Luiz Real at JavaOne 2026

Jim Grisanzio from Oracle Java Developer Relations talks with Luiz Real, an engineer and college professor from the SouJava Community in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Luiz came to JavaOne 2026 for the first time this year to build relationships, catch up on the latest technical features in Java, and to mix with the Java Champions. He says building those connections is something you can only do in person at a conference like this. “JavaOne for me is a career changing thing,” he says.

Luiz has been around Java for 18 years and working with it professionally for at least eight years. He’s a lead software developer at a large university and currently building digital management systems. The university runs more than 80 systems in Java. As he puts it, “Java in the enterprise world is, I think, the most reliable, the most used language.” Luiz is also a college professor, so he sees both sides of Java in industry and academic. His students are picking up Java because the jobs are there and they pay well. The hard part isn’t learning the language. It’s in the application. Students learn the fundamentals but sometimes struggle to apply them to real problems solutions. So Luiz brings real problem sets into class, works through them step by step, and explains what he’s doing as he goes.

On AI, Luiz sees real opportunities for Java developers. “Even in the AI era, we can do a lot more with AI now with Java,” he says. “You see language is a tool. I’m telling my students that if they want to learn they should learn as many tools as they can. This is very good for them because it’s just one more thing that they can put in their resumes and one more thing that can help them to achieve what they want and to solve the problems that the market presents to us.”

But there’s a catch he sees in his classroom regarding AI. Many students use AI to build things for them rather than to understand how those things work. So, he pushes students to ask the follow up questions about how the code they just built actually works. AI should be a tool for learning and extending their knowledge of Java development.

Luiz says his biggest opportunity for his career was when he joined the Java community. Everyone is so passionate about the language, he says, and willing to share what they know. “SouJava is one of the biggest communities in the world,” Luiz says. The community hosts at least one in person meetup a month, sometimes two or three. “Every month we get more than 100 people in person, and hundreds more online.” When SouJava partners with other communities, the events grow to 200-400 people in person. Everyone is a volunteer, from the registration desk to the speakers themselves. Attendees feel the energy and want to stay involved. They want to become friends and step up as the next speakers. SouJava also runs international sessions in English, in person and streamed live. “Everyone is welcome in our community.”

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