Olimpiu Pop

Martin Kleppmann, an associate professor at Cambridge and author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, discusses the evolution of data systems over the last decade, mainly the shift from monolithic databases to modular building blocks. Kleppmann underlines the importance of moving from cloud-centric data storage systems to decentralised data storage similar to Bluesky’s AT protocol. He also dives into explaining the local-first movement and the importance of users owning their data.

Birgitta Böckeler, Distinguished Engineer at Thoughtworks, returns to discuss the rapid evolution of AI in software delivery. She touches on the evolution from vibe coding, the changing tools landscape and the more autonomous agents that, besides higher velocity, introduce higher risk. AI Development moved from verbose vibe coding to more autonomous context engineering.

The call to action, "to make 2026 the year of Java in the terminal", was quickly responded to by the launch of TamboUI, the first modern TUI Java library. Inspired by Ratatui (presumably the library used to develop the Claude CLI), it promises support ranging from low-level terminal drawing to high-level APIs, including components and event handling. Currently at version 0.3.0, it has already been adopted by major projects such as Maven and Spring.