing Rust. Rust is here to stay… and so is Java. Yet there is lot to learn from looking into the approaches Rust took, that will benefit you as a Java developer with its features to come. And how you can get your Rust code to run on a microcontroller, where a JVM would not run… ALEX SNAPS Alex is a Sr. Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat where he works on the Kuadrant project. Kuadrant aims to deliver a smooth experience to providers and consumers of services within the Kubernetes landscape when it comes to rate limiting, authentication, authorization, discoverability, … In his past, Alex has been involved in large scale deployments (and cloud migrations) at Shopify. Clustering Java Virtual Machines at Terracotta, where he also was part of different specifications bodies on caching & data grids, as well as the Java Community Process Executive Committee. He also worked on much smaller systems, when at Moog Music, doing real-time sound processing and embedded system solutions for synthesizers. Generally, he likes making the life of developers both easier and simpler. But finds it mostly awkward to type this all out about himself.