Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would gather all the best resources, projects, technologies and everything else related to microservices? Yes, it would! The good news is- someone (many people) already did. Let me introduce you to awesome-microservices! What are “awesome lists”? Someone had an idea of listing the best GitHub projects and resources relating to particular technologies and… putting it on GitHub. This way, such a list can be curated and expanded by other community members in an orderly fashion. ...

Recently I have been taking a bit of a step back from microservices and trying to look at systems architecture from a more general perspective. With that mindset, I have picked up “Clean Architecture” (Amazon) by the “Legendary Craftsman” (that’s probably the publisher’s enthusiasm!) Robert C. Martin “Uncle Bob”. What follows is my thoughts and overall review of the book. SOLID foundations The book starts quite a bit below the abstract levels of architecture. We are treated to a very entertaining review of the journey from Structured Programming, through Object-Oriented Programming and ending on Functional Programming. ...

There is great value in simplicity. When things are simple, they are easier to understand, easier to extend and easier to modify. They are better. Simplicity is the ultimate compliment you can give to an architecture or a framework. In this article, I look at how four different frameworks- Spring Boot, Javalin, Vert.x and Micronaut; approach this quest for simplicity. Simple does not mean easy One of my inspirations for this article was a great presentation by Rich Hickey titles Simple Made Easy. ...

Are you really building microservices? What are microservices? There seems to be a constant disagreement on what constitutes microservices systems and what simply makes a “distributed monolith”. In this article, I will go back to basics and look at what’s at the core of what microservices really are. Before giving my own opinion on the microservices definition and helping to answer you the question “are we really building microservices?” let’s quickly review what the greats have to say on that topic. ...

Technical Architect is a job that many people understand differently. Some people argue Technical Architects should only design systems, staying hands-off, while others would see them as being deeply involved in the development of systems. In here I will explore the role of Technical Architects, the job itself and the value they bring. The Role of a Technical Architect All systems have technical architectures. Sometimes this architecture is decided and designed, other times- it happens by chance. ...

It is hard to believe (mostly for myself) that I have already written 60 articles on this blog. With hundreds of people reading this blog daily, I would like to provide more varied and valuable content. I started by adding a Start Here page to help visitors navigate. See what other ideas I have on my mind and help me chose. Adding Start Here is just the beginning of adding more varied content to the blog. I am looking for other ideas for making this an interesting place to learn about microservices and have a good time doing so. ...

Three years ago I was looking for a new job. I decided that I will pick up a couple of books to help me revised for the interviews. One of those books was*“Cracking the Coding Interview”*by Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell. I expected a book that will help me revise for the interviews, but I got a lot more from the book! Programming interview questions and answers The main idea behind this book is to give you a list of programming questions that may come up during the interview and teach you how to solve them. ...

I have recently been very interested in microframeworks. One thing notably missing from that article is Spring in the context of a microframework. You may be surprised, but it is possible to write very lightweight APIs with Functional Spring. In this article, I will show you how, by turning CIA World Factbook into a REST API. So what is Functional Spring? Functional Web Framework was introduced in Spring 5 and lets you build a very lightweight REST API without much of the Spring Magic. Sounds perfect! ...

I have started studying Computer Science at University more than 10 years ago. Now, with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and a few years in the industry, I look back reflecting at the value of these degrees. Are Computer Science degrees worth the effort? Before going into details of what I wish I knew before going into the world of professional software development, I want to address the most commonly asked question, whenever the topic of degrees comes up: ...

Should I learn Java? This is a question that just keeps coming up. If you are just starting out as a developer, if you already work as a Front End Developer or even if you are from the .NET background, many people wonder if learning Java is the right career/personal development move. Let’s see how useful learning Java is in 2018. When I first started using Java, around 2007, it had a very mixed reputation. On one hand, it was a reasonably new and modern language, but on the other, it was infamous for its bad performance (not fully deserved in my opinion) and verbosity (when contrasted with, back then, very popular Python). ...