Spring IO Barcelona

Spring IO 2023 took place in the vibrant city of Barcelona. As fresh new engineer this was my first ever conference! Hearing I could attend a conference in Barcelona felt like a dream coming true. Being inspired for 3 days with my colleagues and enjoying the city of Barcelona - what a time to be a developer! The conference offered a big variety of knowledge based within the Spring Boot environment. Here, I’ll share some of the most exciting insights from the day.

Josh Long - Bootiful Spring Boot 3

One of the standout/ high visited talks was by Josh Long, who presented on ‘Bootiful Spring Boot 3’. Josh delved into the latest advancements in Spring Boot and Spring Cloud, demonstrating how these technologies simplify the development of cloud-native applications.

Enhanced Developer Experience

Josh started by emphasising the enhanced developer experience that Spring Boot 3 offers. He showcased the streamlined project setup and improved dependency management that makes getting started with Spring Boot projects even easier. The new version simplifies the onboarding process for new developers and enhances productivity for seasoned professionals.

One of the most exciting features Josh discussed was the native image support. Spring Boot 3 integrates seamlessly with GraalVM, allowing developers to compile their applications into native executables. This results in significantly faster startup times and reduced memory consumption, which are critical for cloud-native applications.

Josh also covered the advancements in observability in Spring Boot 3. With the increasing complexity of microservices architectures, having robust observability tools is crucial. He walked through the new and improved metrics, tracing, and logging capabilities integrated into Spring Boot 3. The built-in support for distributed tracing and better integration with observability tools like Prometheus and Grafana helps developers monitor and troubleshoot their applications more effectively.

New Features and Enhancements

Josh highlighted several new features and enhancements in Spring Boot 3, including:

• New Configuration Options: Simplified configuration management with enhanced support for configuration properties.
• Kotlin Support: Improved Kotlin support, making Spring Boot even more attractive for Kotlin developers.
• Dependency Upgrades: Upgraded dependencies across the board, ensuring compatibility with the latest versions of popular libraries and frameworks.
• Security Enhancements: Better security features, including support for OAuth 2.1 and improvements in Spring Security integration.

Barcelona experience

The conference was amazing, but next to having a cool venue to host the talks - there was way more to discover! Together with my team we stayed for one extra day to explore some parts of Barcelona. From nights in the city, drinking Sangria's - to discovering la Sagrada Familia! We had a stunning time sight seeing and Barcelona treat us really well. The public transport is amazing, and the city is really beautiful. If you've been given the chance to attend Barcelona, don't think twice!