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 and Java

>> Better application events in Spring Framework 4.2

Events in Spring are getting a much needed upgrade – this is going to make events a lot more powerful and useful.

>> Introducing JHipster

A quick and solid intro go JHipster, a stack that I've been following for a while.

>> Hibernate locking patterns – How does OPTIMISTIC_FORCE_INCREMENT Lock Mode work

Yet another code driven, in-depth exploration of locking strategies in Hibernate – this one about the the OPTIMISTIC_FORCE_INCREMENT mode.

>> Java Doesn’t Suck – Rockin' the JVM

An interesting rundown of how the Spring ecosystem makes java development easy and lightweight.

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical and Musings

>> Spotting Bad Actors: What Your Logs Can Tell You About Protecting Your Business

Very cool usecases for using Elasticsearch to determine bad traffic to your site. Invaluable information to have when mitigating an attack or just sanitizing your network input.

>> Writing Just Enough Documentation

Doing Agile and writing documentation are certainly not mutually exclusive – but it does take some experience to navigate the situation. This article will get you one stop closer to doing that well.

>> Time Zone Use Cases

Sound advice on how to deal with the necessary evil that is timezones.

>> This Uncanny Valley of Voice Recognition

Voice recognition is great when it works and infuriating the rest of the time. Have a read and explore the why, or it least if you want to actually laugh out loud.

>> Aggregation of Indignities

Sometimes, this is why people quit.

3. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

>> Something called Blame

>> I like dancing; I'm out

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.