Revamping the Developer Experience

Is there a way to simplify the development and deployment process for software engineers so that they can focus on the business value of an application?

In the latest DSTA Academy Technology Talk series held on 5 July 2023, Josh Long, a Spring Developer Advocate, was invited to provide insights into the use of the Spring Framework and share about building cloud-native applications while using modern DevSecOps practices.

Jumping straight into demonstration, Josh illustrated how the Spring Framework ^[1] and cloud-native development can enhance productivity and streamline workflow during the software development process. During the demonstration, he also featured the integration of Spring Boot ^[2] 3, released in Nov 2022, with testcontainers, Micrometer and GraphiQL to simplify testing and observability. He emphasised that Spring Boot can help further simplify the development and deployment process of Java applications by providing auto configurations.

Josh also shared on Project Loom, an initiative by Oracle to introduce lightweight threads and will be ready for production use in Java 21, which is scheduled for release in Sep 2023. He went into detail about how the integration of Project Loom with the Spring Framework can enhance performance and responsiveness. Taking out the reliance on conventional operating system threads, it can improve scalability, reduce resource consumption, and simplify concurrency programming.

Implementing these techniques could provide our software engineers with comprehensive infrastructure support, facilitating development and deployment. This may also offer significant benefits such as improved application performance, optimised resource usage, and simplified concurrency management. It will allow for more efficient data handling and streamlined application management, enabling them to embrace modern development practices while enhancing productivity right from the start of the development process.

Josh’s insightful and entertaining talk and demonstration concluded with a Q&A session facilitated by Deputy Director (C3 Development) Ho Cheeng Tse.

Engineer (C3 Development) Dylan Tan, who was interested in better understanding the framework, said: “Being able to listen to Josh speak about the upgrades and advances in technology was an incredible and eye-opening experience. Learning about these developments has not only piqued my interest, but has also offered insights into the way we approach developing applications.”

The DSTA Academy Technology Talk is a special lecture series where subject matter experts are invited to share their insights and experience in emerging technologies with DSTA staff.

A group photo with Josh Long

^[1] Spring Framework: an open-source framework that provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for developing Java enterprise applications.

^[2] Spring Boot: a tool that makes it easy to create standalone Spring applications that can just run with minimal configuration and setup.