A Java geek

Faster Maven builds

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.

Java

Multiple ways to configure Spring

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.

Java

Reassessing TestNG vs. Junit

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What was true a couple of years ago could be dead wrong nowadays, and you probably don’t want to base your decisions on outdated data.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.

Java

Annotation-free Spring

Some, if not most, of our judgments regarding technology stacks come either from third-party opinions or previous experiences. Yet, we seem to be adamant about them. For a long time (and sometimes even now), I’ve seen posts that detailed how Spring is bad because it uses XML for its configuration. Unfortunately, they blissfully ignore the fact that annotation-based configuration has been available for ages.

Miscellaneous

On metrics

There’s still an ongoing debate whether development in particular and IT, in general, are engineering practices. In all cases, there’s no denying that our industry is based on scientific foundations. Most of the organizations I’ve worked for implement the Deming wheel in one form or another: From a bird’s eye view, it makes a lot of sense. And given the success of the method in the Japanese car industry, there’s no denying that it’s effective.

Miscellaneous

On online public speaking

On March 14th, 2020, I landed home. I had planned the week before to be productive: one talk in Pasadena, two talks in San Francisco, one in Bucharest, and one in Istanbul. Then, on the 16th, I was supposed to fly again to other events. Then, Covid happened. Governments started to close borders; in turn, organizers began to cancel events. I managed to do the talk in Pasadena with about ten people in the room. The organizer of one of the San Francisco talks managed to move my talk online.

Development

Free Docker registries

Since Docker announced that it would remove unused images from Docker Hub, I’ve been interested in listing places where I could host mine. As it’s for personal purposes, I’m interested in free plans. Here’s what I found.

Development

Updating data files, commits vs. pull requests

For once, I’m wondering a bit if this post can be helpful to somebody else. I believe my context is pretty specific. Anyway, just in case it might be the case, here it is. My Jet Train project makes use of GTFS. GTFS stands for General Transit Feed Specification. It models public transportation schedules and their associated geographic information. GTFS is based on two kinds of data, static data, and dynamic data. Static data may change but do so rarely, e.g.

Development

Rust's Vector

This is the 9th post in the Start Rust focus series. I’ll be honest: I initially wanted to describe all collections available in Rust as well as their related concepts. Then, I started to dig a bit into it, and I decided it would have been (much) too long. For that reason, I’ll restrict the scope to the Vec type.

Nicolas Fränkel's blog