At the very beginning of last year, I decided to track my reading habits and share the best stuff here, on Baeldung. Haven't missed a review since.

Here we go…

1. Spring and Java

This article continues to explore testing with Spock, this time with a close look at specifications.

>> Parallel execution of blocking tasks with RxJava and Completable [solidsoft.wordpress.com]

RxJava is definitely a powerful tool and quite a nice API. Here's a practical writeup showing some real-world scenarios of how to use it.

>> Oracle's OpenJDK Cleanup of “Unsafe” Implementation [infoq.com]

A short update on what's happening with Unsafe in Java 9.

Very interesting approach to supporting multiple Java versions in a public API. If you're building or maintaining a public API – definitely worth checking out.

And, as a side-note – if you're into marketing – this is a nice piece of being smart about the way you produce content that supports your product.

The identity of an entity is a lot more complex than just slapping an @Id on and call it a day.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical

Mutation testing makes the bogus metric that is code coverage slightly less bogus. It looks easy enough to set up, so I'll definitely give this one a try.

Like always, a solid deep-dive into the intricacies of getting to a well tested, easy to change system.

>> How to Detect and Analyze DDoS Attacks Using Log Analysis [loggly.com]

An interesting and certainly helpful look at how DDoS attacks work, how targets are usually picked and what you can do about it.

Hint – good logging can help see the pattern early. Reacting to it – well, that's not as easy as just knowing it's happening.

I've been in my fair share of coding standard discussions (let's call them “discussions”) where I was trying to convince someone of something. It's never fun and almost always unproductive – so I tend to approach this problem different now (hint – I'm a lot more flexible than in my early days).

This writeup goes over some of that process and makes some really good points you can pick up and use when your team is pulling the trigger on a coding standard.

Also worth reading:

3. Musings

Monoliths have a bad rap. It's really important to understand though where monolith makes more sense and what kind of system really does need a microservice architecture.

That early decision has the clear potential of saving you many months of extra development work to get to where you need to be.

Attempts of reviewing code are legion. Positive, useful code review cultures geared towards learning are few and far between.

And that's definitely because the practice does require a few things to be in place in order to work well – not the least of which is some level of emotional maturity.

A couple of fun reads about how fast the general tech industry is moving forward.

This isn't a post, it's a small book 🙂

It's also an intelligent, clearly written writeup on what it takes to put your work out there and do it well.

Well worth reading if only to get rid of “deployment stress” (real medical condition) and 10x your chill factor when going to production.

A well known practice in the DevOps world, and hopefully outside of it as well.

I'm expecting this article to keep growing like the previous series here, following the super interesting Evolving Publication concept.

Also worth reading:

4. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

5. Pick of the Week