Category Archives: Java/Java EE

[devnexus 2026] how to run 1 on 1s for everyone

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Speaker: Alex Riviere (@fimion@notacult.social)

See the DevNexus live blog table of contents for more posts

Bad One on Ones

  • How was the conference?
  • Anything you want to talk about?
  • Ok, Talk to you next month

Assumption

  • Collaborative environment
  • Small team
  • Non-hostile environment (aka if your manager is trying to get you fired)
  • Ideal situation. Ok to not want to do some of these when lower trust

Types of one on ones

  • Manager to employee (or team lead to team member)
  • Peer to peer. People you work with
  • Employee to Manager. Employee leads meeting.

Expectations

  • Both parties state their expectations for the meeting
  • What’s important to you
  • ex: open and honest about how work makes you feel, clear understanding of work responsibilities or bring up if not, bring up if work not on track
  • ex: don’t surprise me. “I’m going to talk to you about X in 5 minutes”
  • ex: I want you to help me level up
  • ex: I need brace when I mess up

Notes

  • Have notes from last meeting on one side of screen and notes from this meeting on other side.
  • Good when answers are the same from previous time.
  • If answer changes, ask for more information.

Always ask

  • Am I living up these expectations for you? Usually the answer is yes.
  • Are there any expectations you want to edit or add? Circumstances change over time.

Manager to Employee

Meets monthly for up to an hour. Sometimes take 15 minutes, but can use up to an hour. Could be every two weeks if junior/need more involvement. That one is shorter.

  • Check in on role. – Do you feel like you clearly understand your role in the business? Are you being asked to do work that doesn’t align with your role? What do you think about the company’s culture/vision/direction? Are you feeling burned out at all? What’s something you are doing a lot of today that you weren’t doing a year ago? (also can use these for annual review). Do you see any opportunities to change your role? What kind of impact do you feel you are making? Are you doing meaningful or important work?
  • Reserve a time for a specific topic or question – What’s something I do that annoys you? (ok to say nothing) What technologies are you interested in that you wish you could be using at work? What issues do you think we should be prioritizing that we aren’t currently? Team specific question: (ex How do you think our QA process could be better)
  • Set and track goal process – individual (employee wants to do) and assigned (from company) goals. Also can use for annual review as well)

Peer to Peer

He allocates 30 minutes; sometimes uses 15. Ok to be quarterly. Ensure next one scheduled before end prior one

  • Fortering relations – Do you feel like you clearly understand my role in the business? Both answer this question. Are we asking too much/little of your team
  • Retro checkin – What challenges have you faced since the last meeting? What went well since our last meeting. Cover schedule for next x days (a few days more than the meeting cadence to ensure enough notice)
  • Vibe check – Are you feeling burned out/how’s it going?
  • Track goals – Accountability buddies. Each have one goal want to achieve and check in on it

Employee to Manager

  • What is coming up in the next x months that I should be aware of?
  • Are there any tasks that you have concerns about our progress on?
  • Are there things we are doing that concern you? (could be just one person or the team). Allows answer to be “no”
  • What are things we are doing that you like?
  • Is there anything we didn’t already cover that you want to talk through?

Other notes

  • Track action items – carry forward if not done between meetings
  • Repetitive by design
  • Can add questions based on the person or level. ex: ask a junior what struggling with
  • Never cancel a one on one. Ok to move, but don’t cancel as won’t communicate effectively.

Slides: https://github.com/fimion/1-on-1s-for-everyone

My take

It feels like it would be repetitive to ask the same questions every month. But these are great ideas of things to think about and bring up!

jetbrains junie

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I had a coupon code for JetBrains Junie AI Ultimate for a year. I set it up last month and have been using it a good bit.

How setup went

First I installed the Junie plugin. After accepting the license, I went to:

help > register – click disabled paid plugins > click JetBrains AI Assistant > Enable and restart

Then I clicked the three dots and license info which took me to the website. I had to click buy on AI ultimate and enter the code. I’m guessing I could have started on that page.

My first test

As a simple use case, I asked JUnie to create a package with two examples. Junie gave me a plan and the two examples:

Create com.jeanneboyarsky.scoped package with immutability examples.

Explore repository to confirm coding style and package naming conventions.

  1. Create new package directory src/com/jeanneboyarsky/scoped with two classes:
  2. Ensure examples are self-contained with main methods printing illustrative output.
  3. Note compilation requirements: document that JDK 21 needs –enable-preview, while JDK 22+ compiles normally.
  4. Provide summary and submit changes.

then listed summary for each class

A new Java class has been created to demonstrate that ScopedValue bindings are immutable within their scope. The implementation highlights that reassignment attempts are not permitted due to ScopedValue being a preview API.

A new Java file has been created to demonstrate that while a ScopedValue’s binding is immutable, the underlying object can be mutable. The code successfully illustrates mutating a Map within scoped values, while also handling scope boundaries.

Finally listed two two classes it created with a link to rollback if i don’t like
A new package com.jeanneboyarsky.scoped was created with two classes: ScopedImmutable1 demonstrates the immutability of ScopedValue bindings, and ScopedMapMutable1 shows that the contents of a mutable Map inside a ScopedValue can be changed. The code compiles for JDK 21+ but lacks automated tests.

In PyCharm

The license is good for all JetBrains products so I tried it in PyCharm as well.

Create a file named junie.py that plays tic tac toe. However instead of X and O, use Unicode symbols for unicorn and wolf. Also have the computer player use a strategy with a low win rate.

The generated code was concise and clear. It used Python idioms. It was well commented. Junie decided to implement my request for a low win rate with this strategy:

# Strategy intentionally weak:
# 1) 60% of the time: choose random move outright.
# 2) 40% of the time: attempt some light heuristics but also sometimes skip blocks/wins.
# Light heuristics section (still weak)
# a) occasionally avoid taking a direct win to stay weak
# b) occasionally block human, but not always
# c) mild preference for center, but not strong
# d) otherwise random corner or side

I ran the code and it works. And won’t frustrate a small child.

Generating Docs

I’m presenting an updated version of “Java Does What Now.” I created an IntelliJ project with packages for each of the examples in my presentation. After I was done, I asked Junie to create a readme to document the unexpected behaviors exhibited by the code.

It didn’t always get it right, for example telling me the module import was invalid. But that’s a new feature so not one it’s been trained on. But overall it did a good job.

[kcdc 2025] 82 bugs i collected in a year you won’t believe made it to production

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Speaker: Francois Martin

For more see the table of contents

General

  • Collected 382 bugs over 2 years

Bugs

  • Shows places where the accent mark in his name was handled incorrectly
  • Lorem ipsum on website instead of text
  • Ship date 12/31/69 – default time in a different timezone so converted
  • Get it before gone – 0 available
  • All items in pull down are “Object”
  • “null” displayed instead of value
  • Undefined/NaN instead of number
  • Emails missing
  • Everything in English and terms and conditions link in French
  • Dark mode changes background but not text so black on black
  • Viewing 42 of 38
  • 18 of 0 products found
  • Merge first and middle name into first name
  • Clicking + goes from 0 to 1 to 2 to 0 to 3.00000000000000004
  • AI bug – said thought looking for something unrelated
  • Lack to HTML entity decoding
  • Character encoding issues
  • @fmartin_ fails validation. It wasn’t the underscore, Couldn’t get it to be valid even without.
  • Lack of responsiveness; text overlays, menu cutoff
  • Glitching – various things that go away on refresh
  • Placeholders not replaced
  • Unfiltered error message. User shouldn’t/doesn’t need the back end message
  • “2 guest” instead of “2 guests”
  • Text keys instead of translated value
  • Text keys flash and translate a few seconds later. SSR (server side rendering) solves this.
  • Incorrect/missing info

General

  • Defect – imperfection or deficiency where it does not meet requirements or impairs its intended use
  • ex: expose info that shouldn’t. not clear what to do, instructions don’t work
  • Reproducibility doesn’t matter. Once is enough
  • Found more bugs since June. Maybe because of vibe coding?
  • Most bugs are UI. Logic, error handling came in next
  • Of the critical/blockers, data validation and error handling had most bugs

To prevent

  • webdriver.io good for testing mobile
  • end to end testing
  • dog fooding – use the product yourself
  • exploratory testing – experts can find lots of bugs in short time
  • heat map visualization – see where clicks are. dead clicks (click an element and nothing happens. Rage clicks (repeated clicks out of frustration and nothing happens)
  • Turn off stack traces in prod. Only show specific messages
  • Prevent SQL injection and XSS
  • Test in all the languages you support

My take

The session began with a guest – 30 seconds accordion song about bugs and service pack 2. Relaxing and fun; great timing as last session of the day. I enjoyed seeing the examples and also the analysis/statistics about categories of bugs.