Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Spring I/O and Video Content

Happy Monday and welcome to another edition of the newsletter. Last time we talked, I mentioned that I was writing a new book but didn’t give you many details. I’m happy to announce that the contracts have been signed and I have begun writing, so I can share a bit more about it now. The name of the book is "Fundamentals of Software Engineering," and I am co-authoring it with my good friend Nate Schutta.

The purpose of the book is to help those who are new to the industry and or 1-2 years on the job. This will be a bit of a guide or a reminder on some of the most important things you should remember as a new developer. Nate and I have over 40 years of experience on a wide range of roles between the 2 of us.

I'm not only excited about this because this is my first book, and I’m doing it with my good friend but because I honestly believe in the book. I think this is one of those books that new developers will continually reach for and come back to time and time again.

This book is on the O’Reilly Learning Platform which means that when we publish new chapters you can get early access to the content. This doesn’t mean that this is the final version, but you can get it before everyone else. I’m excited for all of you to get your hands on it and of course I would love some feedback.

Spring I/O

It’s been almost 2 months since Spring I/O in beautiful Barcelona, Spain, and there have been a few updates I want to share with you. First, there is a new highlight video that showcases some of the amazing talks and events from the conference. I got really excited about the conference all over again after watching this video. I even made it into the video a couple of times, so I thought I would share it with you.

My presentation titled “A Spring Developers Guide to Navigating the Frontend Landscape” has been published to the Spring I/O YouTube Channel. This was my first time giving this exact talk and I thought it went pretty well. If you need to build a frontend for your Spring application and aren’t sure where to start I think this is a pretty good overview.

Also, a huge shout-out to Sergi and the entire team at Spring I/O for posting all the presentations. The recordings are high quality and the speakers were top-notch. I am still going through all of these presentations myself.

Video Content

I am always working on ways to improve my video content. I noticed my videos were taking a lot longer to record, edit, and publish, so I looked for ways to cut down on that time to create more content.

I came across new screen recording software called Screen Studio, and I loved its unique look. The camera was in the lower right-hand corner with a unique shape and drop shadow, and it zoomed in to show certain parts of the video.

I enjoyed this feature, so I decided to purchase the software and make a couple of videos using it. The first video had more zooming in and out than the second one. You gave feedback saying you didn’t like the automatic zooming, so in the second video, I tried to use less of it.

In the end, I had a single video that I could edit and publish more quickly. I don’t know if I will keep using it forever, but I will for now. I also have some ideas for redesigning my home studio to improve the look, and I'll let you know when that happens. For now, here are some of the videos I worked on since we last spoke:

Spring Boot Rest Client Testing (Issue and Fix)

In this tutorial you will learn how to test your Rest Client calls using the Rest Client Test annotation (@RestClientTest) in Spring Boot. If you need to change out the underlying HTTP Client library to the JDK Http Client you might have run into an issue, and we will talk about it and a work-around.

Building a ChatGPT Clone in Java with HTMX, Spring Boot, and Spring AI

In this video you are going to learn how to build a ChatGPT clone with HTMX, Spring Boot and Spring AI. HTMX allows you to add dynamic behavior to your frontend without having to write JavaScript. Spring AI allows you to easily build intelligent applications with generative AI. In this application you will use OpenAI's GPT-4o, but you could easily replace that with your Large Language Model (LLM) of choice.

What’s new in Spring AI 1.0.0 M1

In this tutorial you will learn about the new features in the latest release of Spring AI, 1.0.0 M1. I am a huge fan of the Chat Client's new fluent API as it makes the code so much more concise and readable.

Until Next Week

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter installment, and I will talk to you in the next one. If you have any links you would like me to include please contact me and I might add them to a future newsletter. I hope you have a great week and as always friends...

Happy Coding
Dan Vega
danvega@gmail.com
https://www.danvega.dev