Rafael Winterhalter

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

If you prefer a written version of how I think we should build Java programs, here's a blog posting on Jenesis: foojay.io/today/introd...

This is how I think we should build Java applications: m.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Jj... 30 minute tool in action.

If you wonder how build tooling for Java can look like compared to what is out there, here's a teaser comparing to Maven, Gradle and Bazel. It all works! jenesis.build/why/tool/

If you care for the evolution of the Java ecosystem, consider expressing your opinion on github.com/CycloneDX/cy...

Ever wanted or were forced to use two versions of the same library in Java at the same time, but you did not want to shade: Jenesis now supports layers which uses the JVM to split off a layer within a JVM, without moving a single package. jenesis.build/tool/depende...

Last pillar: Jenesis can now track GPG fingerprints and automatically validate dependencies against their signature. When updating, you are therefore notified if a new version was shipped by a different entity. github.com/jenesis/jene...

I argue, Java can become simpler and more secure if we do like this: vimeo.com/1223683963

Thanks to coding agents, Jenesis has matured at a speed I did not expect, and it has become the build tool for Java I would have liked to see a decade ago. I had agents build hundreds of projects, and it works, so try it out. I moved the entire shebang to a GitHub org: github.com/jenesis

In Session 4 of the GitHub Secure Open Source Fund, 50 projects upgraded their security posture through AI-assisted workflows, maintainer expertise, GitHub security tools, and more. As AI changes how software is built, maintainers remain at the center of protecting the open source ecosystem. 👇

Released Jenesis 0.10.0, after building a first larger modular Java app without a single POM. Works without glitches now and is rather fast. Try it! github.com/raphw/jenesi...

Jenesis 0.9.0 fully supports SBOMs and automatically creates them now and improves on automated licensing and vulnerability constraints. With all it knows how to do (github.com/raphw/jenesi...) what would still be missing?

Jenesis now offers all features build tools out there offer through configuration, but by detecting configuration files in the main folder. I would expect that most developers will meet a feature complete tool. Try it out: github.com/raphw/jenesi...

Added implicit support for jmod, jlink and jpackage to Jenesis,for those that want to use it. Samples are in the demos. Should now also build most POM projects without needing Maven. github.com/raphw/jenesis

I added support for most JVM languages to Jenesis and polished the framework altogether. I also added a range of demos: github.com/raphw/jenesi... If you are interested in build tools and always thought that building on the JVM should be easier, maybe this approach is for you. Let me know!

Out of the 1000 most downloaded artifacts from Maven Central, more than a third are not actively maintained. commons-io is the second most downloaded artifact. That is a little bit sad. github.com/raphw/jenesi...

As amazingly well Claude and Codex are working as tools; they are not useful as pair programmers in my eyes, as they are never pushing back. Makes me wonder how broad the need for maintenance of technical debt will affect worker productivity. The best code is the one you don't write, still.

As an old and somewhat inactive Mockito maintainer I'd like to congratulate Tim for these past years keeping the light on the Mockito project. He his now stepping down. Thank you Tim. github.com/mockito/mock...

I had the pleasure of traveling home to Munich to talk to Marco about software, and I quite enjoyed it! And I will hope you will, too. Thanks for having me.

Help--my LocalDate isn’t flattened! Just before my Valhalla talk at JFall, I found out that the early access build can flatten LocalDate arrays, but the latest version from Github cannot. Why? Serialization, of course. Read the gory details at https://horstmann.com/un...

That was for developer interview... "I was 30 seconds away from running malware on my machine." Malware hidden in the Code exercise. blog.daviddodda.com/how-i-almost...

Tried to give an introduction on the class file API that explains it to anybody working with Java: vimeo.com/1115458585 Courtesy of JavaZone. Thanks for having me.

Wow, TIL that LISTEN/NOTIFY in Postgres requires a global lock when committing transactions issuing a NOTIFY. Consider listening to the WAL via logical replication as an alternative with no impact on the write path. www.recall.ai/blog/postgre...

"Towards a JSON API for the JDK" New proposal on the core-libs-dev list for adding a basic JSON API to #Java. That would be a more than welcome addition, in particular considering the envisioned usage once member patterns will be available. Make it So 🤩! mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/co...

Und das, liebe Kinder, ist der Grund, warum man sich bei existenziell wichtigen Werkzeugen am besten mindestens parallel auf lokal gehostete Open Source Lösungen stützt. Wenn #Trump anfängt, die US-Tech-Konzerne in Waffen zu verwandeln, wird es finster. #KritIs

Here's something I want but am too lazy to build: Take a picture of a huge pile of Lego, and get me a classification of what brick belongs to which set. The manual equivalent is quite something.

We just integrated a performance improvement to Java String that will provide a ~10x performance boost in some applications where Strings are used as keys and where the associated values are constant foldable. This will make JDK 25 faster. github.com/openjdk/jdk/...

Do I understand it correctly that the central-publishing-maven-plugin intends to replace the nexus-staging-maven-plugin? But not necessarily the maven-release-plugin? How would one otherwise handle tagging in Git? I'm confused.

We’d love to see more talk proposals rolling in for #JavaZone2025! Got something interesting to share? Big or small, wild or practical — we want to hear it! 🙌 2025.javazone.no/en/...

My first question on Stack Overflow in four years. Any ideas why Kotlin reflect cannot observe an annotation if a class's "flag" is 6 and not 7? stackoverflow.com/questions/79...

What frustrates me most about Kotlin and Scala is their closed world perspective on their own tooling. Java byte code is well-defined and easy to interop. It should not be hard to add an annotation to a class, but with Kotlin it somehow is: discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/dynamicly-...

All folks who speak at conferences should read this and think long and hard about whether they want to risk speak in the US in the future. Also anyone who works while traveling. comicon.com/2025/03/18/f...

Catch of the day: The Kafka client for Java logs a bunch of things on info level that likely should be debug, which resulted in Splunk logging for millions of crowns of repetitive things nobody needs. I argue that libraries should never log anything on the info level.

@vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu Here’s a potent idea for Europe: allow member states to charge VAT on online ads served within their borders. Why should platforms like Meta earn ad revenue from EU audiences without paying VAT locally?

One of my most radical political positions is that online ads should be treated like addictive substances (alcohol) and have something like 100% VAT. This doesn’t exist because governments can’t technically charge VAT for online ads served in the country.

Finally found the time to make Mockito a proper named module: github.com/mockito/mock... jdk.unsupported can still be used, but if Mockito is added as an agent and the package is not imported elsewhere, it still works fully without it on official API in the instrumentation API.

🎓 We are so happy that our great friend Rafael Winterhalter (@rafaelcodes.bsky.social) will be back to Sofia and will give his talk: "Exploring the Java Class File API"! 🗓️ 14-15 May, 2025 📍 Sofia, Bulgaria 🇧🇬 🎫 Grab your pass: jprime.io/tickets

Dette kan du gjøre for å støtte Ukraina: Trykk på «republiser-knappen» - slik at flest mulig får vite om den politiske markeringen på mandag.

💘 Roses are red, commits turn green, JavaZone’s stage is calling—be seen! 💘 Every bug fix, late-night hack, and production horror story deserves an audience. Your code has a story—share it at #JavaZone2025! 💌 talks.javazone.no/ ℹ️ https://2025.javazone.no/en/speaker #JavaZone

So Apple.tv has no Android app, but if you open it in the browser, it automatically routes to /us. This I have to replace with /no manually, otherwise the page crashes loading a language bundle for a popup. Did someone make this page in Dreamweaver? Severance better be a good show.

It took another release to iron out some issues with the Class File API Integration. Also, Byte Buddy now offers improved support for using constantdynamic in instrumentation, with fallback to invokedynamic if not yet available. github.com/raphw/byte-b...

I made a mistake in my changed build and 1.16.1 now offers the actual support for this.

Byte Buddy 1.16.0 now integrates the Java Class File API and is therefore compatible with any future JDK that retains its instruction set, without activating the experimental flag. github.com/raphw/byte-b...