Java Annotated Monthly – September 2019

Trisha Gee

September: back to school!  Words that struck fear into us for many, many years, but for those of us with children these words may mean a welcome return to routine. It’s all downhill to Christmas from here, so let’s make the most of the rest of the year by stopping to think about what’s important to us personally and professionally, and not jumping blindly into the chaos of everyday work.

Java News

• OpenJDK 8 and 11: Still in safe hands – people have been a little worried about what the new release cadence means, this blog discusses how maintenance of OpenJDK 8 and 11 are being led by Red Hat
• JDK 13: The new features coming to Java 13 – will be released this month
• Project Loom Is Moving to GitHub – migration completed. This is a huge step forward in making the JDK easier to contribute to.
• Project Loom Early-Access Builds – available now
• Heather VanCura, Director of the JCP, Speaks to InfoQ on the JCP 20th Anniversary – a bit of information on what the JCP is (note: JetBrains is a member of the JCP Executive Committee)
• 5 Topics Developers Are Reading Right Now – interestingly suggests Java EE/Jakarta is still a very hot topic among developers.
• Candidate JEPs: Records and Sealed Types – upcoming JDK features
• Records (Preview) – draft spec updates for the upcoming records feature (JEP 359)

Java Tutorials & Tips

• Scaling up Performance Benchmarking (video)
• Jeanne’s experiences taking the 1Z0-816 exam – certification has changed quite a lot recently, it’s worth doing some homework here, especially if you’ve taken these types of exams in the past.
• Preposition Preference – an interesting look at API design
• BNYMellon/CodeKatas – “The Calendar Kata is an advanced kata which can help developers become familiar with the Java 8 Date/Time and ThreeTen-Extra libraries.”
• Once Upon an Oak – this is an old post that dives into the history of Java and explains why some things are the way they are
• 10 Steps to Become an Outstanding Java Developer – another old post which popped up lately. I’m not sure I agree with many of the points, or maybe it needs updating. I’d be interested to see what steps people in 2019 think it takes to become an outstanding developer.
• Think Twice Before Using Java 8 Parallel Streams – or: think carefully about performance (who knew?)
• Serverless Java (video)
• What is Serialization? Everything About Java Serialization Explained With Example – but honestly, Java serialization is plagued with issues and desperately needs an overhaul

Brian Goetz spends a solid chunk of his time regretting serialization at #gotocph pic.twitter.com/b8IA1WutW9

— Mads Dydensborg (@madsdydensborg) October 6, 2015

Languages, Frameworks, Libraries and Technologies

• Five Command Line Options To Hack The Java Module System
• Top 14 new features in Vaadin 14 | Vaadin
• Truth 1.0: Fluent Assertions for Java and Android Tests – an interesting library to hopefully improve the readability of tests
• Why Are So Many Developers Hating on Object-Oriented Programming? – in case you still care about the OO vs FP debate
• Java On iOS and Android via Gluon – via JavaFX. Gluon is an interesting project and well worth a look if you want a single code base to run on multiple platforms
• Reactive Spring: Define a REST Endpoint as a Continuous Stream
• Regex For Noobs (like me!) – An Illustrated Guide – not just for n00bs
• Jabel – use Javac 12+ syntax when targeting Java 8 – interesting project but probably not something to stick straight into production

Culture & Community

There’s a bit of a theme this month about the value of writing – e.g. blogs, articles, documentation.  Which is a bit ironic given I’m currently working on a new talk about the value of reading code instead of just writing it.

• We All Should Write Articles – because it’s another learning path
• Two Years and Fifty Blogs – effectively a case study of what happens when you get started writing. Also contains links to a bunch of useful blog posts.
• Documenting Software Architecture – mostly covering different types of diagrams that can help our understanding
• How to quickly and effectively read other people’s code – some practical tips on how to understand unfamiliar code
• How to read code without ripping your hair out – more tips
• A Codebase is an Organism – reading this gave me a genuine “Oh My God” moment that changes the way I see code
• Soft skills, communication, and programming as a thinking activity (podcast) – I was interviewed and gave yet more career advice
• The 4 Questions of a Retrospective and Why They Work – the most important part here is at the end, it’s one thing to do the retrospective but there must be actions at the end
• Randy Shoup on Creating High-Performance Cultures (podcast) – not high performance code, but teams.
• Becoming A Fully Buzzword Compliant Developer (video) – a slightly irreverent talk I gave at QCon London this year about staying relevant in this industry
• Lifelong learning in software development – musings inspired by my talk above
• Fully Reactive: Spring, Kotlin, and JavaFX Playing Together with Trisha Gee (podcast) – I was interviewed by Mark Heckler about my talk for SpringOne Platform 2019, and women in technology.
• Survival Tips For Women In Tech – not everyone will agree with all of these, but reading them might open your eyes to things you weren’t aware of
• Gendered on-ramps are important to get women into software development – another point I’d never thought of, and I was one of those women who got into programming partly by being taught secretarial skills
• 25 influential women in software development – for those wanting more techies to follow
• Meet the Researchers Working to Make Sure Artificial Intelligence Is a Force for Good
• Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer – don’t let anyone tell you real developers don’t need to use Google (my favourite was “undo a rebase – oops”)
• The 7 Myths of Learning to Code – really great post to show anyone who’s thinking of becoming a developer, or anyone you think should become a developer
• Programming Sucks – this is old but is always funny even on a re-read. Do not show it to anyone thinking of becoming a developer.

And Finally

A chance to catch up on the other IntelliJ IDEA blog posts from this month:

• IntelliJ IDEA 2019.2.1 is Released
• What’s Next: IntelliJ IDEA 2019.3 Roadmap – the focus is on quality and fixing pain points, so make sure you upvote any bugs that you really want fixing
• Services tool window: One place to rule them all
• If you are at Oracle’s Code One this month, we’ll see you there! We have a booth and several talks.

If you have any interesting or useful Java / JVM news to share via Java Annotated Monthly, leave a comment or drop me a message via Twitter.

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