SivaLabs

First of all, Wish you a very happy new year and I hope this year will bring more joy and happiness into your lives.

I would like to share how was 2022 for me and what my plans are for 2023.

Highlights of 2022

The year 2022 is very eventful for me and lots of interesting things happened.

1. “How to Become a Software Architect” series with in28minutes and JavaBrains

I collaborated with in28minutes Ranga and JavaBrains Koushik and did a “How to Become a Software Architect” series

2. Restarted my YouTube channel with “Spring Boot Tips - 10 part series”

I started my YouTube channel few years ago and after making a couple of videos I stopped for some reason. I restarted making videos with my favourite topic “SpringBoot” and made a 10 Part series on “SpringBoot Tips”.

3. Created “Spring Boot + Kubernetes Tutorial” 25-Part Series on YouTube

With the overwhelming positive feedback I got from “SpringBoot Tips” series, I made another 25-Part series “Spring Boot + Kubernetes Tutorial” Series demonstrating how to build a FullStack SpringBoot + ReactJS application from end-to-end and deploy on Kubernetes.

4. I joined AtomicJar as Developer Advocate

If you know me via Twitter/SivaLabs Blog etc then you probably know that I like Testcontainers very much for testing. I got the wonderful opportunity to join AtomicJar as a Developer Advocate and work with my favourite technology Testcontainers.

Read Why I am excited to join AtomicJar to know more.

Plans for 2023

I know plans don’t go as planned always, but it gives some direction. Following are few things I am planning to do in 2023.

1. Helping devs to efficiently use Testcontainers

At AtomicJar we, Developer Advocate Team, planned many things that would help developers to learn how to write better tests using Testcontainers. Also, we are focusing on sharing some “Best Practices” on using Testcontainers in various environments (local, CI etc).

2. “SpringBoot : The Missing Guide” YouTube Series

After doing SpringBoot Tips and Spring Boot + Kubernetes Tutorial Series, many people asked me whether I have any course that covers SpringBoot.

I am planning to make a new series to cover:

• The “must know” concepts before starting with SpringBoot
  • Dependency Injection, Front Controller, Template Design Patterns
  • Programming to Interfaces, Loose Coupling
• Building a SpringBoot CRUD application using InMemory Store
• Introducing Spring Data JPA
  • Using Pagination, Projections
  • Flyway DB Migrations
• SpringBoot CRUD with Spring Data JPA
• Building UI using SpringBoot + Thymeleaf
• Introducing Spring Security
• Secure the application using Spring Security
• Testing using Testcontainers
• Converting package structure from package-by-layer to package-by-feature
• Should you adopt Clean/Hexagonal Architecture?
• Decoupling the external service interactions
• Applying Single Responsibility Principle

I hope this video course will be useful for a lot of people.

3. Learning something new

It is important to keep updating your skills in IT to be relevant. I thought of learning GoLang more in-depth. I kinda have a love/hate relationship with Go. While I am in love with some features of Go, I can’t stand it’s verbosity, especially it’s error handling. I thought I can get used to it, but no matter how hard I try I am not getting the joyful feeling. So, I decided Go is not my cup of tea and decided to move on.

May be if I have time, I will learn Rust.

Personal Stuff

• I am 39 years old now and what used to be a “nice to follow” healthy habits became “must follow” now. So I got to change my food habits, reduce screen time and take care of both physical and mental health.
• I feel people on social media are becoming more judgemental. Thanks to some people, I learned my lesson of “not everyone deserves a reply”.
• I have already realized that being passionate about technology is nice but being balanced is more important. In the name of passion don’t screw up your health.
• Screw all those personality development and productivity improvement bullshit. It is absolutely ok to just chill doing nothing. I worked hard so that I can relax when I want to. I won’t fall into these productivity gurus trap of “every second has to be productive”.

Conclusion

Well, just relax, do stuff as good as you can and enjoy the ride.