Fast code reviews make your development experience better, so what can you do to speed up code reviews? — Faster code reviews are better for you, and the team. No developer likes lingering PRs. Every day you need to merge in the main, resolve conflicts, and dive into the thread of comments. Can’t we do better? We can and should. What are the benefits of faster code reviews? What…

Some Optional mistakes I still see in my project and how to prevent them on your end — Most Java developers abuse Optional to oblivion. Some don’t even know it exists. The gist of Optional — it’s not a silver bullet for null pointer exceptions. Let’s start with seven rules to follow for better Optional usage Never, ever, use null for an Optional variable or return value. Never…

Here are the lesser-known Enum tricks and improve your codebase — “Why are you putting Enum#values() inside a static variable?” — my coworker doesn’t know about the benefits of caching Enum#values results. There are a lot more unknown gotcha’s around enums. And that’s why you’re reading this. To learn more about enums, and how to use them properly. I didn’t know…

Why Lombok still holds its respected place amongst experienced Java developers — “Why are you using Lombok to generate getters and setters? I prefer to write them on my own.” — says my coworker and merges the boilerplate getters into the codebase. Why are developers against Lombok? What are the wrong beliefs they have about Lombok? And why do they prefer to…

5 issues I’ve discovered and resolved while working on the X509 certificate authentication — You can’t easily set up X509 certificate authentication with Keycloak. Why so? Lack of docs, or poor understanding of documentation. Custom setup, such as reverse proxy in front of Keycloak. And additional configuration you’ll need for the startup of Keycloak. Even when you do set up everything the browser doesn’t…

If you feel incompetent here’s an advice for you — Some developers think they suck at coding. In reality, they’re as good as the other guy. If you ask seniors interview questions they’ll also stutter. Or they will tell vague answers at best. What should you focus on instead? Why sucking at coding is subjective? What matters more than coding…

Generate an access token for users dynamically using only the username — Do you need to obtain an access token only with a username? How to make this secure enough? Can Keycloak admin client create users with(without) dummy passwords? Developers are having this issue as there’s no OAuth2 flow for this scenario. You don’t have a clear way to obtain tokens using…

What you can do to prevent the firing, but also what can happen if firing doesn’t happen — What could I’ve done to make things better? What was the mistake on my part? What’s the modus operandi for working with those folks? Well, this guy was doing the same work and got a bit stuck in a single line of work. So any task for X module is…

Why an experience gap shouldn’t stop you from the job — Most fear they’ll fail in their new job. And that’s why they don’t apply for jobs. They fear instant rejection. Even though they could do the job as described. Should you as an experienced developer apply for an unmet skills job? Will the impostor syndrome kick in? What if you…