Mario first discovered the technologies that would eventually evolve into Jmix in 2015, long before Jmix itself existed. Since then, he has written about the platform, answered questions in the community, built add-ons, spoken at conferences, and followed the evolution of the ecosystem for more than ten years.
As Jmix turns 10, Mario reflects on architecture, community, AI, and why he has continued coming back to the platform over the years.
A Chance Discovery
I first discovered what would later become Jmix technologies in 2015 through a chance link in my Twitter feed. It led to an article on Java Code Geeks, and I immediately thought: this is surprisingly close to the kind of framework we have been looking for.
At the time, I was part of a team building a large business application for public administration to replace an older Delphi system.
Our Grails-based, server-side approach was not going to scale to the level of functionality and user experience we needed. At the same time, the emerging model of fully separate single-page applications and REST APIs did not feel right for our context either.
This platform seemed to offer another way.
More Than a Web Framework
What drew me in was that the platform was not just another framework for building a web layer.
Its full-stack approach covered many of the things our application actually needed: security, reporting, data management, and a coherent way to build data-centric business applications.
I remember reading almost the entire documentation in one or two evenings on my phone, simply because I was fascinated by its depth.
At that point, however, Jmix technologies were not yet open source and came from a company we had never heard of. We decided to wait. When they became open source in 2016, that changed the situation for us.
I remember reading almost the entire documentation in one or two evenings on my phone.
A Direct Approach to Business Applications
The architecture was the part I found particularly interesting.
One of the defining characteristics of Jmix technologies has always been placing the JPA entity at the center of the application and embracing a more direct style of software development.
I had long felt that excessive abstraction could get in the way of actually solving business problems.
The best practices repeated across the industry sounded reasonable, but many of the problems I encountered in real projects were essentially CRUD-oriented: structured data entry, operations on business entities, and the automation connecting them.
For that kind of work, designing every application to last twenty years and remain completely independent of any particular technology often felt like over-engineering.
The platform reminded me of the productivity offered by classic desktop development tools such as Visual Basic - a feeling I rarely encountered when building applications for the web.
Becoming Part of the Community
In 2015, I wrote my first blog post about the platform: My Personal CRUD Story, or How I Came to CUBA.
I also began answering questions in the forum and, over the years, built several add-ons.
From the beginning, I had direct contact with the team behind the platform. They were surprisingly approachable and genuinely open to discussions, suggestions, and feedback from the community.
Eventually, they invited me to speak at conferences in Germany. One experience I still remember particularly well was traveling with the team to JavaOne in 2017.
Even during the years when I barely used the platform, that connection with the people behind it was one of the reasons I continued coming back for the new projects.
The Evolution of Jmix
From an outside perspective, the move from CUBA to Jmix felt natural.
CUBA had already been built on technologies such as JPA, Spring, and Vaadin. Jmix modernized that foundation with Spring Boot, newer versions of Vaadin, Liquibase, and a technology stack that was more familiar to the wider Java ecosystem.
Importantly, Jmix did not try to hide all those frameworks behind its own abstractions.
Instead, it increasingly focused on curating and integrating them, while keeping the underlying technologies closer to what Java developers already knew and trusted.
That made Jmix feel less like a closed development environment and more like a structured way to use established technologies together.
Jmix in the Age of AI
More recently, the rise of AI-assisted development made me reconsider where a framework such as Jmix still fits.
Some of the capabilities that once felt almost magical - such as generating standard CRUD interfaces - can now be achieved with AI tools in a similar way.
But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized that code generation had never been the platform’s main value for me.
Its real value was in the abstractions, conventions, and integrated building blocks that are still difficult to keep consistent across a large application, whether AI is involved or not.
AI makes generating code easier. It does not automatically make large business applications more coherent. The main value was never just code generation; it was the abstractions and integrated building blocks that are still hard to keep consistent
Ten Years of Lasting Impact
CUBA and Jmix have had a lasting impact on my professional life.
I am grateful to have been part of this journey. The platform shaped not only some of the applications I built, but also many of the professional relationships formed over the years.
Through it, I met people, joined discussions, contributed to open-source projects, spoke at conferences, and became part of a community that extended far beyond the technology itself.
Congratulations to the entire Jmix and Haulmont team on ten years - and all the best for what comes next.
Thank You, Mario
Mario, thank you for being part of the Jmix story for so many years.
Your articles, add-ons, conference talks, forum contributions, thoughtful feedback, and willingness to openly discuss both the strengths and challenges of the platform have made a real difference to our community and to the way Jmix has evolved.
We are especially grateful that, even as technologies, projects, and industry trends changed, you continued to stay connected with the platform and the people behind it.
It is a privilege to have you as part of the Jmix community. Thank you for your trust, curiosity, and contribution - and we hope there are many more stories still to come.
