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 interesting.

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

Here we go…

1. Spring

>> Spring and Angular JS: A Secure Single Page Application

>> The Login Page: Angular JS and Spring Security Part II

A solid, detailed introduction to securing a single page app with Angular on the front end and Spring Security on the back end. This is going to be an important reference going forward.

>> “Configuring It All Out” or “12-Factor App-Style Configuration with Spring”

Configuration is easy to get wrong. It’s always a balancing act of how much flexibility you want and how much complexity you’re comfortable with. This article gives you the tools you need to do a good job reaching that balance.

Lots of Spring goodness this week (this is why Spring is the first section of the review on this one).

>> Getting Started with Gradle: Creating a Multi-Project Build

Continuing the Gradle series, this article goes into detail on how to structure a multi-module build.

I haven’t jumped on the Gradle bandwagon yet, but if I do, I’ll definitely be coming back to this article for a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

Some very cool presentations:

And the interesting releases of the week:

2. Java

>> Testing with files and directories in JUnit with @Rule

I wasn’t aware of this cool JUnit @Rule for intelligently working with the filesystem – looks helpful.

>> A beginner’s guide to Java Persistence locking

A high level intro to JPA 2.0 / Hibernate locking.

>> Java 8 Streams API as Friendly ForkJoinPool Facade

A few fun exercises using the new Streams API to submit work to a ForkJoinPool.

>> Everything You Need To Know About Default Methods

A good theoretical reference on default methods, aiming to basically cover everything there is to be covered on the subject.

Would benefit from a few more code examples showing how some of the scenarios/examples work. Must have taken a heck of a long time to put together.

3. Technical and Musings

>> The God Login

A thorough analysis of what a good authentication process looks like, what problems it solves and how it can be made so that it doesn’t annoy the crap out of your users.

>> Dissecting an interview question: math is hard

A fun problem of adding to number together. Yeah.

4. Comics

And the weekly dose of some Dilbert greats:

>> Adding 2 more people to a project

>> It couldn’t be worse

>> Minor website changes

5. 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.