Brian Foster

Brian is an Editor at O'Reilly Media, Inc. focusing on Enterprise, Java, and Microsoft technologies. He has been working in technical publishing for over four years acquiring books in statistical computing, open source platforms, financial engineering as well as several other computer-related topics.

Embracing Java for the Internet of Things

Technology executive and enthusiast Mike Milinkovich on Java's role in shaping future enterprise development.

by | @brianatoreilly | May 5, 2015

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Hardware and software are coming together in new and exciting ways. To get a better sense of this excitement, one need look no further than the nascent explosion of connected devices and technologies. But how do we best cater development for these emerging paradigms, and how do more mature languages, like Java, fit into the equation?

I spoke with Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director at the Eclipse Foundation. Mike and his team are currently leading the charge to promote open source IoT protocols, runtimes, frameworks, and SDKs across a variety of languages, including Java. Eclipse’s IoT stack for Java is already being utilized by such companies as Philips, Samsung, and eQ-3. Here, he talks about Java’s unique standing in this emerging marketplace, and the impact of the open source community on IoT development.

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3 simple reasons why you need to learn Scala

How Scala will help you grow as a Java developer.

by | @brianatoreilly | March 12, 2015

Editor’s Note: If you’re a Java developer these days, one who is fully entrenched within the Java SE or Java EE development environment, you’ve grown accustomed to waiting for new features and updates. Change happens at the speed of dial-up, which is a blessing for legacy code, servers, and software infrastructure that thrive on maintaining profitable grace through clunky predictability. You may have even dabbled with a JVM language, such as Scala or Clojure, thinking you could do more with less code — and you can — but then you’ve realized the barrier to entry is steep compared with the needs of meeting day-to-day responsibilities. Why learn something new, you’ve thought, when there’s no strong incentive to change?

With Scala Days nearly upon us, the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco will be awash with developers excited to share ideas and explore the latest use-cases in this “best of both worlds” language. Scala has come a long way from its humble origins at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, but with the fusion of functional and object-oriented programming continuing to pick up steam across leading-edge enterprises and start-ups, there’s no better time than right now to stop dabbling with code snippets and begin mastering the basics. Here are three simple reasons why learning Scala will help you grow as a Java developer, as excerpted from Jason Swartz’s new book Learning Scala.

1. Your code will be better

You will be able to start using functional programming techniques to stabilize your applications and reduce issues that arise from unintended side effects. By switching from mutable data structures to immutable data structures and from regular methods to pure functions that have no effect on their environment, your code will be safer, more stable, and much easier to comprehend.
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