From Quantum Physics to Quarkus

An airhacks.fm conversation with Holly Cummins ( @holly_cummins ) about: first computer experience with her dad's Kaypro CPM machine and ASCII platform games, learning Basic programming on an IBM PC clone to build a recipe management system, studying physics at university with a doctorate in quantum computing, self-teaching Java to create 3D visualizations of error correction on spheres during PhD research, joining IBM as a self-taught programmer without formal computer science education, working on Business Event Infrastructure (BDI) at IBM, brief unhappy experience porting JMS to .net with Linux and VNC, moving to IBM's JVM performance team working on garbage collection analysis, creating Health Center visualization tooling for J9 as an alternative to JDK Mission Control , innovative low-overhead always-on profiling by leveraging JIT compiler's existing method hotness data, transitioning to WebSphere Liberty team during its early development, Liberty's architectural advantage of OSGi-based modular core enabling small fast startup while maintaining application compatibility, working on Apache Aries enterprise OSGi project and writing a book about it, discussion of OSGi's strengths in protecting internal APIs versus complexity costs for application developers, the famous OSGi saying about making the impossible possible and the possible hard, microservices solving modularity problems through network barriers versus class loader barriers, five years as IBM consultant helping customers adopt cloud-native technologies, critique of cloud-native terminology becoming meaningless when everything required the native suffix, detailed analysis of 12-factor app principles and how most were already standard Java practices, stateless processes as the main paradigm shift from JavaServer Faces session-based applications, joining Red Hat's quarkus team three and a half years ago through Erin Schnabel's recommendation, working on Quarkiverse community aspects and ecosystem development, leading energy efficiency measurements confirming Quarkus's sustainability advantages, current role as cross-portfolio sustainability architect for Red Hat middleware, writing Pact contract testing extension for Quarkiverse to understand extension author experience, re-architecting Quarkus test framework class loading to enable deeper extension integration, recent work on Dev Services lazy initialization to prevent eager startup of multiple database instances across test profiles, fixing LGTM Dev Services port configuration bugs for multi-microservice observability setups, upcoming JPMS integration work by colleague David Lloyd requiring class loader simplification, the double win of saving money while also reducing environmental impact, comparison of sustainability benefits to accessibility benefits for power users, mystery solved about the blue-haired speaker at European Java User Groups years ago Holly Cummins on twitter: @holly_cummins

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From Quantum Physics to Quarkus is an episode from airhacks.fm podcast with adam bien by Adam Bien.

This episode is 01:07:10 long.

This episode was published on Jan 27, 2026.

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