Joel was right all along...

I used this title not to gain attention, but because there was not a single conversation where we haven’t quoted Joel at least once, often multiple times.

It took myself 20 years ongoing discussions with him (with regular 1:1 talks, especially after unfortunate tweets from my side 😌😅) to finally learn that he was right all along.

APEX Alpe Adria is a very effective conference. You get the same top quality presentations from the same top speakers, including APEX team members. So you know the “state of the union” after a day, get drunk at the party talking to friends, then head home on Saturday and all of that for an affordable price.

Here my recorded presentation: AI for Dummies

The current state of APEX

Quality:

We found a couple of confirmed bugs in the 24.2 Application Builder which made it almost impossible to upgrade. The quality of the APEX releases are getting worse. It was rock solid roughly 5+ years ago. We started with a one day of scheduled “we have to fix things after the upgrade”. Now we plan 4 weeks of fixings and workarounds for bugs after installing a major release. But two of our bugs has been already fixed 4 weeks later in the latest Patchset-Release. So they are really quick, which is not what you can expect from a large company like Oracle.

I advocated for a long time not to hire just developers but also testing people into the team, who know a new feature from day one and can do testings already during the development phase. The external approach: We give testing to a separate department in India is not working. They have no chance to find all the many test cases which even the developer can’t think of. To win a football game you need a strong defence and can’t hire them from a different club 😉

I don’t think that will change in any way and we just have to live with the new “quality”. But for the defence, it’s not the APEX 5 or 10 years ago anymore. And I know about the exponential growth of test cases when your product becomes more complex and has more dependencies. It’s called “Combinatorial Explosion” for a reason. So it’s not just the fault of Oracle it’s simply math. But I also think the focus should have been more on testing and quality instead of hiring only developers.

Hopefully we will get a great AI Testing Suite soon which solves all these problems anyway, until that plan more days for fixings. It’s not different with other complex products from other companies though.

Future:

I think the new features we get now per release have become very decent again. Nothing to complain about on that front anymore. Also the implementation of 20+ ideas per release shows, we - the community - are back in business and recognised as customers again! Special thanks to Vincent, it always comes down to one person to initiate the change.

Personally I miss the “AI First” Strategy from Oracle, like we see it in other Companies like Microsoft or Google. The APEX team does its best to leverage the current developments in AI, but overall it feels like Oracle is at least one step behind and for sure not one of the hot addresses when it comes to AI.

APEX Lang could work though. We know that Mike, Kris and their teams are one thing for sure and that is super smart. So I could see a model trained on APEX Lang which can actually generate impressive parts of APEX Applications, easily adaptable with the Application builder afterwards and also generating parts during the development process. Let’s wait, seeing is believing 😊

Oracle Cloud? I don’t have personal experience, but when I hear something from trusted sources, it’s never positive. I think the technology part is great, but I also think we have an “Old Management” that lags agile thinking, development and customer focus. I would love to see a guy like Gerald there to make Oracle Cloud Great Again. One example that is most relevant for us and shows the Cloud problem in general imo is that everybody in the world gets the latest APEX releases, but if you are on the vendors Cloud itself, you are months behind. That’s embarrassing. If there is any difference for a release upgrade it should be one day earlier for paying Oracle Cloud customers 😉

https://x.com/aejes/status/1909918380523405422

Community

How do I tell my kids 😊

The old friend- and relationships are rock solid and won’t change, but the new guys will never experience what we had the first 15ish years.

APEX has become main stream. Like when Apple was a small “cult” 20 years ago when we proudly put these weird stickers on our cars, this is also not a thing anymore for Apple. Maybe it is the price to pay if you become main stream and you can’t do anything about it? I would love to see an alternative timeline where Joel is still with us and compare the communities. I would put my money on that it would be still the same, just 3 times larger.

The APEX team hired somebody who should reinvigorate the community which is honorable but it won’t work. We have been dragged through a long presentation which was half of it about himself the other half what he has achieved with the management and what he plans to achieve. We had short discussions about it at dinner and at the party and let me put it that way, there were no alternating opinions 😊

What would Joel have done?

Not a single slide! Instead of talking about himself, his achievements and what he plans to do, he would have stand in front of 250 valuable customers and start an actual conversation with the words: “OK guys, we are all friends here, tell me what you really think!”

You wouldn’t have seen him in any presentation, because he would have been in constant talks with his customers in the Foyer. He would be the first at the party, made sure he talked to everybody at least once, sit on their table and drink with them (I haven’t seen a single Oracle guy at the party and I was there for 3 hours with 10 others on the table). He would be the last to go, heading back to the hotel with the rest of the bunch and wreck the mini bars with them, just to show up at breakfast at 8 am like he hasn’t drank anything for weeks 🤷‍♂️😅

I remember vividly some APEX World conference on the boat when Steve Jobs was still alive and there was an Apple Keynote. We (me and the Oracle guys) watched it in the room right next to the party with an open door. Suddenly Joel came in and said: “Oh, this is what we’re doing!”. We have all been pissed, not because he interrupted us, but because we all understood, that he was right. We were supposed to mingle in the party, engage with our customers and be approachable. So one by one we stood up and did exactly that.

He would have made sure that there would be a decent good bye at least for the keynote speakers and organisers (he always emphasised how important it is to greet the customers, look them in the eyes and also have a proper good bye). The only proper good bye I had was with Monica who I’m very impressed with. She is doing the right things without wanting or even knowing it.

You can’t make it, you have to be it. Sorry, I love Marc for what he is, but honestly I would find it kind of creepy if he would suddenly show up at the party at our table and ask, how we are doing 😅. So you can’t blame the people not to be Joel and it’s also not working to just act like him. You could learn from his example, understanding it and this will actually change you without “doing something”. But it took myself 20 years with very special training, so no blame on anyone. All you can do is be who you are right now. Be authentic, learn and improve which changes you eventually - but it takes time, change is never easy.

The conferences are also not designed to engage with each other. So it’s definitely not coming from Oracle (don’t believe any slides, if you need slides you are not doing it), it’s also not coming from the conferences, so all that’s left is that the newbies have the courage to connect with us, the old bunch. I can ensure you, we are all happy about every new contact we make, but you need to make the first step.

Personal Takeaways

After 20 years I stand corrected. Joel was right all along. The people are more important than the truth or the project success. I learned that finally - it took a while. Or like a very wise friend told me recently, there is truth, which is important, but there is also wisdom which includes people 😊

The world is changing. I’m following it for the last 5 years, investing thousands of hours to investigate what was really going on the last thousands of years in this world. The old power structure is exposed and coming to an end. I would like to think that I’m through at least once, so I can go on with my life now. There are very few people I can talk to about it, but if we do, I always get the question: What do you think will come next?

I would say something completely different, we all have no idea about, otherwise it wouldn’t be different? There are good people in the world who mean good and try to restore the “old right” like Jordan Peterson’s ARC project, but I don’t think this is what’s coming, because we had that already, locally in some time periods. I think we will get a new Operating System: World 2.0.

In the old world you could only be really successful if you just focused on yourself and the more ruthless you became and payed the price, the higher you rose in the ranks (you will see the “Superstars” in a different light eventually and won’t envy them or like to become them anymore 😉).

In the new world I think you will be successful in a healthy way but at the same time you will also be happy. Only the things that actually benefits humans (and this will also include animals and nature in general) will prosper 🖖

This said, It was nice to see that I met some people at the conference who did this already in their life (focusing on other people - the mission of Joel’s life) and seeing them thrive but also happy at the same time.

I had a lot of great talks, APEX related and private where we quoted Joel at least once. So he is still with us and probably will for a very long time…

I’m not sure if I will attend future conferences anymore. It could be. But my life goes on, I’m starting a new career in the medical sector. It was a great time experiencing this extraordinary community and their people!