Michael Nascimento Santos's Blog

A few words about Brazil, Java technology and myself

If you have been to the last edition of JavaOne, then you probably have seen me :-) I was one of the crazy, shameless Brazilian guys who attended the conference this year. No, I wasn't the "Brazilian superman", as one guy who works for Sun named Bruno Souza, our Javaman. :-) But, getting back to the point, there is a lot more about Java development and Brazil than you might know.

To begin with, as Manoel Lemos and Beatriz Leao mentioned at their session, we speak Portuguese - yes, we don't speak Spanish and we are more than 50% of Latin America, what means most latins speak Portuguese! We are the 12th largest world economy and our capital city is Brasilia, not Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo nor Buenos Aires (that last one would make some of us really angry :-P) And some national wide projects are entirely or mostly Java technology based. Oh, probably the most surprising fact: our JUGs are the largest of the world! The #1 is SouJava, which I am glad to be part of and help to coordinate.

As this is my blog let's talk a little bit about me: currently, I am working on a application that is going to be used by one of the main industry players here and it's going to control nearly everything they do. My Ant builds are taking ages - ok, 5-7 minutes, but that's ages from a Java developer perspective :-P - and I think our code base is still going to get 5 times bigger! That is what motivated my java.net main project, called AntG. Its main purpose is to make Ant builds run faster by using threads and taking advantage of grid computing. If you are interested, check it out! Give your suggestions and join the project. We are still limiting its scope and deciding how to begin to implement it, so all of you are welcome. Right now, we are discussing everything in Portuguese, since we are all Brazilians, but if you join, identify as a non-Portuguese speaker and we'll do our best to write in a language you understand - as long as it is English or Spanish. :-)

I intend to publish some useful and practical tips here and also to talk about my other projects, so keep checking my blog out.

Regards,
Michael "MisterM" Santos

Comments

• Brazil in Africa ?
  And dont forget to say that Brasil is not located in Africa ! ;-)

  Posted by: danieldfjug on August 04, 2003 at 03:40 PM

• Brazil in Africa ?
  OK, I'll mention some other interesting facts in my next entry.

  Posted by: mister__m on August 04, 2003 at 06:06 PM

• Nearly but not more...
  >To begin with, as Manoel Lemos and Beatriz
  > Leao mentioned at their session, we speak
  > Portuguese - yes, we don't speak Spanish
  >and we are more than 50% of Latin America,
  > what means most latins speak Portuguese!

  From www.lonelyplanet.com
  República Federativa do Brasil Population: 175 million
  Republic of Peru Population: 27,012,899
  Republic of Ecuador Population: 12,920,092
  Republic of Bolivia Area: 1,098,580
  Republic of Chile Population: 15 million
  República Argentina Population: 37,812,817
  República Oriental del Uruguay Population: 3,334,074
  Républica del Paraguay Population: 5,585,828
  Estados Unidos Méxicanos Population: 100,350,000

  There are more spanish speaking countries but so far we have 209 millions...

  Cheers

  Posted by: jdavi on August 07, 2003 at 06:28 AM

• Nearly but not more...
  I didn't make myself clear: I meant latinamericans :-) I was thinking of South America actually, sorry for not being accurate.

  Posted by: mister__m on August 07, 2003 at 06:35 AM

• is sad...
  Well i don't like to speak about it, but i'm cuban and live in Brazil, i love brazil(really) but at the same time i feel sad to see how much nacionalist they are!...

  Posted by: jars on August 07, 2003 at 08:07 AM

• Re: is sad...
  Hi,

  I am sorry if my blog entry gave you the impression I am nationalist. Actually, I am not nationalist at all! The point was trying to make is that Brazil is quite different than most people think, that we have more to offer than samba, soccer and women - although we do have the previous three things I mentioned in unique ways :-) . What I meant is that there is a lot of Java development going on here - and far more than Java development! We are _as good as_ any other country - better in some ways, worst in others, but the same in general. And software development is one of the things we are proud of. I don't think we are better than everyone else; I just think we are far better than people expect - especially when it comes to Java ;-)

  Posted by: mister__m on August 11, 2003 at 04:48 AM

• is sad...
  Hi,

  I just want that when I say I am from Brazil people dont say 'Hasta la vista' or something like that!

  ...and that Buenos Aires thing makes me mad!!!

  Certainly we are nacionalists, you are right about that. But at least we don't have anything like Capitain America (I read it!! but I prefer Thor)

  :-)

  Posted by: jerkolino on August 13, 2003 at 12:08 PM

• Check out Java Make
  To speed up your Ant builds, check out Java Make.

  Java Make
  http://www.experimentalstuff.com/Technologies/JavaMake/

  Posted by: coxcu on November 05, 2003 at 11:11 AM

• Portugal
  Michael, could you also mention in your next article that Portugal is not a province of Spain nor a north-african country where people speak brazilian? A lot of people also seem to get confused about it. :-)

  Posted by: tuga on April 28, 2004 at 12:50 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.