Ana-Maria Mihălceanu is a fan of Java software craftmanship and a constant adopter of challenging development scenarios; some of her experiments are available on Dzone. Recently, her technical passion for cloud application development has been badged with IBM Certified Application Developer – Cloud Platform v1; and she would like to share with the audience her experience and experiments. Her other passions? The usual knowledge hunt through reading and growing fashion skills through shopping.

Q. You’re speaking at Voxxed Days Bucharest in March. Tell us a bit about your session.

My session’s scope is to clarify through examples how easy is to make an application delivered on PaaS.
The 12 factor methodology is not just invented, but it represents an early blueprint for cloud application development.
In my session I will use this 12 factor manifesto and prove that (no matter the technology you use in your application) “it will work if those rules are followed”.

Q. Why is the subject matter important?

This subject is important because there is a gap between on premise and cloud application development. The gap exists for two reasons:
to detach your mind as a developer from your on premise habits and to emphasize the advantages of each development manner in order to decide what is best for you.
There is a bridge over the gap: both on premise and cloud application developers use the same programming languages, the same frameworks.
So there should be no difference in terms of methodology, right? And yet, if there is no difference why and when is the cloud better for development?
These are natural questions that come to everyone’s mind and without a methodology like the 12 factors, many developers would abandon the idea of cloud application development. This might come as a shock, but imagine that in PaaS environment a programmer focuses only on code and data for that application, while on premise he/she should have also had to consider matching the deliverable with the infrastructure. A PaaS offers freedom in exchange of less programatic control on the environment itself.
And the rest of the fairy tale will be uncovered at VoxxedDays Bucharest.

Q. Who should attend your session?

Anyone that would like to take a glimpse on what makes an application as agnostic as possible of the configuration set on target deployment.
Or any technical person that at least once told to herself/himself any of the following: “the Java framework/technology that I am currently working with will not work with the cloud”,
“that PaaS does not have this awesome server/service provisioned”, “because my client’s business is sensitive, I will never work an application for cloud environment, so why should I care about how it’s done?”.

Q. What are the key things attendees will take away from your session?

Obviously the 12 factors and how they can become a part of the developer’s discipline when comes to cloud application development.

Q. Aside from speaking at Voxxed Days Bucharest, what else are you excited about for 2017?

2017 represents “yet another year of meetups” here in Bucharest. I am proud to be a Romanian technical person and also honored to be part of these meetup gatherings.
Given the success of the past VoxxedDays event, I have a great feeling about our developer comunity here in Romania that is strengthen to
do more give back not only here locally, but also outside the country.