Java Champion Trisha Gee presents in November; how JPMorgan Chase practices DPE; the goal of making Apache Maven faster; are AI code assistants over-hyped; and LOTS of open jobs


Want to connect with Gradle? Email me at owhite@gradle.com , and have a productive month!

FEATURED UPCOMING EVENT

Writing tests is hard. Fixing them is harder. Trisha Gee presents…

You may not know it, but developers spend almost as much time writing tests for their code as they spend writing the code itself ( source: GitHub ). It’s a Big Deal.


We all tend to think that testing is a Good Thing, overall—especially automated testing. But the phrase "good things come to those who wait" doesn’t appeal to a busy developer. When a test starts failing, dropping everything to find and fix the problem can be a frustrating experience.


Join Trisha Gee , Java Champion, author, and Gradle Advocate, on Nov-13 to learn techniques for troubleshooting tests and go through some of the information you need to identify these problems. Trisha will cover the following topics, including a live coding demonstration, and then do Q&A:

  • Why is it hard to troubleshoot tests?

  • What steps should you take to fix a test?

  • Why are flaky tests toxic?

  • How can you write tests that are easier to fix?

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from one of the Java ecosystem’s most popular experts!


Register to attend

BEST PRACTICES

How JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) enhances its global developer experience

It's always refreshing to see large, traditional organizations like financial institutions recognize the importance of developer productivity and developer experience. When JPMC experts spoke at DPE Summit 2023 , their toolchain team revealed the DPE challenges of supporting 40k+ developers across 100k+ repos, how they measure CI quality of service in terms of predictability, reliability, and developer experience, and how they implemented a developer experience platform.


In this CIO Dive article , journalist Lindsey Wilkinson writes about JPMC’s annual developer conference, DevUp. Created to focus on the developer experience, DevUp is a three-day event attended by JPMC's global engineering community. Some key takeaways are:

  • Their Internal Developer Platform (IDP) has helped reduce context switching and cognitive fatigue, and is seen to boost productivity and align with modern engineering practices.

  • AI in software development has potential, but is being treated with caution in light of concerns about security and code quality. 

  • There is no replacement for in-person collaboration—the benefit of being able to sit in a room together and work on complex challenges is real.

Check out Shenba Vishnubhatt, Executive Director, Engineer’s Platform and Experience at JPMorgan Chase, share her developer productivity story at DPE Summit 2023.


Watch the video

EXPERT TAKES

This DPE journey aims to speed up Apache Maven across large development teams

Gradle Developer Advocate Brian Demers is on a mission: to help development organizations accelerate build and test times with Apache Maven. 


Brian is a Java Champion and Maven committer with a long history of improving developer productivity with Maven, one of the Java ecosystem's most-used enterprise tools.


In a series of blogs on Maven stretching back to June 2024, Brian reviews a series of topics, including the role of using a build cache for accelerating local and remote builds, how to understand and better manage dependencies, and various other ways to speed up Maven builds using OSS and free technologies. 

Read more from Brian and other authors on the Gradle blog!


Go to blog

DPE SUCCESS STORY

75% reduction in build and test feedback cycles for EarnIn

Read how EarnIn, an American financial services company that provides earned wage access services, used Develocity to cut build and test times by 75%.


Read more

IDEAS & INSIGHTS

After early wins, are AI code assistants now over-hyped?

It seems like only a year ago that Generative AI-based code assistants (e.g. GitHub Copilot) were being heralded as the best thing since sliced bread.


Wait, it *was* only a year ago. :-)


Preliminary research at that time showed test groups completing tasks 50% faster using Copilot, which many met with credulity and glee. We could almost imagine excited development managers preparing to buy every developer a license, with a massive spike in developer productivity just over the horizon.


Fast forward a year later, and we see different headlines. 


Rather than boosting developer productivity, some now see that in many cases GenAI does not boost productivity in an easily understood or measurable way—in fact, it's breaking traditional productivity metrics, like DORA. Others report that AI coding assistants have introduced security issues and code quality problems in the mix, and that a lack of training and poor toolchain observability are hindering efforts.   


We may have finally started to see the ugly side of GenAI, but that's because we're now starting to look at it far more seriously than we did a year ago. By professionally applying GenAI to actual workloads, we've begun to identify areas for improvement—and that's a Good Thing, too. 


Read more: 

For a personal story about early successes with GenAI, check out Szczepan Faber’s talk from DPE Summit 2023 about using AI at Airbnb!


Watch the video

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

DPE Job Openings

The industry needs you! You might find your dream role among these job openings related to DPE, developer productivity, and platform engineering. 


NOTE: These postings are active at the time of sending but are subject to change.

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