Java & Spring Boot

How it is taught

1. Step 1

   Start where you are

   A short placement task, graded by the tutor, starts you past the modules you can already do.

2. Step 2

   Learn in conversation

   Each concept is one session: the tutor explains, asks you to write code, and reviews it until you have shown you understand.

3. Step 3

   Keep it

   Every concept comes back on day 3, 7 and 18. A memory model tracks how well each one is holding, and reviews can go straight into your Google Calendar.

What you will learn

Each concept has its own page: what a session covers, an example and the mistake to watch for.

1. Module 1Modern Java essentials

   • Records and var
   • Collections and generics
   • Streams and lambdas

2. Module 2Object-oriented design

   • Interfaces and abstract classes
   • Encapsulation
   • Composition

3. Module 3JVM internals

   • Heap and stack
   • Object lifecycle and references
   • Garbage collection
   • Generational garbage collection
   • JIT compilation
   • Performance profiling

4. Module 4Concurrency

   • Threads and thread safety
   • Java memory model
   • Virtual threads

5. Module 5Build tools and testing

   • Maven and Gradle
   • JUnit tests
   • Mocking with Mockito

6. Module 6Spring Boot fundamentals

   • Auto-configuration
   • Dependency injection
   • Application properties

7. Module 7REST APIs

   • Controllers and mappings
   • Request validation
   • Error handling with advice

8. Module 8Data access with JPA

   • Entities and repositories
   • Relationships
   • Transactions

9. Module 9Spring Security

   • The security filter chain
   • Authentication providers
   • Method security

10. Module 10OAuth 2.0 and JWT

    • OAuth 2.0 flows
    • JWT validation
    • OpenID Connect

11. Module 11Microservices

    • Service boundaries
    • Spring Cloud Gateway
    • Service discovery

12. Module 12Resilience and messaging

    • Circuit breakers with Resilience4j
    • Retries and timeouts
    • Event-driven messaging

13. Module 13Observability and deployment

    • Actuator and metrics
    • Containerising with Docker
    • Configuration per environment