[MM’s] Engineering Weekly #17 — July 21st, 2025
A smarter way to stay up to date — every week.
Welcome to this week’s engineering roundup! This edition covers essential software development practices, Spring Boot patterns, career insights, and AI’s evolving role in engineering.
Spring & The Java Ecosystem
- 5 Spring Boot Patterns That Separate Senior Developers From Juniors: “I’ve worked on Spring Boot apps written by everyone from interns to enterprise architects, and I’ve noticed something…”
- Stop Writing Terrible Spring Boot Code (Please): “A rant about the Spring Boot disasters I’ve seen common in companies, and how to avoid them.”
- Spring Boot 4 Preview Released: “A Full Analysis of 11 Major Changes!”
- Spring Debugger: “Working With Dynamic Database Connections Just Got Simpler”
- Redocusaurus for Spring Boot: “Document Your Spring Boot APIs with Redocusaurus in Minutes”
- I Cracked 5 Senior Java Interviews in 30 Days: “Complete Battle-Tested Strategy.”
- Nearly 3 out of 4 Oracle Java users say they’ve been audited in the past 3 years: “Big Red’s changes to Java licensing also inspire exodus to open source.”
Developer Craft & Productivity
- How I build software quickly: “Know how good your code needs to be for the task at hand. Start with a rough draft.”
- 7 Habits That Quietly Made Me a 10x Developer (No, Not ChatGPT): “It’s about habits. Quiet ones. The kind no one notices… until your output starts to look suspiciously high.”
- How I Write Code That I Don’t Hate Reading a Week Later: “Let’s be honest — sometimes our code is like a cryptic message from our past selves.”
- Why I Don’t Use Postman Anymore…: “From 100 clicks to 10 lines of code…”
- Mastering Postgres Replication Slots: “Preventing WAL Bloat and Other Production Issues.”
- The Mill Build Tool: “A Better Build Tool for Java, Scala, & Kotlin”
- IntelliJ IDEA Moves to the Unified Distribution: “We are excited to announce the next step for IntelliJ IDEA: we are moving to a single, unified distribution. And yes, before you ask, our commitment to open source remains as strong as ever.”
Industry & Career Reflections
- Junior Roles Aren’t Going Away: “There’s been a lot of doom and gloom about AI wiping out entry-level jobs. Is it justified?”
- Leading your engineers towards an AI-assisted future: “Your CEO wants to know why AI isn’t writing half your code yet — are you ready for that conversation?”
- How to become passionate about delivering shareholder value: “I am passionate about delivering shareholder value. It feels kind of embarrassing to admit, but it’s true.”
- Reflections on OpenAI: “OpenAI is a big place, and this is little window into it.”
- Reflections on Palantir: “A retrospective of an eight-year stint.”
Originally posted on marconak-matej.medium.com.