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.

Another solid week of Java: http://t.co/6d1tEjrNIJ by @jetbrains, @codecentric, @vaadin, @EclipseFdn, @voxxed and @kennybastani

— Baeldung (@baeldung) July 28, 2015

Here we go…

1. Spring and Java

>> Spring Data JPA Tutorial: Auditing, Part One [petrikainulainen]

Auditing strategies with Spring Data and JPA – this is an important first part of any mature, production-grade system.

>> Testing Web-Applications with JBehave, PhantomJS and PageObjects [codecentric]

I've always found the Page Object pattern instrumental in testing web apps. The fluent, English-like syntax that you can get is super useful, and this article is a good illustration of that.

>> What the sun.misc.Unsafe Misery Teaches Us [jooq]

A quick, level headed look at the whole Unsafe removal debacle.

>> Java 9's New HTTP/2 and REPL [infoq]

Java 9 is indeed coming with a lot of cool new things that are going to move both the language and the ecosystem forward in the next few years.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical

>> Under the Hood of Amazon EC2 Container Service [allthingsdistributed]

Looking under the hood of the new Container Service from EC2. Very interesting stuff, for a lot of strategies I'm currently seeing being implemented manually.

>> Monitoring Microservices: Three Ways to Overcome the Biggest Challenges [loggly]

Quick and interesting read on monitoring and alerting in a microservice architecture.

>> RESTful considered harmful [nurkiewicz]

The nuts and bolts of some of the disadvantages of adhering to a RESTful architecture.

Some of these have nothing to do with REST itself, more with the way it happens to be implemented in the wild, but most of these points have good take-aways, whether you agree with them or not.

Also worth reading:

3. Musings

>> Your Code Is Data [daedtech]

A solid piece exploring static analysis below surface level. Definitely a must read if you're using static analysis tools or not, but most definitely if you aren't.

>> Group Flow in Software Development [hypesystem]

A group in flow is rare, but certainly doable and worth it when you're there.

Also worth reading:

4. Comics

And my favorite comics of the week:

>> New intern knows best: GOTO

>> I no longer understand what employes say

>> When you start to understand a concept, it marks the beginning of its decline

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.

If not – you can share the review and unlock it right here:

[sociallocker id=”6211″]

A worthwhile read on the maturity of the field and what it means to be “senior”:

>> On Being A Senior Engineer

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