good practice

When I introduce Apache APISIX in my talks, I mention the massive number of existing plugins, and that each of them implements a specific feature. One of the key features of Apache APISIX is its flexibility. If a feature is missing, you can create your own plugin in Lua or a language compiled into Wasm, showcasing the platform’s adaptability to your specific needs.

This week’s post is pretty short. I’ve already written about overengineering, but this adds a personal touch. I had to rewrite my Jet Train demo to use another data provider, switching from a Swiss one to a Bay Area one. One of the main components of the demo is a streaming pipeline. The pipeline: Reads data from a web endpointTransforms data through several stepsWrites the final data into an in-memory data grid Most of the transform steps in #2 enrich the data.

Regular readers of this blog know I’m a big proponent of the Spring framework, but I’m quite opinionated in the way it should be used. For example, I favor explicit object instantiation and explicit component wiring over self-annotated classes, component scanning and autowiring. Concepts Though those concepts are used by many Spring developers, my experience has taught me they are not always fully understood. Some explanation is in order.

Let’s face it, most developers - myself included, prefer to deal with code than with people. However, when communicating with other developers, we share a common context and understanding, which makes a lot of explanations unnecessary. It’s the same for all specialized jobs, such as lawyers or civil engineers.

Most of our day-to-day job is learned through mentorship and experience and not based upon scientific research. Once a dogma has permeated a significant minority of practitioners, it becomes very hard to challenge it. Yet, in this post, I’ll attempt to not only challenge that sometimes tests must be ordered but prove that in different use-cases.

If you listen to other language communities - such as Python or Ruby, it seems Java developers have a strong tendency of over-engineering. Perhaps they’re just jealous of our superior platform (wink), perhaps there is some very slight reason that they believe so. I do believe so. And it’s quite interesting that I realized it by doing code review - while I may be guilty of over-engineering myself when writing code. But I’m working on it.

Before being software developers, we are people - and thus creatures of habits. It’s hard for someone to change one’s own habits, it’s harder for someone to change someone else’s habits - and for some of us, it’s even harder. This, week, during a code review, I stumbled upon this kind of structure.