A Bootiful Podcast Dr. Kris De Volder on developer tooling for Spring developers
Oct 2, 2025
Dr. Kris De Volder, a seasoned tooling engineer and Spring tools contributor, shares his insights into the evolution of developer tooling. He highlights how Eclipse revolutionized IDEs and discusses the role of Spring tooling in enhancing developer experience. Kris dives into his work on OpenRewrite recipes for automating Spring migrations and explains the Accelerator project for standardized templates. He also explores the intersection of AI with tooling, considering its potential as a coding tutor and the implications for developer workflows.
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From Emacs To Eclipse: A Tooling Revelation
- Dr. De Volder recalled using Emacs for Java before discovering Eclipse and finding the IDE transformative.
- He credited Eclipse with raising the bar on what an IDE could be and enabling modern tooling progress.
VS Code Leverages Eclipse Java Tech
- VS Code Java tooling often runs on Eclipse JDT under the hood, benefiting from decades of Eclipse work.
- Polyglot developers favor VS Code for breadth, while pure Java developers may prefer Eclipse or IntelliJ.
Writing Automated Migration Recipes
- Dr. Kris De Volder described writing OpenRewrite recipes that transform Java ASTs to automate Spring migrations.
- He used release notes to turn deprecations into automated refactors for Spring Security and other libraries.