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

>> Stagnation with Java EE 8: Can the Java Community Make a Difference? [infoq.com]

The Java EE story unfolding.

>> JUnit 5 M1 [marcphilipp.de]

The official announcement of the very first milestone of JUnit 5. Good stuff – it looks like it's time to give this one a real try.

>> JUnit 5 – Dynamic Tests [codefx.org]

And speaking of the first milestone of JUnit 5, Nicolai is of course continuing to explore the very cool aspects of JUnit. This one is about the concept of a dynamic test, which can potentially be quite powerful.

>> How to Get Started with Java Machine Learning [takipi.com]

A quick overview of machine learning in the Java ecosystem. It's a bit of a shame that Mahout has been abandoned in this space, as it was showing some promise a few years back.

>> Robot Framework Tutorial 2016 – Integration with Jenkins [codecentric.de]

Solid intro to setting up the Robot Framework with a new Jenkins 2.0 server from scratch. Definitely one to bookmark for if/when you have to do that.

>> The best way to detect database connection leaks [vladmihalcea.com]

DB connection leaks are never fun and almost never easy to find and solve. This is a good introduction to how you may handle that.

>> Stackoverflow: 7 of the Best Java Answers That You Haven’t Seen [takipi.com]

A fun an interesting idea – having a look at a few of the top questions about Java on StackOverflow.

Some of these brought me right back to the Operating Systems course in college 🙂

Also worth reading:

Webinars and presentations:

Time to upgrade:

2. Technical and Musings

>> Jepsen: VoltDB 6.3 [aphyr.com]

Another deep analysis of a persistence solution that doesn't quite do what it advertises yet, but is on the right track to getting there.

These kinds of in-depth dives into the low level problems of a persistence implementation are priceless to really learn about the mindset, the approach and the practical way of looking things when it comes to persistence.

>> The REST Report [tbray.org]

Some thoughts about REST in the ecosystem today.

>> How Collaboration Humanizes the Enterprise [daedtech.com]

This piece is both a bit sad and a bit encouraging.

Organizations do inherently run into well-understood issues with scale, but it's still so very rare to find an organization that is successfully navigating these issues and not just patching them up.

>> For those of you thinking about moving into the test automation field [ontestautomation.com]

Advice worth reading even if you're not planning to do test automation full time but simply in parallel to your day to day work.

>> Benefits of Serverless Architectures [martinfowler.com]

Continuing the discussion, this piece has a look at the benefits and reasoning behind a Serverless architecture.

>> Baeldung Q2 2016 Report [meta.baeldung.com]

And the quarterly inside look at the numbers of baeldung.com is out.

If you didn't know, I publish this report regularly giving curious readers an inside look into how the site is doing.

Also worth reading:

3. Comics

And my favorite Dilberts of the week:

>> You are entitled to a cubicle that is three inches wider [dilbert.com]

>> The extreme level of abstraction [dilbert.com]

>> Hubris? What's that [dilbert.com]

4. Pick of the Week

>> Getting less done [signalvnoise.com]