This is a raw braindump post so don’t be surprised if it feels all over the place. There’s very few life experiences that can alter your perception like becoming a parent. Young Joel didn’t know what to expect by the end of the 20s, and it’s only reinforced my feelings on the phrase “where do you want to be in 5 years?” because quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what you think at that moment in time, stuff will happen.

Design patterns are these cool things that make you go 'hell yeah' because they make a certain problem easier to deal with. Whether it's applicable to all languages, or due to a language constraint, they're pretty nice. Of course, some people go crazy with them rather than doing the simple thing that works. Other times, you'll naturally do a design pattern without even knowing about it...

In the recent years, reactive Java has been growing in popularity, but writing reactive code is tricky to get used to due to the asynchronous (non-blocking) style it requires. Furthermore, asynchronous Java comes with some common pains..