JDK9

Modular Java Development in Action

What's the focus of the work that you do at Luminis today?

I work as a software architect at Luminis, and I've been developing Java-based applications for more than 10 years. Currently I'm working on a system that revolves around personalized learning for Dutch secondary schools. We're building web applications and matching back-ends that do data analysis, all in order to improve education. We are doing that using the Java platform.

What kind of stack are you using? You mentioned earlier Spring, Hibernate.

We do some of that as well at Luminis, but the products that I'm currently working on heavily use OSGi, which is a modular technology for Java applications. We do that because we build products instead of projects. We have learned the hard way that creating products means you need to be maintainable, you need to be extensible and not just for the first few months or the first year, but for many many years to come. And modularity helps us in that, where OSGi is a tool that helps us to translate modular designs into actual code.