At the very beginning of 2014 I decided to track my reading habits and share the best stuff here, on Baeldung.

2014 has been quite the year, covering each week with a review. I've been doing a lot more reading to make sure I cover and curate stuff that has value and is actually worth reading.

Let me know in the comments if you're finding my reviews interesting and useful.

Here we go…

1. Spring and Java

>> Mark Reinhold on Java 9 and Beyond

The plans for Java going forward.

>> JDK 8 Streams and Grouping

Powerful use of Streams to reorganize and classify the backing collections.

>> Hibernate CascadeType.LOCK gotchas

Further code-heavy, in depth exploration of locking in Hibernate.

>> Test Collection Implementations with Guava

An interesting way to test a custom collection implementation using tests that already exist in Guava. Didn't know Guava can do that.

>> Become a DevOps with Spring Boot

This is a very good place to start for monitoring a Spring Boot app.

>> Peter Lawrey Describes Petabyte JVMs

An very cool exploration of JVMs with very large heaps (32GB+).

>> Getting started with Activiti and Spring Boot

A solid, code focused introduction to Activity within the Spring Boot ecosystem. I especially like the testing part – that usually takes a bit of API exploration to get right.

>> Getting Started with Gradle: Creating a Web Application Project

Although I'm personally not using Gradle, this series will definitely be my go-to if I ever decide to jump on the Gradle wagon.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical and Musings

>> Fired

This took a pair to write.

>> Yak Shaving is a Good Way to Improve an API

It's widely understood that building APIs is hard. And more nuanced, some of the good practices that would otherwise apply in most cases of building software may not apply when building APIs. This piece is about that.

3. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

>> Nothing to fear but fear itself

>> I summon the vast power of CERTIFICATION

>> I fixed the Internet

4. Pick of the Week

Earlier this year I introduced the “Pick of the Week” section here in my “Weekly Review”. If you're already on my email list – you got the pick already – hope you enjoyed it.