[MM’s] Engineering Weekly #32 — From Code to Design: The Architecture Renaissance
Why the future belongs to developers who think in systems, not syntax.
🎯 Featured Article
🧩 Modularizing Spring Boot
Spring Boot 4 takes a decisive architectural leap — moving from a single, monolithic spring-boot-autoconfigure jar to a modular ecosystem of focused components. This structural redesign improves clarity, reduces runtime bloat, and simplifies maintenance while impacting how developers migrate from Spring Boot 3 to 4.
⬢ Introduces fine-grained, modular auto-configurations for better flexibility.
⬢ Reduces runtime footprint and increases transparency across Spring projects.
⏩ TL;DR (Quick Recap)
⬢ Architecture and modular design dominate this week’s updates.
⬢ Spring Boot takes a bold step toward modularization and clarity.
⬢ Kotlin and Java evolve toward performance and concurrency precision.
⬢ AI and automation reshape how developers think, code and review.
☕ JVM Corner
💡 Finding Order in the Mayhem: A Novel Concurrency Testing Tool that Improved the Kotlin Compiler
JetBrains Research introduces LitmusKt, a concurrency testing tool that stress-tests Kotlin’s JVM, Native and JS backends.
⬢ Designed to detect and fix concurrency edge cases in compiler internals.
⬢ Strengthens Kotlin’s reliability across multiplatform ecosystems.
🚀 First Look at Java Valhalla: Flattening and Memory Alignment of Value Objects
Project Valhalla brings value objects to Java for memory-efficient, immutable data structures.
⬢ Improves cache locality and performance while maintaining Java’s safety.
⬢ Signals a new era of low-level optimization within the JVM.
⚙️ How fast is Java? Teaching an old dog new tricks
A deep dive into modern Java performance improvements and JIT compilation strategies.
⬢ Java’s modern runtime closes the gap with “faster” languages.
⬢ Benchmarks prove performance myths are increasingly outdated.
📦 Partition a List in Java
A simple, but practical guide to splitting lists using Guava and Apache Commons.
⬢ Demonstrates how to handle collection partitioning elegantly.
⬢ Highlights missing functionality in core Java utilities.
🍃 Spring Updates
🤖 Prompt Caching Support in Spring AI with Anthropic Claude
A new Spring AI feature helps cut costs and latency when working with large LLMs.
⬢ Reuses previously processed prompt segments for efficiency.
⬢ Optimized for Anthropic Claude integration in enterprise-grade AI apps.
🏗️ Spring Boot Architecture Patterns Every Senior Developer Swears By
A curated look at best practices for clean and scalable Spring Boot architecture.
⬢ Covers configuration, layering and data contracts.
⬢ Reinforces disciplined code quality and production readiness.
🔍 Extra Reads
🧠 Software Craft & Practice
The Smartest People I Know Are Obsessed With a Skill Many Were Told Is Useless — A meditation on attention, thinking, and mental stillness.
Hard work vs. Long work — A reflection on focus over hours, and insight over grind.
The worst designer I’ve ever worked with was also the most productive — When quantity-driven design leads to technical debt.
Mistakes I see engineers making in their code reviews — Common review pitfalls in the AI-assisted coding era.
🧰 Tools & Ecosystem
uv is the best thing to happen to the Python ecosystem in a decade — A fast, unified Python dependency manager changing workflows.
Kafka is fast — I’ll use Postgres — Why simpler is sometimes smarter for message queues.
Flink’s 95% problem — When the complexity of streaming frameworks outweighs the gain.
Spreadsheets: The Second Best Tool for the Job — On the dangers of overfamiliar tools.
🌐 Industry & AI
Google pulls the plug on Privacy Sandbox, leaving cookies in place — The post-cookie web vision falters.
AWS to Bare Metal Two Years Later — A post-migration reflection on costs and control.
What Actually Happens When You Press ‘Send’ to ChatGPT — A deep technical breakdown of how ChatGPT works.
GenAI Image Showdown — State-of-the-art models compared on prompt fidelity.
🏗️ Agile is Out, Architecture is Back — Software development is shifting from fast iteration toward thoughtful architecture.
📘 Writing & Documentation
AsciiDoc over Markdown — Why serious documentation outgrows Markdown.
Regulation Isn’t the European Trap — Resignation Is — Europe’s innovation dilemma explored.
Free software scares normal people — On usability, simplicity and user expectations.
I am sorry, but everyone is getting syntax highlighting wrong — A call for more meaningful code colorization.
The best Chrome browser isn’t Chrome, it’s Helium — A privacy-first browser alternative without AI bloat.
The Pragmatic Engineer 2025 Survey: What’s in your tech stack? Part 3 — A snapshot of developer tooling across 3,000 engineers.
Originally posted on marconak-matej.medium.com.