1 Year Anniversary – Working as a Freelancer

Yesterday, 1 October 2017, was my 1 year anniversary of quitting my day job and starting as an independent trainer and consultant. To be honest, it feels like yesterday that I said goodbye to my coworkers and started to work for myself. This was the quickest, most intense, challenging, stressful and fun year I ever had in my career. Thanks to everyone who followed me on that journey, joined my Hibernate online or classroom training, got my Hibernate Tips book or said “hi” at a conference! Looking back, it’s hard to believe what you can achieve within such a short timeframe if you follow your passion and invest all your energy. Here are some of the most notable things I did in the 12 months:

• Posted 105 articles here on the blog
• Wrote my Amazon bestselling book Hibernate Tips – More than 70 solutions to common Hibernate problems
• Recorded 61 videos for the Thoughts on Java YouTube channel and grew it to more than 1800 subscribers
• Created the Advanced Hibernate Online Training, which I will reopen soon
• Gave 6 talks and 3 workshops at JUGs and conferences
• Introduced consulting calls and project coaching as new ways to work with me

OK, enough bragging about the last year. Let’s celebrate with some of the most popular posts and videos and a special offer.

Posts and Videos You Shouldn’t Miss

105 posts and 61 videos are quite a lot and most likely a few more than you can watch or read right now 😉 So, here are some of the most popular ones.

Posts

The JPA 2.2 release is only a few weeks old. So, it’s no surprise that the posts about the included changes have recently been some of the most popular ones:

• How To Map The Date And Time API with JPA 2.2
• JPA 2.2 Introduces @Repeatable Annotations
• JPA 2.2’s new getResultStream() method and how you should NOT use it

Another popular series was the one about Hibernate Search and how you can use it to add full-text search functionality to your application:

• Add full-text search to your application with Hibernate Search
• How to implement complex full-text search with Hibernate Search
• How to use Facets to categorize your FullTextQuery results

And if you just need to implement a few normal queries, you should take a look at the following 2 posts:

• Ultimate Guide to JPQL Queries with JPA and Hibernate
• 5 tips to write efficient queries with JPA and Hibernate

Last but not least, I want to point you to a few posts that show you how to use Hibernate with popular database and what you can do if you need to support multiple ones:

• Hibernate with PostgreSQL – 6 things you need to know
• How to use PostgreSQL’s JSONB data type with Hibernate
• 5 Things You Need to Know When Using Hibernate with Mysql
• Hibernate Tips: How to override the primary key generation strategy

Videos

I enjoy reading and writing but I get it, sometimes it’s easier to watch a video. So, here are some of the most popular videos on the Thoughts on Java YouTube channel.

Take a Look at the Book

Writing and publishing my first book was my personal highlight of the last year. I love books and I wanted to write one myself for ages. In April 2017, my dream came true and I published my first and definitely not my last book: Hibernate Tips – More than 70 solutions to common Hibernate problems. That book contains some of the Hibernate Tips you might have read here on the blog and lots of exclusive ones which I wrote specifically for the book. If you want to take a look at it, you can download the first 30 pages here.

Work with Me – Special Offer

OK, and now to this week’s special anniversary offer. This one is for you if you have some questions about Hibernate or need help with your current project. For this week only, I’m offering a 12% discount (1% for each month of me working as a freelancer) on all booked consulting calls and project coaching packages. A consulting call is the best option if you just want to discuss a few questions or need my input on your design or implementation decisions. I’m looking forward to talking to you in a 30- or 60-minute consulting call. If you want to jump-start a new project, review an existing one or need some help with a tricky problem, one of my project coaching packages will be the better option for you. I will virtually join your team via email and video calls for 1 week or 1 month to answer your questions and help you make the best decisions for your project.