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

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

A new installment continuing to explore audit functionality with Spring Data JPA – good stuff.

I’m actually gearing up for a similar audit implementation now and will be using these articles as a reference point.

>> A Map of Akka [codecentric]

An intro to what Akka brings to the table.

>> Testing your Liquibase Migrations in Continuous Integration [codecentric]

Testing these kinds of flows in your system – such as DB evolution and migration – is quite important if you’re not actively looking for trouble.

>> Build High Performance JVM Microservices with Ratpack & Spring Boot [infoq]

A very interesting match between Ratpack and Boot, to address some of the common problems when building microservices.

>> Spring Boot @ConfigurationProperties [java-allandsundry]

Cleanly working with properties is a sign of project maturity. One of many, sure, and maybe a pet peeve of mine, but certainly useful in practice.

This is how Spring Boot makes all of that easier.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical

>> Bypassing Google Authentication on Periscope’s Administration Panel [fin1te] and

>> Messenger.com Site-Wide CSRF [fin1te]

Two great pieces of security reading.

I really enjoy reading these detailed analysis of security issues – makes me triple check everything in my own implementations.

>> Stream processing, Event sourcing, Reactive, CEP… and making sense of it all [confluent]

A good introduction to Event Sourcing with the goal of “finding the wisdom behind the buzzwords“. Solid read.

Also worth reading:

3. Musings

>> Why Guessing is not Estimating and Estimating is not Guessing [herdingcats]

A quick writeup about the spectrum between pure guessing and careful estimation.

>> Doing Terrible Things To Your Code [codinghorror]

Starting out? Read it. In your third decade of building software? Read it.

Also worth reading:

4. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

>> Crumb-Snatcher? No! Niche Player

>> Anything I don’t understand is easy to do

>> Your script was almost perfect, keep up the good work buddy

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″]

>> Your API versioning is wrong, which is why I decided to do it 3 different wrong ways

[/sociallocker]