Dan Vega - Spring Developer Advocate, YouTuber and Lifelong Learner

Happy Monday, and welcome to another edition of the newsletter. Unfortunately, I must start today's newsletter on a somber note. This week is the Great International Developer Summit (GIDS), where I was scheduled to deliver two talks. Regrettably, I won't be able to attend. I was truly excited about meeting many amazing developers and speakers in India, a country I have yet to visit. I’m going to try and not get too hung up on though and hope I have another chance next year.

I have exciting news about two other conferences, but I'll keep you in suspense for now. Keep reading to find out more! In this week's edition of the newsletter, I'll discuss Spring AI, Frontend Development for Java Developers, and an exciting update on Spring Academy Pro.

Spring AI

In other conference news, I was recently accepted to jConf.dev, taking place in Dallas, TX from September 24 to 26. I will be presenting a talk on building intelligent applications in Spring with AI, a topic I have been deeply researching and am passionate about. If you missed my introduction to Spring AI, you can watch the video below.

I have a handful of videos that are ready to record so I am going to work hard on getting some of those out the door this week.I also started working on some demos around Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) and this has been a lot of fun working on. I ended up building a native command-line application using Spring Shell + Spring Ai that uses the Spring Boot Reference docs to answer questions.

Spring AI + Spring Shell Native App

Spring Boot Frontends

In the last episode of Spring Office Hours we took some time to discuss the ever changing landscape of frontend development but specifically for Java Developers. We discussed a lot of the options out there and when you might want to reach for one over the other.

One of the topics we touched on in that show was htmx. I understand the concepts but admittedly don’t have a ton of experience with it. That is why we decided to bring on the author of the book Modern Frontends with htmx, Wim Deblauwe. In this weeks episode we will ask Wim about htmx, how to get started with it in Spring and when to reach for it.

On the topic of frontends I’m happy to announce that I will be giving a talk on this subject at Spring I/O in Barcelona next month. This will be my first time attending and speaking at this conference and I’m beyond excited to meet so many people I work with and talk to online for the first time.

Spring I/O Talk

Spring Academy Pro

I mentioned this on last weeks episode of Spring Office Hours but in case you missed it Spring Academy Pro is now FREE. There was always a free tier available but if you wanted access to more of the pro courses you needed to pay for the pro subscription. This also came with an exam voucher to take the Spring Certification which will no longer be a part of that package. If you want to get certified you can still pay the $299 but until you’re ready you can binge all of the content Spring Academy has to offer. If you’re looking to learn Spring this is the best place to start.

Around the web

📝 Articles

🎬 Videos

In preparation for my upcoming chat with Wim about htmx in Spring I watched his presentation from Spring I/O last year and I really enjoyed it.

✍️ Quote of the week

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” - Alexander Graham Bell

🐦 Tweet

https://twitter.com/therealdanvega/status/1780621419795062849

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