Go

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Go is my go-to language for backend services, CLI tools, and DevOps tooling. The standard library covers most of what you need, the compiler is fast, and the concurrency model (goroutines + channels) makes it well suited for infrastructure-adjacent work.

Tooling

IDE: GoLand: JetBrains’ Go-specific IDE. Solid refactoring, built-in debugger, good test runner integration.

Formatting: gofmt / goimports: no debates about style, just run it.

Linting: golangci-lint: meta-linter that runs a configurable set of linters in one pass. Worth wiring into CI.

Testing

Testing is built into the standard library — go test ./... is all you need to get started. Table-driven tests are the idiomatic pattern for covering multiple cases cleanly.

func TestAdd(t *testing.T) {
 cases := []struct{ a, b, want int }{
 {1, 2, 3},
 {0, 0, 0},
 }
 for _, c := range cases {
 if got := Add(c.a, c.b); got != c.want {
 t.Errorf("Add(%d, %d) = %d, want %d", c.a, c.b, got, c.want)
 }
 }
}

Resources

Java

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Java is my primary language for backend services. Mature ecosystem, strong tooling, and frameworks like Spring Boot and Quarkus make it productive for building production-grade APIs and microservices.

Tooling

IDE: IntelliJ IDEA — the standard for Java development. Excellent refactoring, code analysis, and framework support (Spring, Quarkus, Jakarta EE). The free Community edition covers most needs; Ultimate adds Spring-specific tooling and database tools.

Build: Gradle or Maven — Gradle is the least bad option; keep the build file focused on compile, test, and package only. See Build Systems for the full take.

Frameworks

Spring Boot — the dominant choice for enterprise Java. Convention over configuration, huge ecosystem, production-ready out of the box.

Quarkus — optimized for containers and GraalVM native compilation. Noticeably faster startup and lower memory footprint than Spring Boot. Worth considering for microservices running in Kubernetes.

Testing with JUnit

JUnit 5 is the standard testing framework. Combine with Mockito for mocking and AssertJ for readable assertions.

@Test
void shouldReturnGreeting() {
 var service = new GreetingService();
 assertThat(service.greet("Manfred")).isEqualTo("Hello, Manfred");
}

Spring Boot’s @SpringBootTest and @WebMvcTest slice annotations make integration testing straightforward without spinning up a full application context.

Backend on Backend Engineering Strategy Tools

Go

Tooling

Testing

Resources

Java

Tooling

Frameworks

Testing with JUnit

Resources