Thanks so much @heinzkabutz for bringing so many friends together on Crete for the @JCreteUnconf!

On the 4th day of JCrete I went to a discussion about ORM, the pros and cons of a very generic relational models with those guys:

It's about ORM at #Jcrete. Usual suspects I guess. @gunnarmorling @TobiasFrech @KateStanley91 and @SanneGrinovero just entered. pic.twitter.com/n1uUewSd27

— Michael Simons (@rotnroll666) July 20, 2017

learned about Learys Theory or Learys Rose by Kees Jan Koster’ which was really great:

and then went to a group of mostly German anonymous UI testers. Hint: Many people want UI test, most don’t have them. Its still a hard problem, especially on the desktop.

The final summary ended up with a new definition of done, session where I discussed are highlighted:

After lunch with Ulf and @ch4inl3ss

I took of with Zhen and @ChVest from @Neo4j and @GerdAschemann to Elafonissi-Beach:

and even had a beach-selfie with my friend @starbuxman

The evening BBQ party was super awesome, with live music coding, live music and more.

Saidly, it’s a wrap-up. #JCrete has been great and I learned many new things. I hope I could contribute as well. Its fortunate to have a job in such a great community:

Third day #JCrete. Just shortly after the picture I noticed I messed with the sun blocker. I had some in the eye and I was like crying throughout the morning. Anyway.

First session was lead by Cliff Click, one of the creators of Java JIT-Compiler. It was all about self worth and it was so good:

A session with Cliff Click, Martin Thompson and so many other sharing about self-worth cannot be valued in money. Thanks #JCrete

— Michael Simons (@rotnroll666) July 19, 2017

There have been actually points that I already heard at the anti-stress seminar I took the last 4 months: Be aware that your animal brain turns over when confronted with an attack: You stop processing words and start processing emotions. It’s important to be prepared. Prepared to make space for yourself.

One guy mentioned the fact that it’s good for yourself and your health to do courses apart from technical things. It really helps.

Second session was about everything non Jigsaw in upcoming Java 9. If you look closely you’ll even find me in the vine:

A session with Cliff Click, Martin Thompson and so many other sharing about self-worth cannot be valued in money. Thanks #JCrete

— Michael Simons (@rotnroll666) July 19, 2017

Then people talked about Apache Netbeans. Its kinda complicated I guess.

Today I skipped on the excursion, try to get some sleep in the afternoon and wrote then some on @springbootbuch:

I spend diner with those guys: @kjkoster, @hendrikEbbers, @TobiasFrech, Ameer, @ivar_grimstad and @GerdAschemann:

I went to bed at around 0:30 something and got up (without alarm) at 5:30 for one of several #JCrete excursions. I opted for the Beach “Balos”. Folks gather:

They said it’s gonna be a though road and yeah, it was:

I was driving and had @GerdAschemann and @shelajev and his girlfriend with me. It was too early to talk Java and stuff and I preferred to concentrate on the road anyway. There have been obstacles, among them:

The nearly 1 hour drive was worth the time spent, at last to me:

Gerd and I halfway down:

Conference in the sea:

So, topics that day: On our way back Oleg, Alina and I had a very good conversation about the worldview of a Java influencer named Yegor that wants to spare women from the war of programming and I’m really happy that people I respect do not share his opinions at all.

I read his current blog post which has a sentence in it like: “This fear mentally castrates us.” where fear is that women try to blackmail men. Yeah, right. Let me tell you something: A tumor nearly castrate me more than 12 years ago, not fear of women. What a piece of stupid shitty writing.

Todays JCrete topics for me have been Database internal, Serverless, the highly interesting Graal VM presented by @JaroslavTulach and then a session that included topics like

• Staying healthy on the road
• Preventing burnout
• Stress

Actually, that’s the kind of topic I’m really interested in for personal reasons. There are so many high profile and respected people around here and I’m thankful they share their experience.

A good nutrition, knowing what to do in case of some “emergency” of any kind, the ability to shut out outer disturbances, some kind a balance, the assurance that we are in control what we allow to happen to us, being it over hours, not say no and so on: It was good to hear what others do.

My personal main take away is however than one must not only really on having purpose through work and recognition thereof. It’s better to have a some separation of work and fun. My future colleague @ewolff at @innoQ who I regard very highly, tends to say it’s good to have a work / work balance. Well, I try not to over interpret it, but I guess it could hint into this direction.

First official day at #JCrete:

Forecast said rain!!

Defining and finding sessions:

I started with the Java 9 flow and reaction session but switched to the writers table:

Real good!

After that we spoke about working remote, how to organize work, communication and live. Great discussion, too:

Takveway where things like: Keep a communication channel open (for example Skype, Teamchat), do a (physical) thing like walk around the block to get you in “work mode”, close and open the door behind you.

Lunch was nice too (how can it not be on a balcony like this):

and after that part of the people drove to a beach

There I mainly discussion about work and live balance and preventing burnout with @saturnism, which was an unexpected and good spend afternoon.

And yeah, standup meetings continued in the waves:

And then ~70 people crashed a local tavern without a warning and the people there handled it so well… Unthinkable in most german restaurants.

Good day, but I miss my family:

I started sunday with an awesome ride and swimming at a nice beach:

The decline to the beach was nice… Upwards not so much:

Spent the afternoon arranging stuff

and the evening with old and new friends.