Coding Steve's Blog

I'm a senior software developer with about 10 years of experience doing devops and development work. This is my blog where I write posts I wish I had found online myself.

I also write on my substack, which is a little less technical and sometimes a bit more personal. You can find that at https://substack.com/@stevenpg1

Quick Reference Posts

• Spring Version Compatibility Cheatsheet

• Official Spring Dependency Matrix

Featured

• Fixing Page<T> Deserialization in Spring Boot 4 with Jackson 3

  Published:Mar 31, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  Spring Boot 4's Jackson 3 upgrade silently breaks Page<T> deserialization for REST clients. Here's why it happens and the one-dependency fix.

• Stop Guessing Your GraalVM Native Image Metadata

  Published:Mar 31, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  How to use the native-image tracing agent with Testcontainers integration tests to automatically generate accurate GraalVM native image metadata — and how to iterate when new reflection errors appear.

• GraalVM Native Image Reflect Config Demystified

  Updated:Mar 30, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  This post digs into the native-image configurations, specifically the reflect-config.json!.

• GraalVM Native Spring Boot vs Go — Build, Boot, and Benchmark

  Published:Mar 30, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A head-to-head comparison of GraalVM native Spring Boot 4 and Go, build time, startup time, and runtime throughput on a real HTTP + Kafka workload.

• The Ultimate Guide to Spring Boot 4 Migration

  Published:Feb 16, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A comprehensive, practical guide to migrating from Spring Boot 3.x to 4.0 — covering Gradle 9, Jackson 3, starter renames, testing changes, and everything in between.

• Guide to Migrating From Retired Ingress Nginx

  Published:Jan 29, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A comprehensive guide to migrating from the retiring ingress-nginx controller to the Kubernetes Gateway API, covering implementation options like Traefik, NGINX Gateway Fabric, and Envoy Gateway.

• UUID4 Shouldn't Be Your Primary Key

  Published:Jan 25, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A comparison of UUID4, UUID7, TSID, and sequential IDs for database primary keys with practical PostgreSQL 18 examples and Spring Boot integration.

• Project Leyden vs GraalVM Native Image - A Complete Guide

  Published:Jan 17, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A comprehensive comparison of Project Leyden and GraalVM Native Image for Java developers deciding how to optimize startup time and memory footprint.

• The Ultimate Guide to Spring Web Clients with OAuth2

  Published:Jan 11, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A comprehensive guide to Spring's HTTP clients - RestClient, WebClient, and declarative interfaces - with complete OAuth2 integration patterns.

• The Ultimate Guide to Spring Cloud Streams

  Published:Jan 9, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  A comprehensive guide covering every aspect of Spring Cloud Streams - from functional programming models to multiple binders, error handling, and beyond.

• Why you should use Instancio in 2026

  Published:Jan 1, 2026 |  at 05:00 AM

  An introduction to Instancio and why it's the best testing library you're not using yet

• Spring Boot 4 - What is JSpecify?

  Published:Nov 3, 2025 |  at 12:00 PM

  An article walking through JSpecify support in Spring Boot 4.

• JLink - Java Runtime Optimization Reference Guide

  Published:Jun 18, 2025 |  at 12:00 PM

  Complete reference guide for using JLink to create optimized Java runtime images and reduce application size by 60%.

• Hibernate 6.6 Breaking Changes - StaleObjectStateException

  Published:Mar 1, 2025 |  at 12:00 PM

  Spring Boot's update to Hibernate 6.6 brings with it a breaking change that could silently cause issues in projects using it.

• Spring Cloud Stream's Record Recoverable Processor

  Published:Feb 7, 2025 |  at 12:00 PM

  An example using the new RecordRecoverableProcessor class in Spring Cloud Streams for highly configurable error handling.

• Easy Spring Rest Client w/ OAuth2

  Published:Sep 19, 2024 |  at 12:00 PM

  Using the new Spring RestClient with newly supported OAuth2 capabilities!

• Logging Request Body with Spring WebClient

  Published:Mar 5, 2024 |  at 12:00 PM

  An article describing the latest way to log spring web client requests and responses using Logbook.

• Converting Spring Boot 2 to Spring Boot 3 Native Image w/ GraalVM

  Published:Mar 4, 2024 |  at 12:00 PM

  A walkthrough of updating a Spring Boot 2 application to Spring 3 running on GraalVM as a native application.

Recent Posts

• Casual Machine Performance Test

  Published:Mar 20, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  Just a fun little comparison of a group of machines and how they handle Java and GraalVM native images.

• Spring Boot 4 and Logbook Now Work Together

  Published:Feb 3, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  Logbook 4.x now supports Spring Boot 4 and Jackson 3. Here's how to upgrade.

• Part 6: Vibe Coding for Non-Coders

  Published:Jan 6, 2026 |  at 12:00 PM

  An introduction to vibe coding, a method for creating software without traditional coding skills.

• Writing an Instancio Extension Library

  Published:Jan 2, 2026 |  at 05:00 AM

  Creating an Instancio Extension for Testing Java Applications

• Part 5: Vibe Coding for Non-Coders

  Published:Dec 22, 2025 |  at 12:00 PM

  An introduction to vibe coding, a method for creating software without traditional coding skills.

• Spring Boot 4 and Logbook: ClassNotFoundException

  Published:Dec 8, 2025 |  at 12:00 PM

  Attempting to use Logbook with Spring Boot 4 (broken on arrival)