Graeme Rocher is the creator of several popular Open Source projects including Grails and Micronaut and co-author of «The Definitive Guide to Grails» (Springer). Graeme currently works as an Architect at Oracle. Graeme is a member of the Java Champions and 2018 was awarded the Groundbreaker award by Oracle for his work on Open Source.

Thomas Wuerthinger is a Vice President at Oracle leading programming language implementation teams for languages including Python, JavaScript, and Java. He is the architect of the Graal compiler and the Truffle self-optimizing runtime system. Previously, he worked on the Crankshaft optimizing compiler of V8 at Google, and the Maxine research virtual machine at Sun Microsystems. He received a PhD degree from JKU Linz for his research about dynamic code evolution.

Florian Enner is a co-founder of HEBI Robotics, where he works on APIs and user-facing tools for robotics applications. He has spent more than a decade creating intuitive and performant APIs that simplify robotics development, including a Java-based real-time control stack that is used in high-stakes industrial applications. He maintains several open source projects around low-latency Java, GraalVM native images, and JavaFX.

LOCATION: Zürich
ROOM: PH Zürich, Lagerstrasse 2, 8090 Zürich, Building LAA, Room J002C, Travel instructions
KEYWORDS: Lessons learned, Open Source, other Languages, Technology

The GraalVM Community Summit is coming to Zurich on October 21-22, bringing together contributors, partners, and users from across the community. The evening before, JUG Switzerland will welcome three speakers from the GraalVM community for a special meetup.
And with many community members already in Zurich for the Summit, there may be a few more familiar faces around too. Definitely one you do not want to miss.

Faster Development with Java, Python, and Micronaut

SPEAKER: Graeme Rocher   COMPANY: Oracle
SPEAKER: Thomas Wuerthinger   COMPANY: Oracle

The Java platform has always been about performance, reliability, and a rich developer ecosystem. But what if those same capabilities could become the foundation for building modern polyglot applications?

In this session, we'll unveil a new pre-compiled, pre-optimized Micronaut runtime built on GraalVM that delivers fast startup, low memory footprint, and a consistent programming model across Java, Kotlin, Python, and other Micronaut-supported languages.

Unlike approaches that require expensive native image builds before you see the benefits, this runtime is pre-compiled ahead of time, keeping the developer feedback loop fast. Make a source change, restart, and you're back in milliseconds – while still taking advantage of GraalVM's performance and native deployment capabilities when you're ready for production.

You'll see how Micronaut's dependency injection, configuration, testing, observability, and cloud-native features extend naturally across languages, enabling polyglot applications without sacrificing operational consistency. We'll also explore why this architecture is an ideal fit for AI-powered systems, combining Java's production strengths with the flexibility of Python where it makes sense.

If you're interested in the future of Java, GraalVM, cloud-native runtimes, and the next generation of polyglot application development, this session offers an early look at what's coming next.

LANGUAGE: Talk: en / Slides: en

Real-Time Robotics on the JVM: A Decade of Lessons, and How GraalVM Changes the Game

SPEAKER: Florian Enner   COMPANY: HEBI Robotics

Since 2011, we have been doing real-time robot control on the JVM in production, with users who mostly never knew Java was involved. Making that work required rethinking common wisdom: what real-time actually demands from a runtime, which beliefs about GC and latency hold up in practice, and the architecture patterns that make a garbage-collected language deterministic enough to trust with hardware.

GraalVM native shared libraries have since changed the game: Java is no longer just an application language, but a native library that other ecosystems can embed. An annotation processor turns Java APIs into C++, Python, and MATLAB bindings with isolate management, type conversions, and exception propagation across languages. The first production result: a JavaFX-based Python visualization that beats even commercial solutions.

We will close with notes from the bleeding edge. Expect robot videos, live demos, and surprising capabilities of Java.

LANGUAGE: Talk: en / Slides: en

Graeme Rocher is the creator of several popular Open Source projects including Grails and Micronaut and co-author of «The Definitive Guide to Grails» (Springer). Graeme currently works as an Architect at Oracle. Graeme is a member of the Java Champions and 2018 was awarded the Groundbreaker award by Oracle for his work on Open Source.

---

Thomas Wuerthinger is a Vice President at Oracle leading programming language implementation teams for languages including Python, JavaScript, and Java. He is the architect of the Graal compiler and the Truffle self-optimizing runtime system. Previously, he worked on the Crankshaft optimizing compiler of V8 at Google, and the Maxine research virtual machine at Sun Microsystems. He received a PhD degree from JKU Linz for his research about dynamic code evolution.

---

Florian Enner is a co-founder of HEBI Robotics, where he works on APIs and user-facing tools for robotics applications. He has spent more than a decade creating intuitive and performant APIs that simplify robotics development, including a Java-based real-time control stack that is used in high-stakes industrial applications. He maintains several open source projects around low-latency Java, GraalVM native images, and JavaFX.

---