Do you really need to use all these frameworks and libraries? Would you know to implement them? Can you remove any of them? 1. “Good Chefs Don’t Use Cake Mixes” — Christin Gorman I recently came across a funny short talk from a JavaZone conference back in 2011. In the recording, Christin Gorman is using a humorous analogy between ready-made…

Let’s discuss Lombok’s @With, @Builder, and @NonNull annotations and see how we can use them with Java 17 records. @With Even though records are immutable objects, sometimes we might need to change the attributes of an object. To solve this, we can create a new instance of the object and copy…

Hands-on and beginner-friendly breakdown of Java 8’s Optional API. What is “Optional”? As you may already know, Java 8 introduced some functional features to the language: one of these features is the Optional type. An Optional object wraps a variable or the return of a function call and, based on this data, it…

Let’s discuss the ideas behind the Hexagonal Architecture and see what it has to offer. 1. Overview “Hexagonal Architecture”, “Clean Architecture”, “Ports and Adapters”, “Onion Architecture ”— are all different names for the same group of concepts and ideas about the ideal design of an application. In this article, we’ll discuss these…

In this article, we’ll discuss Java 17’s records and see if we can leverage the new keyword to completely replace the usage of Lombok. 1. Records vs Lombok’s @Value Lombok offers the @Value annotation to help us generate immutable “value objects”. …

Hands-on refactoring of a code snippet written in an imperative style, progressively adding functional and reactive features. In this article, we’ll look over a simple piece of code written in an imperative style and do our best to refactor it in a functional manner. After that, we’ll try to refactor…

Please, Use Optional<> In the Intended Way! — 1. Overview Firstly, let’s see where the need for Optional (and for monads, in general) comes from. To do this, we’ll start with an analogy and think of the process of making bread. firstly, we’ll make flour by milling the wheat; after that, we’ll make bread using the flour from the previous…

In this article, we’ll see how to react to unexpected features and changes in requirements. 1. Overview In our previous article, we implemented a simple FizzBuzz application while focusing on the Open-Closed Principle and testability. Additionally, we used encapsulation and immutable Divider objects to check what needs to be printed for each…

Take a picture using the laptop’s webcam and convert it into ASCII art in 5 simple steps. — In my previous article, we saw how to convert images to ASCII art in Python. I had some very interesting suggestions in the comments — so I decided to do a follow-up. This article will be an improvement on the code written in the previous one. So, if you…