At the very beginning of last year, I decided to track my reading habits and share the best stuff here, on Baeldung. Haven't missed a review since.

Here we go…

1. Spring and Java

>> High-Performance Java Persistence – Part One [vladmihalcea.com]

Vlad's book is half-way done and, if the chapter on transactions is any indication – will be a fantastic writeup.

He's publishing it via Leanpub, with flexible (and way to low) pricing, so if you want to really brush up on your SQL game, definitely pick that up.

I don't do a lot of product recommendation around here (this is literally the first in almost two years), but having a solid base with low level persistence is critical, and this is a great way to build up that base.

>> 7 Tips to boost your Hibernate performance [thoughts-on-java.org]

And still on persistence – here's a great set of important tactics and recommendations to follow when working with Hibernate.

>> What Might a New @Deprecated Look Like? [marxsoftware]

A quick look at how the old @Deprecated annotation might be improved and how that would look like in practice.

>> Java 9 Code Tools: A Hands-on Session with the Java Microbenchmarking Harness [takipi.com]

For years, benchmarking has been really complex (while looking really simple). There's some interesting stuff coming in JDK9 that will make things a little bit easier.

But just a little bit – good benchmarking will still be hard.

>> JavaOne 2015: Prepare For JDK 9 [codefx.org]

Like always, solid notes by Nicolai, discussing modularity in the upcoming JDK release.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical and Musings

>> Your Old Language Version is Costing You Money [daedtech.com]

A company that is enabling their developers to work with new, solid hardware and new(ish) language versions has a distinct market advantage.

That's both a general, logical observation as well as a personal tactic I used the last time I interviewed for a job. I literally took a walk through the office right after the interview, paid attention to what hardware people were using, and excluded a couple of companies that otherwise looked interesting based on that.

Technical – also worth reading:

Musings – also worth reading:

3. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

>> What's happening here? Ninja. [dilbert.com]

>> Using Twitter [dilbert.com]

4. Pick of the Week

>> Best Practices for Designing a Pragmatic RESTful API [vinaysahni.com]