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

A solid and quite exhaustive writeup about the new modularity work coming to Java 9.

A quick, solid intro to what Spring Batch is and what it's super useful for.

Very cool and to the point guide to how flushing – and in particular auto-flushing – behaves differently between Hibernate and JPA.

A high level writeup about using exception to control execution flow and actually having an disciplined approach to how logging is done and how these exceptions flow through the system.

An look at using annotations for flow control. And an entertaining peek into Lukas' “love” for Java annotations.

A super cool look into JVM level security.

A straightforward introduction to using the new(ish) CompletableFuture in Java 8.

You think Java object instantiation is simple? Think again.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical

The feature toggle is such a powerful technique done right. It can save you oh-so much merging time, testing work and just general sanity that it's not even funny.

This article will be one to follow (because it's getting published in installments) and come back to.

As always, a solid deep dive into the nuances of testing and maintainable code, and as always – a good read.

Also worth reading:

3. Musings

It's sometimes easier to be negative about new technology that you don't fully understand. But after being wrong a few times, it's a good idea to re-evaluate that approach.

On a personal note – I didn't get Twitter in the early years and it really took a while until I came around, so now I tend to twink twice before making any decision on something new (Spapchat?).

Very insightful thoughts on doing code review in a way that is genuinely helpful and helps the developer receiving that feedback grow. Which is very hard to do, but also very worthwhile to strive for.

The “microservice craze of 2015” (as it will be referred to by historians) is dissipating as sobering, experience-anchored tales are being published.

Here are some valid usecases for microservices. On a personal note, I do think that there are a good few more valid usecases where it's worth paying the complexity cost.

But generally speaking, I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment of – don't jump into microservices because you think it would be cool, as that rarely works out.

Also worth reading:

4. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

5. Pick of the Week