A Java geek

The Cloud has enabled a lot of new usages that were not possible before. Among them stands Serverless: Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider allocates machine resources on demand, taking care of the servers on behalf of their customers. Serverless computing does not hold resources in volatile memory; computing is rather done in short bursts with the results persisted to storage. When an app is not in use, there are no computing resources allocat

The need for shorter and shorter Time-To-Market requires to integrate more and more third-party libraries. There’s no time for the NIH syndrom anymore if it ever was. While most of the time, the library’s API is ready to use, it happens that one needs to 'adapt' it to the codebase sometimes. How easy the adaptation is depends a lot on the language. For example, in the JVM, there are a couple of Reactive-Programming libraries: RxJava, Project Reactor, Mutiny, and coroutines. You migh

Last week, we described several criteria to look at to choose a cache. This week, it’s time to list Java cache providers based on these criteria. Java Caching System Guava Caffeine Ehcache Infinispan Coherence Community Edition Ignite Geode Hazelcast Java Caching System JCS is a distributed caching system written in Java. It is intended to speed up applications by providing a means to manage cached data of various dynamic natures. Like any caching system, JCS is most useful for h

Today, I’d like to provide some help on how to choose a cache solution. I will organize it into two parts: In this post, we will list what features a cache must have and which ones it can optionally provide. Most criteria are general and can be used regardless of the tech stack, while a couple is specific to the JVM.In the second part, I’ll list providers and verify their respective capabilities Why cache? First, let’s bust a common myth. Using a cache is not the sign of a b

Some time ago, I read a post describing how to run a serverless Kotlin function on OpenFaaS. While the content is technically correct, I believe the concept itself is very wrong. Such posts can lead people to make ill-advised decisions: 'because we can' is hardly a winning strategy. in this post, I’d like to first explain why the JVM platform is a bad idea for FaaS. Then, I’ll proceed to propose alternatives to use Kotlin nonetheless. I deliberately chose not to link to the original

Last week, I described different techniques to fasten your Maven builds. Today, I’d like to widen the scope and do the same for Maven builds inside Docker. Between each run, we change the source code by adding a single blank line; between each section, we remove all built images, including the intermediate ones that are the results of the multi-stage build. The idea is to avoid reusing a previously built image. Baseline To compute a helpful baseline, we need a sample project. I create

Builds require a few properties, chief among them reproducibility. I would consider speed to be low on the order of priorities. However, it’s also one of the most limiting factors to your release cycle: if your build takes T, you cannot release faster than each T. Hence, you’ll probably want to speed up your builds after you’ve reached a certain maturity level to enable more frequent releases. I want to detail some techniques you can leverage to make your Maven builds faster i

Two weeks ago, I wrote how you could write a Spring application with no annotations. Many alternatives are available to configure your Spring app. I’d like to list them in this post, leaving Spring Boot out of the picture on purpose. Core concepts Property file XML Groovy DSL Self-annotated classes Configuration classes Kotlin DSL Bean definitions Beans Conclusion Core concepts A couple of concepts are central in Spring. The related documentation doesn’t describe most of them

In my latest blog post, I advised reassessing one’s opinion now and then as the IT world changes fast. What was true a couple of years ago could be dead wrong nowadays, and you probably don’t want to base your decisions on outdated data. This week, I’d like to follow my advice. One of my first posts was advocating for TestNG vs. JUnit. In the post, I mentioned several features that JUnit lacked: No parameterizationNo groupingNo test method ordering Since JUnit 5 has been out