Weekly Links: October 29, 2020

Java

Maven Gets a Daemon

Hey, no need to call an exorcist! Instead, this Gradle-like feature speeds up builds by keeping Maven running in the background. So Maven doesn’t have to start from scratch with each call.

Now Gradle on my Mac often complains that it can’t reuse all these other daemons. Then it starts a new daemon. Am I living in a horror movie where daemons try to take over the world?!

The JPA and Hibernate First-Level Cache Explained

I’ve read this article twice now. And I’m still not sure if “JPA and Hibernate First-Level Cache” are actually two different caches or not. Am I getting old? Or just becoming stupid? And which one’s worse? Anyhow, this article explains how this one cache works/these two caches work. Somebody, please enlighten me!

Releases

Spring Framework 5.2.10 and 5.1.19

These are your typical maintenance releases. 5.2.10 got 27 fixes and improvements, 5.1.29 got 16.

Spring Boot 2.1.18

This is the last release for Spring Boot 2.1.x. So you better upgrade to 2.3 or the upcoming 2.4 soon if you still use that line. This release has 20 fixes and improvements.

Spring Data Neumann SR5, Moore SR11, and Lovelace SR21

This is the Spring project that probably kicked off the whole “We better change our version naming scheme”. I mean “Lovelace SR21”?! “Lovelace” is the name of an actress who starred in what may be the most profitable porn movie of all time!

Anyhow, here are the fixes and improvements: 67 for Neumann SR5 , 43 for Moore SR11, and 17 for Lovelace SR21. How’s that for a smooth transition?

Spring Data 2020.0.0

Talking about the new version naming scheme: It’s in action here. So what else do you get?

• It’s all reactive: As mentioned in Spring 5.3, it includes the reactive Spring Data R2DBC. The Spring Expression Language (SpEL) gets reactive extensions and auditing support. And Spring Data Neo4j 6.0. also supports reactive.
• It works better for Graal native images, upgrades to Redis 6.0, and throws out Lombok.

Over The Fence

How COBOL Holds up at 60

People often call Java the “new COBOL”. Well, the old COBOL is still kicking! If your employer is older than 20 years, it probably still runs COBOL applications. Why? Because it hardly makes business sense to rewrite a working COBOL system. You’ll spend a ton of money for an application that - at least initially - does less and has more bugs than that “good ol’ COBOL workhorse”. So go on, explain that to your boss! And even that’s only if you finish your rewrite. And by golly, most of us don’t!

So read up on COBOL at 60 because that’s us Java guys in 35 years. Well, not me. At least I hope so…

Working Together

At Apple, Your Boss is an Expert, Not a Manager

Roll your eyes at “Apple is different” all you want. But its company structure really is. Apple doesn’t have traditional business units, such as for iPhones, Macs & iPads. Business units all have to make a profit. So they fight each other over budgets, resources, and attention. Instead, Apple is a so-called functional organization. It has just one profit and loss statement for the whole company. So the hardware group builds all the hardware, and the software group all the software. And then the service group comes and messes it all up for everybody!

More importantly for us developers, Apple claims to be a “company where experts lead experts”. Why? Because “it’s easier to train an expert to manage well than to train a manager to be an expert”. That does sound reasonable. But have you met us developers!? We’re not even sure we’re actually human. And you want us to lead our fellow code wranglers?! Wait, is that how iCloud and Apple Maps happened?