'Make serverless Java go supersonic with Lambda and Quarkus'

Not many developers are eager to go serversless with Java. It’s earned a reputation for being too slow. But as solution architects Michael Strydom and Julian Exenberger explain, that’s all old news. With the right optimizations Java can run just fine serverless, for example on Lambda. And as icing on the cake, you can use Quarkus to build the fastest serverless Java apps in no time.

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name Alfa Romeo? There’s a good chance it’s ‘rust’. Alfa Romeo earned that reputation back in the 1970s, when the cars did have a bit of a rust problem. Java suffers from a similar stigma. And it’s not entirely unjustified: Java can’t keep up with newer languages like JavaScript or Python for serverless applications. That’s a serious limitation for developers in the serverless space. But it’s unfortunate that so many people are still hesitant to use it, because at its core Java is stable, flexible and constantly evolving. You just have to give it a little TLC.

Fortunately, you can solve Java’s speed problem on serverless platforms with just a few simple changes. We’ll explain how using the example of AWS Lambda. On that platform, the various phases of the life cycle run at different speeds. By changing how Java collaborates with the serverless life cycle, you can potentially achieve a dramatic boost in performance. How? By utilizing the various speeds of the life cycle to improve overall performance.

Quarkus is another framework that’s suitable for building fast serverless Java apps, which is an area where Java had been losing until recently. Why? Java wasn’t able to keep up with Kubernetes and the rise of cluster management with lightweight applications. Newer script languages also offered more options for server-side and client-side developments. And single-threaded apps like Node.JS were no longer a problem, because Kubernetes can manage multiple single-threaded applications. That was a big setback for multi-threaded applications like Java.

Java also experienced other problems on Kubernetes; especially the size of the artifacts after build and the time it took to roll out apps. And don’t forget the infamous garbage collection problem, which made it impossible to conduct a garbage collection at the moment of your choosing. And if you did manage to do one, it didn’t help very much. So Java virtually disappeared from the scene. Only with the later patch version of Java 8 (after patch 153) were most of the problems solved with the integration of Java and Kubernetes. All but one, in fact: the deployment artefacts were still too large.

In this talk, you’ll immerse yourself in Java in a cloud-native world.  In their Tech Talk, Julian and Michael will explain exactly how you can optimize the collaboration between Java and your serverless platform. And what Quarkus has to offer you as a Java developer.