July 17, 2026 • 9 mins
In this episode, hear my latest writing progress on the Java book, a couple of new DZone blog posts, and upcoming meetups and podcast guests. I also dig into an article on how AI is reshaping developer relations.
- Made strong progress on the Java book, wrapping up one chapter and starting the next
- Published a new blog post on DZone about the agents architecture (first of several planned installments)
- Colleague Akmal Chaudhri published a DZone post on Spring AI, Neo4j, and Goodreads data — check it out!
- Meetup tours coming up: Florida groups in November, North Carolina groups in September (details soon)
- Virtual talk for the Miami JUG on GraphRAG/RAG coming up later this month (event link here)
- New podcast guests starting to line up for the coming weeks
- Discussed the article "Developer Relations After the Cheat Code Machine" by Sunil Pai
- Explored how "watch me work" content reflects a shift in how developers learn implicit knowledge
- Reflected on how DevRel's core mission remains the same, even as the format evolves
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jennifer Reif (00:05):
You are listening to the Breaktime Tech Talks podcast, a bite-sized
tech podcast for busy developers wherewe'll briefly cover technical topics, news
snippets, and more in short time blocks.
I'm your host, Jennifer Reif, anavid developer and problem solver
with special interest in data,learning, and all things technology
I did an absolute ton of writingthis week through the book
(00:27):
and through some blog posts.
I did get a bit of a breather midweek,which I will talk about, and then
got right back into making progress.
I'll talk about blog post updates andother weekly updates, which include
some upcoming podcast guests as well.
Starting off the weekly updates,we have the Java book again, right?
I've had progress on thisthe last several months.
(00:49):
I've been working really hard on itthis summer and have a deadline that
is upcoming at the end of the summer,and I made some really good strides
this week, wrapping up another chapterand starting a new one as well.
I actually got ahead a bit by finishingthe chapter up a day early, and then
it didn't take me very long to outlinethe next chapter, so then that let
me get even just a bit further ahead.
(01:10):
After that, I felt like I needed a bitof a breather, so I tackled some small
tasks and some catch-up work that Iwas behind on and enjoyed a quieter
afternoon, which was really nice.
Then I charged right back in on thenext chapter starting the next day.
The beginning of a new chapter isalways tough to start and to set the
stage and the background properly, so Ididn't quite hit my page count yesterday
(01:32):
for what I was hoping to achieve andwhat I have scheduled out, but I know
that I'll make that time up once thecontent starts flowing really well.
And I am still just a bit ahead,so I'm hoping to maintain that
lead on into the next few weeks andmaybe give myself another breathing
opportunity here in a week or two.
Another set of progress that I madewas posting a blog post to DZone.
(01:56):
I haven't done this in a longwhile, actually, I think since
last fall, and I was really excitedto produce something else and put
something else together for that.
Again, I love, really love writingtechnical blogs, and I wrote
one on the agents architecturethat I've been talking about.
This is based on the session thatI'm really enjoying giving this
(02:17):
year, and I wanted a blog postformat for that, probably over a few
installments, so maybe three or fourposts that I hope will be coming.
I've got the first post out that justsets up the architecture and talks a
little bit about setting the stage andthe background and just a bit of a high
level about the project, and then thenext few blog posts will go into more
(02:38):
detail on the different layers thatwe stack up throughout the project.
So I hope a new one will be coming soon.
Then I also discovered that a colleaguewrote a blog post and published
it to DZone as well on Spring AI,Neo4j, and the Goodreads dataset.
This is from Akmal Chaudhry,who's on my team, and he spoke
(03:00):
at the London Java Community, orthe LJC, a couple of weeks ago.
And in preparation of-- for that, hewas working on some Java things, and
I pointed him to my Goodreads projectthat is available on GitHub, and he
took that and ran with that and puttogether a really nice presentation
and spoke there, and then wanted to puttogether a blog post to follow that up.
(03:21):
And so he published that this week alsoon DZone, which I was super excited about.
So you can hear somebody else'sperspective on using Neo4j and Java,
and I read through the blog post.
It's called GraphRAG in Practice (03:31):
Using Spring AI, Neo4j, and Goodreads Data.
This is a nice walkthrough of settingup the project and getting it running,
including the data import steps toset up your own copy of the data
and then continue on from there.
Definitely check that out if you'reinterested in hearing about those topics.
It was a really nice post, and again,super excited to have, somebody else
(03:52):
jumping in on th- these topics as well.
Then I also have some meetupgroup tours that are coming up.
I have probably mentioned thisin past, podcast episodes.
I have some Florida groupsthat are coming in November.
I have North Carolina groupsthat are occurring in September.
I will give all the details out once wefinalize organizing those, so I'm just
assembling those details and figuring outwhat the schedule will look like, and then
(04:15):
I'll publish more information as I go on.
Plus, I also have a virtual user grouppresentation in a couple of weeks for
the Miami JUG, or Java User Group.
That event link I will leave inthe show notes here in this podcast
episode 'cause that is coming uphere shortly, and it should be a
really fun, interesting session.
We're talking about GraphRAGand RAG and the introduction
(04:37):
to the AI industry and field.
If you're interested in attendingthat, definitely check out
the meetup link and RSVP.
Again, that will be virtual andoccurring at the end of July.
Then I also have some podcast gueststhat are starting to get lined
up for the next, well, few weeks.
I know I have at least one that is linedup next month, and I'm really enjoying
(04:57):
chatting with a few different peopleand hearing different perspectives on
different technologies and projectsthat are going on in the space.
I've been contacted by a few peoplethat I just never anticipated having
the collaboration with, and I'msuper excited to hear their story
and get their perspectives on this.
So stay tuned for some more funcontent coming up in this podcast.
(05:19):
The content piece that I read this weekis called Developer Relations After
the Cheat Code Machine by Sunil Pai.
I really enjoyed this take.
I found myself navigating the changinglandscape as people learn in different
ways and need different things.
We're all trying to figure outwhere things are going, right?
And how to best help people and educatepeople along the way, and that's really
(05:43):
what developer advocacy has been focusingon, or that's what I try to focus on
in developer advocacy, and the authorgoes into some of the details here.
The author talks about his backgroundwith learning via osmosis by watching
colleagues work and operate, theway his colleague, one colleague
in particular, worked her job.
I know my own experience actuallysomewhat mirrors this too.
(06:05):
My first job, I would sit at one ofmy mentor's cubicles and work through
problems over his shoulder, understandingthe different code bases and the processes
and who to contact for what things.
And Sunil, the author of this post,points out that there have been multiple
changes since then, since his entryinto the, the field and his initial
learnings, bringing both negatives andpositives, as most everything does.
(06:27):
But the AI era has definitelyshifted what people want.
The author also mentionedthat the watch me work content
seems to be more popular now.
I find this a bit strange personally,but I definitely see how this mirrors
the over-the-shoulder learning that weused to naturally do in an office with
handwritten code and implicit businessknowledge, things that we would just
(06:49):
soak up from our colleagues and beingaround and watching them work that no
longer really works in a, a remote worktype setting, at least not as well.
And so one way to go about gettingthat is through watching people
work virtually via YouTube channelsor videos that they publish.
It also mirrors the general YouTubetrend that I've seen of day in the life
(07:10):
videos or get ready with me content,which I've seen crop up quite a bit just
in general spaces outside of technology.
It's still not my favorite content,mostly because I want that type of content
digested into succinct action items thatI can apply in a fraction of the time.
I don't really want to watch somebodywork over the course of two hours.
I would rather get snippets and highlightsof the way that they work and the things
(07:33):
that they do in five or ten minutes maybe,and then I can start applying those.
The perspective that I really lovedin this blog post, though, is that
technical folks aren't trying to learncode, but instead they're trying to
learn all of the implicit knowledge ofhow humans work, operate, or respond
to different professional situations.
It's the understanding, the modelingof a domain, the communicating needs
(07:56):
and requirements amongst teammates andtools, and working through debugging
or problem-solving activities.
All of that is very vi- visible in thistype of watch me work type of content.
Now, these things cannot be learned,at least easily, in other formats like
written formats, audio, et cetera,and they can't, at least currently, be
replicated by AI and software tools.
(08:18):
So people are turning to human-createdcontent to learn and focus upon these
particular skills and others as well.
I'd like to make the point thatthese skills were always important,
but what has changed is the effortdedicated to learning them and
where our environment doesn'tnaturally allow us to soak them up.
The author closes with DevRel was alwaystrying to do these things, but now we
(08:40):
have to format them in a different wayand go about them from a different angle.
This week, after getting ahead on mywriting for the book, I was able to
accomplish some other backlog tasks,including a new blog post on DZone,
alongside a colleague's new postwith Java and Neo4j also on DZone.
Finally, I read a good article on howdevelopers are learning from others
(09:00):
around them in new ways and how that isimpacting the developer relations role.
I'm looking forward to havingyou join me on another episode.
As always, thanks forlistening and happy coding
You are listening to the Breaktime Tech Talks podcast, a bite-sized
tech podcast for busy developers wherewe'll briefly cover technical topics, news
snippets, and more in short time blocks.
I'm your host, Jennifer Reif, anavid developer and problem solver
with special interest in data,learning, and all things technology
I did an absolute ton of writingthis week through the book
(00:27):
and through some blog posts.
I did get a bit of a breather midweek,which I will talk about, and then
got right back into making progress.
I'll talk about blog post updates andother weekly updates, which include
some upcoming podcast guests as well.
Starting off the weekly updates,we have the Java book again, right?
I've had progress on thisthe last several months.
(00:49):
I've been working really hard on itthis summer and have a deadline that
is upcoming at the end of the summer,and I made some really good strides
this week, wrapping up another chapterand starting a new one as well.
I actually got ahead a bit by finishingthe chapter up a day early, and then
it didn't take me very long to outlinethe next chapter, so then that let
me get even just a bit further ahead.
(01:10):
After that, I felt like I needed a bitof a breather, so I tackled some small
tasks and some catch-up work that Iwas behind on and enjoyed a quieter
afternoon, which was really nice.
Then I charged right back in on thenext chapter starting the next day.
The beginning of a new chapter isalways tough to start and to set the
stage and the background properly, so Ididn't quite hit my page count yesterday
(01:32):
for what I was hoping to achieve andwhat I have scheduled out, but I know
that I'll make that time up once thecontent starts flowing really well.
And I am still just a bit ahead,so I'm hoping to maintain that
lead on into the next few weeks andmaybe give myself another breathing
opportunity here in a week or two.
Another set of progress that I madewas posting a blog post to DZone.
(01:56):
I haven't done this in a longwhile, actually, I think since
last fall, and I was really excitedto produce something else and put
something else together for that.
Again, I love, really love writingtechnical blogs, and I wrote
one on the agents architecturethat I've been talking about.
This is based on the session thatI'm really enjoying giving this
(02:17):
year, and I wanted a blog postformat for that, probably over a few
installments, so maybe three or fourposts that I hope will be coming.
I've got the first post out that justsets up the architecture and talks a
little bit about setting the stage andthe background and just a bit of a high
level about the project, and then thenext few blog posts will go into more
(02:38):
detail on the different layers thatwe stack up throughout the project.
So I hope a new one will be coming soon.
Then I also discovered that a colleaguewrote a blog post and published
it to DZone as well on Spring AI,Neo4j, and the Goodreads dataset.
This is from Akmal Chaudhry,who's on my team, and he spoke
(03:00):
at the London Java Community, orthe LJC, a couple of weeks ago.
And in preparation of-- for that, hewas working on some Java things, and
I pointed him to my Goodreads projectthat is available on GitHub, and he
took that and ran with that and puttogether a really nice presentation
and spoke there, and then wanted to puttogether a blog post to follow that up.
(03:21):
And so he published that this week alsoon DZone, which I was super excited about.
So you can hear somebody else'sperspective on using Neo4j and Java,
and I read through the blog post.
It's called GraphRAG in Practice (03:31):
Using Spring AI, Neo4j, and Goodreads Data.
This is a nice walkthrough of settingup the project and getting it running,
including the data import steps toset up your own copy of the data
and then continue on from there.
Definitely check that out if you'reinterested in hearing about those topics.
It was a really nice post, and again,super excited to have, somebody else
(03:52):
jumping in on th- these topics as well.
Then I also have some meetupgroup tours that are coming up.
I have probably mentioned thisin past, podcast episodes.
I have some Florida groupsthat are coming in November.
I have North Carolina groupsthat are occurring in September.
I will give all the details out once wefinalize organizing those, so I'm just
assembling those details and figuring outwhat the schedule will look like, and then
(04:15):
I'll publish more information as I go on.
Plus, I also have a virtual user grouppresentation in a couple of weeks for
the Miami JUG, or Java User Group.
That event link I will leave inthe show notes here in this podcast
episode 'cause that is coming uphere shortly, and it should be a
really fun, interesting session.
We're talking about GraphRAGand RAG and the introduction
(04:37):
to the AI industry and field.
If you're interested in attendingthat, definitely check out
the meetup link and RSVP.
Again, that will be virtual andoccurring at the end of July.
Then I also have some podcast gueststhat are starting to get lined
up for the next, well, few weeks.
I know I have at least one that is linedup next month, and I'm really enjoying
(04:57):
chatting with a few different peopleand hearing different perspectives on
different technologies and projectsthat are going on in the space.
I've been contacted by a few peoplethat I just never anticipated having
the collaboration with, and I'msuper excited to hear their story
and get their perspectives on this.
So stay tuned for some more funcontent coming up in this podcast.
(05:19):
The content piece that I read this weekis called Developer Relations After
the Cheat Code Machine by Sunil Pai.
I really enjoyed this take.
I found myself navigating the changinglandscape as people learn in different
ways and need different things.
We're all trying to figure outwhere things are going, right?
And how to best help people and educatepeople along the way, and that's really
(05:43):
what developer advocacy has been focusingon, or that's what I try to focus on
in developer advocacy, and the authorgoes into some of the details here.
The author talks about his backgroundwith learning via osmosis by watching
colleagues work and operate, theway his colleague, one colleague
in particular, worked her job.
I know my own experience actuallysomewhat mirrors this too.
(06:05):
My first job, I would sit at one ofmy mentor's cubicles and work through
problems over his shoulder, understandingthe different code bases and the processes
and who to contact for what things.
And Sunil, the author of this post,points out that there have been multiple
changes since then, since his entryinto the, the field and his initial
learnings, bringing both negatives andpositives, as most everything does.
(06:27):
But the AI era has definitelyshifted what people want.
The author also mentionedthat the watch me work content
seems to be more popular now.
I find this a bit strange personally,but I definitely see how this mirrors
the over-the-shoulder learning that weused to naturally do in an office with
handwritten code and implicit businessknowledge, things that we would just
(06:49):
soak up from our colleagues and beingaround and watching them work that no
longer really works in a, a remote worktype setting, at least not as well.
And so one way to go about gettingthat is through watching people
work virtually via YouTube channelsor videos that they publish.
It also mirrors the general YouTubetrend that I've seen of day in the life
(07:10):
videos or get ready with me content,which I've seen crop up quite a bit just
in general spaces outside of technology.
It's still not my favorite content,mostly because I want that type of content
digested into succinct action items thatI can apply in a fraction of the time.
I don't really want to watch somebodywork over the course of two hours.
I would rather get snippets and highlightsof the way that they work and the things
(07:33):
that they do in five or ten minutes maybe,and then I can start applying those.
The perspective that I really lovedin this blog post, though, is that
technical folks aren't trying to learncode, but instead they're trying to
learn all of the implicit knowledge ofhow humans work, operate, or respond
to different professional situations.
It's the understanding, the modelingof a domain, the communicating needs
(07:56):
and requirements amongst teammates andtools, and working through debugging
or problem-solving activities.
All of that is very vi- visible in thistype of watch me work type of content.
Now, these things cannot be learned,at least easily, in other formats like
written formats, audio, et cetera,and they can't, at least currently, be
replicated by AI and software tools.
(08:18):
So people are turning to human-createdcontent to learn and focus upon these
particular skills and others as well.
I'd like to make the point thatthese skills were always important,
but what has changed is the effortdedicated to learning them and
where our environment doesn'tnaturally allow us to soak them up.
The author closes with DevRel was alwaystrying to do these things, but now we
(08:40):
have to format them in a different wayand go about them from a different angle.
This week, after getting ahead on mywriting for the book, I was able to
accomplish some other backlog tasks,including a new blog post on DZone,
alongside a colleague's new postwith Java and Neo4j also on DZone.
Finally, I read a good article on howdevelopers are learning from others
(09:00):
around them in new ways and how that isimpacting the developer relations role.
I'm looking forward to havingyou join me on another episode.
As always, thanks forlistening and happy coding
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.