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James Ward

@jamesward.com

2.6K followers 860 following 120 posts

Just another nerd with a podcast: happypathprogramming.com And a book: effectorientedprogramming.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Oct 29

In case you missed it, the book that Bruce Eckel, Bill Frasure, and I have been working on for 4 years is out! Effect Oriented Programming: A paradigm for creating reliable, adaptable, testable systems. Optimized for mobile reading! Get the digital or print version at: effectorientedprogramming.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · 26d

This week @starbuxman.joshlong.com and I made two videos on building AI Agents with the latest milestone of Spring AI (Java or Kotlin) and Embabel, using Amazon Bedrock for inference:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmEV...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpeY...

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Jul 20

I need to investigate running this on the new AgentCore Runtime. In the meantime I just deploy to ECS.

Reposted by James Ward

GOTO Conferences @gotocon.com · Jul 4

Structured Concurrency by @jamesward.com: Better cancellation & error handling in concurrent code. Covers Java/Kotlin/Scala approaches. Makes fan-out/fan-in easier! youtu.be/XOSR0Asq4h0?...

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Jul 3

Podcast: creators.spotify.com/pod/show/hap...
Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvIw...

#112 AI Agents Get More 9's with Rod Johnson by Happy Path Programming

Rod Johnson, creator of the Spring Framework, has created a JVM-based AI Agent framework called Embabel. We dive in and learn how enterprises can build more reliable Agents using deterministic plannin...

creators.spotify.com

James Ward @jamesward.com · Jul 3

There has been a huge gap between the world of AI and enterprises' needs. In episode #112 of Happy Path Programming, @bruceeckel.bsky.social and I chat with Rod Johnson about his Embabel Agent Framework and how it helps improve reliability, cost, and other 'ilities when building agents.

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Jun 27

I’d love to!

Reposted by James Ward

Devoxx UK @devoxx.uk · Jun 3

Learn to keep your apps platform-agnostic, scale efficiently, and optimize deployment using Spring and Testcontainers in @jamesward.com ’s and @mmeckes.bsky.social ’s Devoxx UK 2025 talk "Write Once, Deploy Everywhere: From Containers to Serverless."

Watch here - buff.ly/iIlffzZ

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Reposted by James Ward

InfoQ @infoq.com · May 23

Discover how #PklLang is redefining #InfrastructureAsCode!

Unlike complex #YAML, Pkl uses schemas & constraints for robust configuration management, catching errors early and providing clear feedback.

🎥 Watch the video by Dan Chao (Software Engineer, Apple): bit.ly/43ptkpm

#Kubernetes #IaC

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James Ward @jamesward.com · May 21

You can use the Ollama models locally. If you do decide to uae Bedrock, check out the pricing and free tier.

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James Ward @jamesward.com · May 21

The actual body of the function is in the sample repo. Just left out for the purpose of the blog since it wasn’t relevant.

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James Ward @jamesward.com · May 21

The Spring AI 1.0 release is a total game changer for millions of developers, enabling them to easily integrate AI & MCP into their Java & Kotlin systems! Check out my blog about why this release is so monumental: community.aws/content/2xLk...

Spring AI 1.0 Brings AI to the Developer Masses

Spring AI 1.0 has been released, enabling millions of developers to quickly and easily add AI to their Java and Kotlin systems.

community.aws

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James Ward @jamesward.com · May 16

Here is the recording of the "Write Once, Deploy Everywhere: From Containers to Serverless" presentation that @mmeckes.bsky.social and I did at @devoxx.uk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kgN...

Write Once, Deploy Everywhere: From Containers to Serverless by James Ward & Matthew Meckes

YouTube video by Devoxx UK

www.youtube.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · May 14

This could go badly, but I've deployed a public MCP server for testing purposes. Built with Spring AI & Kotlin. Try it out: mcp-test.jamesward.com
Code: github.com/jamesward/he...

A basic MCP server for testing - Built with Spring AI & Kotlin

mcp-test.jamesward.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · May 12

Of course you can build a multi-turn MCP-based Agent on top of Amazon Bedrock Converse and the MCP Java SDK, just with a lot more code than abstractions (Spring AI, Quarkus, Langchain4j, etc). Here's the code:
github.com/aws-samples/...

Sample-Model-Context-Protocol-Demos/modules/java-mcp-bedrock-agent at main · aws-samples/Sample-Model-Context-Protocol-Demos

Collection of examples of how to use Model Context Protocol with AWS. - aws-samples/Sample-Model-Context-Protocol-Demos

github.com

James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 30

Them: "You can build a multi-turn AI Agent connected to MCP servers in only 50 lines of code"
Spring AI: Hold my beer, now watch this:

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 12

MCP & Wasm are like peanut butter and jelly. In episode 111 of @happypathprogramming.com, we take some bites into the best AI sandwich ever made with @nilslice.bsky.social:
creators.spotify.com/pod/show/hap...

#111 Wasm & MCP with Steve Manuel by Happy Path Programming

We chat with Steve Manuel (of dylibso.com and mcp.run) about LLM "plugins" with Wasm & MCP (Model Context Protocol).Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

creators.spotify.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 11

Just finished upgrading some AWS + Spring AI + MCP samples from Spring AI M6 to the new M7. Pretty straightforward but if you need a reference, check out the samples: github.com/aws-samples/...

GitHub - aws-samples/Sample-Model-Context-Protocol-Demos: Collection of examples of how to use Model Context Protocol with AWS.

Collection of examples of how to use Model Context Protocol with AWS. - aws-samples/Sample-Model-Context-Protocol-Demos

github.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 10

Had a great chat with Justin Reock from @getdx.bsky.social about developer productivity on Episode 110 of @happypathprogramming.com:
creators.spotify.com/pod/show/hap...

#110 Unlocking Developer Productivity with Justin Reock by Happy Path Programming

Justin Reock has spent a lot of his career thinking about how to help developers be more productive. In this episode we learn about the methodologies that can help developers spend more time in "flow ...

creators.spotify.com

James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 9

Check out the end-to-end video and the code:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y291...
github.com/aws-samples/...

Building Agents with AWS: Complete Tutorial (Java, Spring AI, Amazon Bedrock & MCP)

YouTube video by AWS Developers

www.youtube.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 9

I'm primarily a back-end developer and I've struggled to understand how to bring AI into my systems. Luckily I was able to sit down with @starbuxman.joshlong.com and learn about how Spring AI makes this all super easy, including integration with MCP servers and RAG with vector data.

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 6

The amazon-q-cli package is now in Nix unstable!

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Reposted by James Ward

Dan Vega @danvega.dev · Apr 6

📣 Join us LIVE this Monday for Spring Office Hours S4E9!

We're excited to welcome @jamesward.com, Principal Developer Advocate at AWS, to discuss running MCP-Based Agents on AWS with Spring AI. Learn how to build AI applications using MCP and Nova.

🔴 Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5JD...

Spring Office Hours: S4E9 - Running MCP-Based Agents on AWS with James Ward

YouTube video by SpringDeveloper

www.youtube.com

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Apr 2

Thanks Christian and other Spring AI devs for making it so easy to work with Amazon Bedrock & MCP! Here is the corresponding video that @starbuxman.joshlong.com and I created: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y291...
And the code: github.com/aws-samples/...

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Reposted by James Ward

Christian Tzolov @tzolov.bsky.social · Mar 30

🚀 The MCP Java SDK core module provides default STDIO & SSE client/server transports - no external web frameworks needed!

Build MCP clients/servers in plain Java with both Async (Reactor) & Sync APIs. Spring support is optional.

🔗 Minimal deps: central.sonatype.com/artifact/io....

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James Ward @jamesward.com · Mar 20

It'd actually make a good addition to my blog or followup to show what the corresponding DSL approach is and what the failure message looks like. :)

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