[MM’s] Engineering Weekly #33 — AI Surgeons and Smarter Spring
How AI is transforming coding workflows, Spring AI’s agentic future and JVM innovations driving next-gen performance.
🎯 Featured Article
🧠 Code Like a Surgeon
AI will not just make us managers or editors — it will turn us into surgical coders, focusing on high-value tasks while delegating setup, debugging, and documentation to AI assistants. This mindset enables developers to operate with precision and speed.
⬢ Reframe AI coding tools as surgical instruments — precise, delegated, and context-aware.
⬢ Focus human creativity where it matters most: problem-solving, architecture and product logic.
⏩ TL;DR (Quick Recap)
⬢ AI is becoming a core part of the developer workflow, reshaping how code is written and reviewed.
⬢ Spring AI expands into agents, benchmarks, and recursive advisors for self-improving systems.
⬢ JVM updates — from Project Leyden to Kotlin value classes — promise leaner, faster applications.
⬢ Developers are rethinking dependencies, architecture choices, and even personal growth through side projects.
☕ JVM Corner
🔥 Java News Roundup: OpenJDK JEPs for JDK 26, Spring RCs, Quarkus, JReleaser, Seed4J, Gradle
A packed week with JEPs targeting JDK 26, RCs of Spring Framework 7.0 and Spring Data, and updates across Quarkus, Gradle and Jakarta EE.
⬢ Key JEPs progress toward better startup time and developer ergonomics.
⬢ Ecosystem remains vibrant across frameworks and build tools.
🔒 Optimistic Locking in Java: Why Retry Might Be Better Than Block
Explains concurrency control strategies in Java with practical scenarios showing when retries outperform blocking locks.
⬢ Encourages designing systems resilient to transient conflicts.
⬢ Promotes efficient database concurrency patterns.
🧩 Value Classes Are the New Data Classes — Kotlin
A look at early-access JDK builds supporting value classes and their implications for Kotlin.
⬢ Value classes improve immutability and performance on the JVM.
⬢ Signals closer integration between Kotlin and Project Valhalla.
⚙️ Guide to hashCode() in Java
An essential refresher on hashCode() mechanics and correct implementation.
⬢ Reinforces best practices for hash-based collections.
🚀 Supercharge Your JVM Performance with Project Leyden and Spring Boot
Project Leyden optimizations drastically improve startup and warmup times for Java microservices.
⬢ Demonstrates measurable gains in responsiveness for cloud workloads.
🍃 Spring Updates
🤖 Introducing Spring AI Agents and Spring AI Bench
Spring introduces agentic AI for enterprise Java — agents that plan, act, and self-evaluate through a new benchmark suite.
⬢ Establishes a common framework for measuring AI agent performance.
⬢ Pushes Spring into the AI-native application era.
🧭 Create Self-Improving AI Agents Using Spring AI Recursive Advisors
Explores recursive loops, validation, and evaluation flows in building adaptive AI agents.
⬢ Demonstrates patterns for agent self-correction.
⬢ Bridges AI experimentation with production-ready frameworks.
✨ Spring AI 1.1.0-M4 Available Now
Brings stability improvements, enhanced documentation, and refined APIs.
⬢ Strengthens Spring AI as a reliable enterprise platform.
⬢ Introduces streamlined dependency management for agent workloads.
🧱 Spring Boot 4’s Bean Registrar: A Cleaner Way to Register Beans Programmatically
Simplifies dynamic bean creation with the new BeanRegistrar interface.
⬢ Enables smarter runtime configuration and performance tuning.
⬢ Reduces annotation clutter with modular registration logic.
🧩 Stop NullPointerExceptions Before Production with Spring Boot 4’s Null Safety
JSpecify annotations help detect null issues at compile time.
⬢ Reduces runtime errors with @NullMarked and @Nullable.
⬢ Moves Spring toward stronger static analysis tooling.
🔗 Spring gRPC Next Steps for 1.0.0
Adds Boot 4 support and prepares for autoconfiguration in Spring Boot 4.1.
⬢ Expands integration between microservices and RPC systems.
⬢ Aligns Spring’s reactive stack with modern distributed systems.
🧾 Explore Spring Framework 7 Features — API Versioning
Introduces API versioning through annotations for better evolution control.
⬢ Simplifies versioned REST endpoints.
⬢ Supports backward compatibility in large APIs.
🔍 Extra Reads
Architecture & Performance
🏗️ We Replaced Kafka with gRPC — And the Results Shocked Everyone — Real-world case study of replacing event streaming with direct RPC for speed and simplicity.
💾 How We Saved $500,000 Per Year by Rolling Our Own “S3” — A cost-driven architecture story using Rust for in-memory file landing.
📦 Choosing a Dependency — Framework for evaluating “build vs. buy” decisions when adding libraries.
AI & Productivity
⚡ How I Use Every Claude Code Feature — Hands-on overview of AI-assisted coding workflows.
🤖 You Should Write an Agent — A call to experiment with agentic development models.
Web & Design
🌐 Your URL Is Your State — Practical guide to URL-driven app state design for better UX.
Culture & Growth
💡 This Is Why You Need a Side Project as a Software Developer — How personal projects restore purpose and learning motivation.
🚫 No Socials November — A mindful digital detox challenge for devs.
🧩 Why Aren’t Smart People Happier? — Examining the weak link between intelligence and happiness.
🔐 2 Billion Email Addresses Were Exposed… — Deep look into massive data breaches and digital trust.
Originally posted on marconak-matej.medium.com.