What you should know

- [Instructor] In order to be successful in this course, there are a few prerequisites. There's a baseline of knowledge, as well as some software you will need to have on your computer itself. There were also be some options with the installations. Please know that you don't have to do everything the way I'm saying it. This is primarily my workflow. We're using the Spring framework for Java for this course. While you can use other JVM languages like Kotlin and Groovy, we will be focusing on Java. Now you need to have a JDK installed on your computer. I will be using JDK 11 as it is a long-term support version. You can also use a different JDK as well based upon the current Spring support for this course. We will not be using any advanced language constructs. However, do you know if you don't use JDK 11, you may run into slight issues with changes in the JVM. I expect you to have some intermediate level Java skills so you don't get tripped up with the language itself. Now we won't be doing anything too difficult from a language perspective but it's hard to learn a framework for a language when you struggle with the language itself. I do expect you to understand how to compile a Java application while we will be using our IEs for a lot of it, it is important to understand what compilation and packaging does in Java. You will also need to understand how to run a Java application, specifically a package jar. Now we will go through this, but it's a basic understanding for building a Spring Boot application. And finally, debugging is an important skill for Java development. If things don't work right on your first attempt, debugging your running program should help you figure out what may be wrong. Now, this is a course on Spring Boot, and as such, you should have a little understanding about Spring itself. Now I will walk through the configurations and implementations but you should have that basic understanding. I have several courses in the library including learning Spring with Spring Boot and Spring framework in depth that will give you a good background. You should understand why Spring is such a value for Java developers. And I assume that since you are here, you already did that. When you add that value to the speed and ease of Spring Boot, you will get a holistic picture of why this is a good framework to learn. Now, you don't need to be an expert at Spring to use it or to get value out of it from this course. For this course, we will use Apache Maven to manage our dependencies. With Spring, you can use Gradle if you want. And in fact, that's what the Spring team itself uses. But I find Maven to be easier to use especially in a learning environment. So you will need to have Maven installed on your machine. Now Apache gives you some great instructions on how to install Maven itself. So I'm going to leave that task to you. You will need to have an understanding of some basic Maven commands. I have a course in the LinkedIn learning library called Introducing Maven that will get you up to speed if you need some extra knowledge on Maven itself. And here's the link from a Apache that you can use to install Maven on your operating system. We will be using Docker a few times in this course. You have some options here if you don't want to run Docker locally but I personally would suggest the Docker route. So you'll need to have Docker installed and Docker once again has some very good documentation on installation for various operating systems. You should understand some basic Docker commands. I will have scripts for you for Linux and BSD-based systems but you'll need to get through the basics, especially in Windows. Now, for most of the uses of Docker, you can choose to run the database locally or run it locally on your machine instead of using Docker. That's your choice. But I often find it not worth the time to install things locally. And I actually use Docker every day for this very purpose. Now here's a link where you can find details of installing Docker. The final required piece of software you will need is an IDE or Integrated Development Environment. Now, first and foremost, it does not matter which IDE you use for this course. Most modern IDEs will work for everything in this course. The most important part is that you personally are comfortable with your IDE. Don't pick the one that I use just because I'm using it. That doesn't help you. You really need to understand how to use it well. Understand how to use Maven integration understand how to run and debug Java applications. Again, it needs to fit you. Now I use IntelliJ Ultimate Edition because for me, it's the most comfortable. I use the products in all languages that I code in again for comfort. And this is what I do every single day. If I used a different IDE for this course, I would struggle through it and it would take away from the core of this course which is not the IDE, but the framework. So do not feel that you need to go buy an IDE for this course, just use what fits. They all will do the same thing. Now there's a couple pieces of helpful software that I use which is optional, but you may find useful. Now we'll use the command line, not only to interact with Docker, but also to execute a few commands. I do expect you to know how to use the command line for your operating system. While cURL works great, I use a tool called HTTPie that I find easier to use when making web requests from the command line. Look it up if you want to use it as well. Otherwise, you can do everything with cURL. I also use a plugin for Chrome called JSON Viewer. I find it easier to read JSON that has been prettified. And this plugin does that for me. There are some options here as well but you may find value in it after digging through JSON manually a few times. Now, that's it. So let's get ready to jump into the course.