Creative Rx usage in testing setup
I don’t know if events became part of software engineering since Graphical-User Interface interactions, but for sure they are a very convenient way of modeling them. With more and more interconnected...
View ArticleCompile-time dependency injection tradeoffs in Android
As a backend software developer, I’m used to Spring as my favorite Dependency Injection engine. Alternatives include Java EE’s CDI which achieves the same result – in a different way. However, both...
View ArticleFully automated Android build pipeline
In the course of my current job, I had to automate jobs for building Android applications. This post aims at describing the pain points I encountered in order for you readers not to waste your time if...
View ArticleImprove your tests with Mockito’s capture
Unit Testing mandates to test the unit in isolation. In order to achieve that, the general consensus is to design our classes in a decoupled way using DI. In this paradigm, whether using a framework or...
View ArticleConnection is a leaky abstraction
As junior Java developers, we learn very early in our career about the JDBC API. We learn it’s a very important abstraction because it allows to change the underlying database in a transparent manner....
View ArticleWhat’s the version of my deployed application?
In my career, I’ve noticed many small and un-expensive features that didn’t find their way into the Sprint backlog because they didn’t provide business value. However, they provided plenty of ROI...
View ArticleBetter developer-to-developer collaboration with Bintray
I recently got interested in Spring Social, and as part of my learning path, I tried to integrate their Github module which is still in Incubator mode. Unfortunately, this module seems to have been...
View ArticleBecome a DevOps with Spring Boot
Have you ever found yourself in the situation to finish a project and you’re about to deliver it to the Ops team. You’re so happy because this time, you covered all the bases: the documentation...
View ArticleFinal release of Integration Testing from the Trenches
Writing a book is a journey. At the beginning of the journey, you mostly know where you want to go, but have only vague notion of the way to get there and the time it will take. I’ve finally released...
View ArticleAvoid sequences of if…else statements
Adding a feature to legacy code while trying to improve it can be quite challenging, but also quite straightforward. Nothing angers me more (ok, I might be a little exaggerating) than stumbling upon...
View ArticleImproving the Vaadin 4 Spring project with a simpler MVP
I’ve been using the Vaadin 4 Spring library on my current project, and this has been a very pleasant experience. However, in the middle of the project, a colleague of mine decided to “improve the...
View ArticleSpring profiles or Maven profiles?
Deploying on different environments requires configuration, e.g. database URL(s) must be set on each dedicated environment. In most – if not all Java applications, this is achieved through a...
View ArticleOptional dependencies in Spring
I’m a regular Spring framework user and I think I know the framework pretty well, but it seems I’m always stumbling upon something useful I didn’t know about. At Devoxx, I learned that you could...
View ArticleAvoid conditional logic in @Configuration
Integration Testing Spring applications mandates to create small dedicated configuration fragments and to assemble them either during normal run of the application or during tests. Even in the latter...
View ArticleMetrics, metrics everywhere
With DevOps, metrics are starting to be among the non-functional requirements any application has to bring into scope. Before going further, there are several comments I’d like to make: Metrics are not...
View ArticleOn resources scarcity, application servers and micro-services
While attending JavaZone recently, I went to a talk by Neal Ford. To be honest, the talk was not something mind-blowing, many tools he showed were either outdated or not best of breed, but he stated a...
View ArticleYou shouldn’t follow rules… blindly
Some resources on the Internet are written in a very imperative style – you must do that in this way. And beware those that don’t follow the rule! They remind me of a french military joke (or more...
View ArticleThrowing a NullPointerException… or not
This week, I’ve lived again an experience from a few years ago, but in the opposite seat. As a software architect/team leader/technical lead (select the term you’re more comfortable with), I was doing...
View ArticleAnother valid Open/Closed principle
I guess many of you readers are familiar with the Open/Closed principle. It states that: Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification-...
View ArticleUsing exceptions when designing an API
Many knows the tradeoff of using exceptions while designing an application: On one hand, using try-catch block nicely segregates between regular code and exception handling code On the other hand,...
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