Herding Code

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Herding Code 236: Will Green on Going Serverless With AWS Jun 12, 2019

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Episode 236

Download / Listen: Herding Code 236: Will Green on Going Serverless With AWS

Kevin and Jon talk with Will Green (@hotgazpacho) about how his small team uses serverless development on the AWS platform to maximize their productivity.

Topics:

(00:20) Will's team builds the FireEye Market, which enables you to "discover apps, extensions, and add-ons that integrate with and extend your FireEye experience."
(02:51) FireEye is a relatively large company, but Will's team is just four people, and they're using serverless development to scale and get a lot done quickly. The FireEye Market is a greenfield development project. It's primarily a single page application that uses GraphQL. When new apps are published, an external provider pings webhooks that kick off background process that cache binaries, notify consumers, etc.
(07:05) Kevin asks about what pushed their team towards serverless technology. Will talks about how serverless lets them maximize the time they devote to delivering business value.
(08:30) Will talks about how they were able to successfully pitch the project internally. While there were some additional costs as they scaled up, they've also been able to take advantage of new AWS services that allow them to scale on demand, which has led to savings.
(11:10) Jon asks for more clarification of what Apollo GraphQL's role in their architecture.
(12:38) Kevin asks about the learning curve. Will says a lot of it was pretty natural since the team already had a Node background, but learning things like cold start took some work.
(14:25) They used the serverless framework, which helped take care of setting up tedious infrastructure. If they were starting today, they'd seriously look at AWS Amplify, which is a lot more feature rich and includes support for CI/CD.
(15:50) Jon asks how they handle failures, including both code errors and service outages.
(19:49) Kevin asks about concerns with vendor lock-in. Will explains why he prefers to just pick a cloud vendor and learn it.
(20:49) Kevin asks how they manage the complexity of many small services interacting; Will talks about the use of AWS Step Functions to manage state and workflow, and keeping updated diagrams really helps.
(22:40) Kevin asks about the local vs. cloud development experience. Will talks about some local development emulators from the community, but it's not quite the same as actually hitting the real service.
(24:00) Kevin asks about the testing strategy.
(25:15) Jon asks how things work with version control. Will explains how AWS CodeBuild handles git push build and deploy for them.
(26:00) Jon asks how Will keeps up with all the different AWS services, especially since many aren't intuitively named. Will defines all the different services they're using.
(28:48) Will describes his bias against containers: you still have to worry about the underlying operating system, whereas with serverless that's all abstracted away.
(30:00) Will explains how they designed the system, starting with diagrams on draw.io, continuing to work through requirements, and evolving the system.
(31:52) Will explains what's different about working with DyanmoDB. There's a lot, especially access patterns.
(36:03) Jon asks how they handle versioning multiple services and data changes; Will talks about using Step Functions and handling data failures.
(38:25) Jon asks for advice for people who are getting started with serverless on AWS, and Will highly recommends AWS Amplify. There are lots of samples for serverless framework.
(40:39) Kevin asks if it's possible to migrate an existing application to a serverless architecture. Will says it's challenging, but you can use CloudFront as a router to start distributing work to serverless services based on URL path segmentation.
(41:50) Kevin asks about the experience of moving from Ruby development to JavaScript development.
(42:40) Will's team is hiring right now, here's the job listing: Senior Developer (US Remote - Prefer Eastern Time Zone).

Herding Code 235: Matthew Renze on Data Science for Software Developers Jun 03, 2019

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Episode 235

Download / Listen: Herding Code 235: Matthew Renze on Data Science for Software Developers

At DevSum Stockholm, Jon talks to Matthew Renze (@matthewrenze ) about data science practices to improve both the products they are creating and their software development practices.

Topics:

(00:20) Matthew explains how he's been speaking to software developers about applying data science practices to improve both the products they are creating and their software development practices.
(00:40) Data science can add intelligence to applications, machine learning to automate decision-making processes, and deep learning to modify the user interface using anticipatory design.
(03:57) The other side to this is using data science to help build software. The DevOps pipeline provides a lot of objective measures to help improve our software development processes and practices.
(05:51) Software telemetry data can help us prioritize the time we spend on features towards those that are actively used.
(07:12) Jon asks which terms he really needs to understand as a developer. Matthew defines data science, machine learning, deep learning, and reinforcement learning. They discuss how text suggestions and language understanding have progressed, and where generated text can and can't help.
(13:55) Machine learning can be used for good and for evil - for instance, it's now possible to forge video in a way that's really tough to detect. What do we do now? Matthew talks about what we can do as developers to educate those around us and apply ethics to the software we contribute to.
(19:50) How do we handle things like legal liability for machines that are making decisions, like self-driving cars? Matthew puts it in historical context and talks about how we'll need to adapt our society to accommodate.
(24:12) Jon asks where to get started applying data science today. Matthew gives some pointers on where to get started learning, and how to start with some quick wins like A/B testing and objective software quality metrics.

Herding Code 234: Dylan Beattie on Social Impacts of Technology and the Meaning of Developer Seniority May 28, 2019

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Episode 234

Download / Listen: Herding Code 234: Dylan Beattie on Social Impacts of Technology and the Meaning of Developer Seniority

At DevSum Stockholm, Jon talks to Dylan Beattie (@dylanbeattie ) about the impacts our technology choices have on our world, different kinds of seniority for software developers, and how to get started as a conference speaker.

Topics:

(01:00) Dylan explains how he juggles writing and delivering several keynote presentations (and a bit about the Rockstar programming language). He talks about writing a presentation as an essay first, rather than starting with slides.
(06:52) Jon asks Dylan about the themes he's hoping to bring up in his presentations. Dylan talks about the difference between the things we're building software to do versus the actual important things we should be focusing on as humans. What is the cost of chasing the new and shiny things, and why can't we be satisfied with the technology we have?
(13:10) Jon asks Dylan about how to convince people to act in the long term interests of humanity. Dylan talks about YouTube's perfect user is someone who watches movies nonstop for the rest of their life. Jon and Dylan discuss the effectiveness and difficulties of legislating technology.
(17:05) So what can we do? Dylan says a good place is to explain things just one level deeper to our non-technical friends. And... heresy alert... you don't have to build software on the absolute newest technology, either. Jon and Dylan talk about how many of our modern application experiences are inferior to basic HTML.
(21:50) Jon asks how developers should advance their careers. Do we need to become managers? Dylan discusses the concept of a "senior developer" and describes four strands: management, leadership, expertise, and mentoring.
(24:55) Dylan talks about the example of how Linus Torvalds reacted when confronted over hostility on Linux mailing lists. One important thing is that Linus didn't put the responsibility of telling him how to fix his behavior on those who confronted him over it.
(27:15) Jon asks Dylan how we can apply this to our careers. Dylan discusses the tradeoff - growing in one area will likely cause others to suffer. He explains how to progress in each of these areas, and explains how impactful mentorship doesn't need to be a big time commitment.
(31:00) Jon asks for advice for developers who are interested in getting started with public speaking.

Herding Code 233: Dino Esposito on Blazor, ASP.NET Core, Writing Technical Books, and Machine Learning May 17, 2019

Show notes

Episode 233

Download / Listen: Herding Code 233: Dino Esposito on Blazor, ASP.NET Core, Writing Technical Books, and Machine Learning

Jon talks to Dino Esposito at dotNext (Saint Petersburg, Russia) about Blazor, ASP.NET Core, Writing Technical Books, and Machine Learning.

Topics:

(00:45) Blazor
(16:50) ASP.NET Core, the ASP.NET Core pipeline and proliferation of available endpoints
(27:45: Writing technical books
(30:05) Machine Learning and ML.NET

Herding Code 232: Scott Koon on getting out of Tech, GitHub Package Registry, Build 2019 Recap May 12, 2019

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Episode 232

Download / Listen: Herding Code 232: Scott Koon on getting out of Tech, GitHub Package Registry, Build 2019 Recap

Kevin, Scott K, and Jon talk about Scott Koon's bold adventure out of the tech industry, GitHub Package Registry, and a Build 2019 Recap.

Herding Code 231: .NET Foundation Elections, WSL, MAX_PATH, calc.exe, Edge on Chromium, Firefox, and Rogue Thermostats Mar 25, 2019

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Episode 231

Download / Listen: Herding Code 231: .NET Foundation Elections, WSL, MAX_PATH, calc.exe, Edge on Chromium, Firefox, and Rogue Thermostats

Kevin, K Scott, and Jon talk about .NET Foundation Elections, WSL, MAX_PATH, calc.exe, Edge on Chromium, Firefox, and Rogue Thermostats.

Some links:

Herding Code 230: 2018 Year End Wrapup Dec 14, 2018

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Episode 230

Download / Listen: Herding Code 230: 2018 Year End Wrapup Kevin, K Scott, Jon, and Rob Conery talked about what they've been learning, programming languages vs. async patterns, message queues, blockchain, Claude Shannon, Mandarin, learning to play the drums, making perfect lattes, and more. In the interest of getting this out there, this one going up the same day it was recorded, without detailed notes. Maybe we'll update the notes, maybe we won't. Enjoy!

Herding Code 229: Matt Warren on .NET Internals and Open Source Contributions Feb 09, 2018

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Episode 229

Download / Listen: Herding Code 229: Matt Warren on .NET Internals and Open Source Contributions The guys talked to Matt Warren about his recent blog posts on .NET open source and open source contributions.

(00:20) How Matt goes about writing his in-depth blog posts
(03:15) Arrays and the CLR - a Very Special Relationship
(07:00) The Book of the Runtime
(11:00) Span<T> to allow high performance array and string manipulation
(16:07) Memory Usage Inside the CLR
(20:06) A look at the internals of 'boxing' in the CLR
(24:40) Intel hardware intrinsic functions (SSE, AVX, POPCNT, etc.)
(25:50) A look at the internals of 'Tiered JIT Compilation' in .NET Core
(35:00) A DoS Attack against the C# Compiler
(40:00) How much the cross-platform aspects of .NET are apparent in the .NET platform code
(43:40) Analysing C# code on GitHub with BigQuery
(51:35) Open Source .NET – 3 years later

Herding Code 228: 2017 Wrap Up with Microservices, .NET Foundation, Mixed Reality, Bitcoin, Alexa Dec 30, 2017

Show notes

Episode 228

Download / Listen: Herding Code 228: 2017 Wrap Up with Microservices, .NET Foundation, Mixed Reality, Bitcoin, Alexa The gang gets together to talk about what they’ve been up to, year end wrap-up, and some random odds and ends. Topics:

K Scott’s been focused on cloud stuff – moving apps to the cloud. Kevin’s been working with rearchitecting an application to Node based microservices. They’re using Docker some in dev, but not in production. There’s a discussion about Docker based deployments.
Jon talks about what’s been going on with .NET Foundation: Meetup Pro, new projects joining, etc. Kevin makes Jon explain what the .NET Foundation actually is.
Mixed Reality – What can you actually do with it? The guys wonder if it’s neat but niche, comparing it to Kinect and the Segway.
Cryptocurrency!
- Jon talks about how he accidentally ended up with $250ish in Bitcoin and $10 Dogecoin.
- The Bitcoin Pizza, Scott Hanselman’s $3500 USB cable.
- K Scott never bought any because he didn’t need to buy meth or pay off a hitman.
- Jon wondered if he could make money mining Bitcoin with solar power, but the internet told him no.
- K Scott’s OdeToCode.com website was mining Bitcoin, he claims it wasn’t him.
Jon talks about how the Herding Code site was hacked.
Net Neutrality: Does public opinion matter? What will the result be? Jon and K Scott bemoan the fact that many consumers don’t really have much choice on internet providers.
iPhone discussions: Does the notch matter? Kevin misses the home button. The guys talk about how touch gestures are sometimes frustrating.
Alexa and voice based commands: what works, what doesn’t?

Herding Code 227: Rob Ashton on Better Coffee Through Science Dec 12, 2017

Show notes

Episode 227

Download / Listen: Herding Code 227: Rob Ashton on on Better Coffee Through Science While at NDC Oslo, Jon talked to Rob about how he and the Tame Baristas crew make amazing coffee. Topics:

What's the deal with Tame Baristas and making coffee at software conventions?
Ensuring consistency - precise weights, equipment
The imporance of a quality coffee grinder (he uses an EK43)
Freezing coffee - actually a good thing?!?
What's the deal with pour over coffee?
What's the best way to up your home coffee game on a budget?
What do you do when you're not making coffee? Spoiler: Elm and Erlang.

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