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Latest Episodes:

Kyle Simpson and Tammy Everts on the challenges of the modern web Apr 05, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Rising barriers to entry, the complexity of the modern web, and a preview of upcoming Fluent sessions.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with two of the program chairs for the upcoming O’Reilly Fluent Conference (July 11-14 in San Jose), Kyle Simpson and Tammy Everts. Simpson is co-author of the HTML 5 Cookbook, and the author of the You Don’t Know JS series of books. Everts is the chief experience officer at SpeedCurve and the author of Time is Money: The Business Value of Web Performance.

Discussion points:

Simpson says that one of the biggest challenges facing JavaScript developers is that the previously low barrier to entry has been raised significantly: “JavaScript developers are facing a monumental task of juggling a vast ecosystem of tools and processes that go around, and on top of, and in front of, what used to just be opening a text file and typing JavaScript.”
Everts talks about the challenges of designing for the modern web: “The web has become so complex, and the user base and the types of devices and bandwidths that people are experiencing are so incredibly diverse,” she says. “Developers and designers are somehow magically expected to take all these assets, all these scripts and make them perform reliably and consistently on everything from a smartphone over a 2G connection to someone who has blazingly fast internet.”
Simpson and Everts preview numerous Fluent sessions and presentations.

Other links:

Everts’ recent O’Reilly blog post “Building for the modern web is really, really hard”
Simpson’s free ebook JavaScript and HTML5 Now
Everts co-curates WPO Stats, a collection of performance case studies
Redux, the open source JavaScript library often used with the React JavaScript library
The W3C’s list of web accessibility evaluation tools
Simpson's recent post Fluent: Trainings To Further The Web

Rebecca Parsons on evolutionary architecture Mar 22, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: How to build evolvable systems.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Rebecca Parsons, chief technology officer at ThoughtWorks. She will be leading the workshop Building Evolutionary Architectures Hands-On at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), July 16-19, 2018, in Portland, Oregon. Parsons also is co-author (with Neal Ford and Patrick Kua) of the book Building Evolutionary Architectures.

Discussion points:

The shift in focus to evolvability rather than predictability: “When you look at the way the technology landscape is changing,” Parsons says, “trying to say you can predict any kind of technology roadmap is simply impractical.”
Why evolutionary systems need to be easy to understand: “How easy it is to change an architecture directly correlates with how easy it is to understand what’s happening in the system,” she says.
The role of fitness functions: “Fitness functions are defining what outcomes we want the architecture to achieve,” Parsons says. “Fitness functions guide our decisions about how we are going to evolve the architecture.”
An advocate for diversity in the technology industry, Parsons talks about groups she has worked with, including CodeChix and Women Who Code, and the issues that women in the field continue to face. “The climate and culture in the tech industry is still not a comfortable place for women to be,” she says. “We would like to believe as an industry that we’re a meritocracy, but we’re not. Part of the problem we’re dealing with is that women leave at a significantly greater rate than men do. We can double the number of women who come in, but if they’re leaving at a faster rate, we’re not going to make progress.”

Other links:

Video of Parsons’ presentation The evolution of evolutionary architectures at the 2016 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference
Parsons praises the work of other groups working to increase diversity, including Black Girls Code and AnitaB.org

Bridget Kromhout on Kubernetes Mar 08, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Containers, orchestrators, and new projects.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk about Kubernetes, containers, and more with Bridget Kromhout, a principal cloud developer advocate at Microsoft, and a frequent speaker at tech conferences. She will be leading the workshop Kubernetes 101 at the O’Reilly Velocity Conference in San Jose, June 11-14, 2018, and at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), July 16-19, 2018.

Discussion points:

The role that Docker played in popularizing containers. “Docker democratized containers and made them more available so that it increased adoption significantly,” Kromhout says. “You didn’t need to be a kernel expert; you could use containers as a developer without needing to focus on kernel features.”
The main parts of a Kubernetes architecture, including the master and nodes, and a look at a Kubernetes cluster
Some open source projects that are making Kubernetes easier to use, including kubicorn, which makes it possible to manage clusters across clouds.
Kromhout’s work as the lead organizer for devopsdays, a worldwide series of technical conferences covering software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them. “It’s really a powerful mechanism to let people in an area start sharing across organizations, and figuring out where they can learn from each other,” she says.

Other links:

Kromhout is co-host of the Arrested DevOps podcast.
Video of Kromhout’s presentation Containers will not fix your broken culture and other hard truths at the 2016 O’Reilly Velocity Conference
Microsoft’s Azure Container Service (AKS)
Kubernetes-related projects at heptio, Brigade, Istio, and Honeycomb
Video of Kromhout’s keynote Computers are easy; people are hard at the 2017 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference

Brent Laster on Jenkins 2 and Git Feb 22, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Creating and implementing continuous delivery pipelines.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk about Jenkins 2 and Git with Brent Laster, who presents a number of live online training courses on these topics (including Building a deployment pipeline with Jenkins 2, and Next level Git). Laster will also present the workshop Power Git at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, July 16-19, 2018, in Portland, Oregon, and he is the author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book Jenkins 2: Up and Running.

Discussion points:

The benefits of the pipeline-as-code model, introduced in Jenkins 2. Laster calls it “more of a DevOps take on things. It adds a lot more flexibility around creating your pipelines, and allows you to treat them like source code.”
The differences between continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment, the topic of a 2017 report by Laster
The Groovy-based Jenkins DSL, and Blue Ocean, Jenkins’ visual interface
Jenkins’ GitHub organization project type, which “really makes it easy to scale up the automatic creation of jobs,” says Laster. “You can point Jenkins at a GitHub organization, and it can go out and look at each project, and then within each project, scan for Jenkinsfile.”

Other links:

The online training course Migrating Jenkins Environments to Jenkins 2, presented by Laster
Laster’s book Professional Git

Richard Warburton and Raoul-Gabriel Urma on Java 8 and Reactive Programming Feb 08, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Building reactive applications.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Richard Warburton and Raoul-Gabriel Urma of Iteratr Learning. They are the presenters of a series of O’Reilly Learning Paths, including Getting Started with Reactive Programming and Build Reactive Applications in Java 8. Warburton is the author of Java 8 Lambdas, and Urma is the author of Java 8 in Action.

Discussion points:

The benefits to developers that came out of the introduction of lambdas and streams in Java 8
How Akka’s actor model helps in the creation of reactive and asynchronous applications
Comparing the uses of RxJava versus the Java 8 streams API to develop reactive code
Warburton’s and Urma’s ideas for preparing the next generation of developers for the requirements of industry, the focus of their forthcoming book Real World Software Development

Other links:

The Learning Path Build Reactive Applications with RxJava, presented by Warburton and Urma
The Learning Path Build Reactive Applications with Akka, presented by Warburton and Urma
The video Programming Actors with Akka, presented by Warburton and Urma
Warburton has been involved as an organizer in the London Java Community
Urma is co-founder of Cambridge Spark and the Cambridge Coding Academy
The schedule for the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, February 25-28, 2018, in New York

Paul Bakker and Sander Mak on Java 9 modularity Jan 25, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: The Java module system and the “start of a new era.”

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Paul Bakker, senior software engineer on the edge developer experience team at Netflix, and Sander Mak, a fellow at Luminis Technologies. They are the authors of the O’Reilly book Java 9 Modularity, in which they call the introduction of the module system to the platform “the start of a new era.”

Discussion points:

The adoption and usage of the Java 9 module system: “This won’t happen overnight,” Mak says. “The community will see that when they’re creating new applications on top of Java 9, they will definitely be able to reap the benefits from the module system.”
Factors to consider when making a decision on whether to use the Java 9 module system or OSGi.
Issues regarding how to modularize existing code.
Frameworks that support the Java 9 module system: Bakker cites Vert.x, and Mak discusses Spring Framework 5.
Netflix’s edge architecture, the topic of Bakker’s presentation at the upcoming 2018 Software Architecture Conference.

Other links:

Bakker’s article “Handling dependency injection using Java 9 modularity”
Mak’s blog post on what Java library maintainers should do to get ready for the Java 9 module system
The book Building Modular Cloud Apps with OSGi, by Paul Bakker and Bert Ertman
Mak’s presentation, Modules or Microservices, at the 2017 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference

Luciano Ramalho on Python’s features and libraries Jan 11, 2018

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: A look at some of Python’s valuable, but often overlooked, features.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk about Python with Luciano Ramalho, technical principal at ThoughtWorks, author of the O’Reilly book Fluent Python, and presenter of the Oriole Fluent Python: The Power of Special Methods.

Discussion points:

The value of some often-overlooked features of Python, including generators, iterators, and the range() function.
How Python’s Asyncio module “brought a definition of what the interface should be for an event loop into the core standard library,” says Ramalho.
Why Ramalho calls pytest his “go-to library for unit testing, and other kinds of testing.”
Striving to avoid surprises and trying to follow the conventions of the language are two characteristics of what Ramalho describes as a “good Pythonic API.”
The work of the Python Software Foundation to increase diversity in the Python community.

Other links:

Ramalho’s presentation Fluent Python: Implementing Intuitive and Productive APIs at OSCON 2016
IEEE Spectrum article on the top programming languages of 2017
The Zope web application server written in Python

Sam Newman on building microservices Dec 28, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: How to effectively make the transition from monoliths to microservices.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, we revisit our June 2017 conversation with Sam Newman, presenter of the O’Reilly video course The Principles of Microservices and the online training course From Monolith to Microservices. He is also the author of the book Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems.

Here are some highlights from the conversation:

Getting started with microservices

If you’re interested in adopting a microservice architecture, start with only one or two services at the beginning. Get them deployed into production, and see if it gives you the outcome you’re looking for.

How microservices allow scaling

By breaking apart a monolithic system into individual services, those individual services could be scaled up as required. I could run my pricing engine on multiple separate physical machines, allowing it to handle more load. I could take another part of my system and run it on a smaller machine that doesn’t need as much load.

The importance of independent deployability

If you create a systems architecture where you have that characteristic of independent deployability—where you can make a change to a service and deploy that service by itself into a production environment without having to redeploy anything else—so many other benefits flow from that.

Other links:

Newman’s presentation Confusion in the land of the serverless at the O’Reilly 2017 Velocity Conference in London

Wendy Wise on developing for virtual reality and augmented reality Dec 14, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: The impact of ARKit on developers and consumers.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Wendy Wise, technical director of emerging technologies at Turner Broadcasting System, and author of the recent article “How to pick the right authoring tools for VR and AR.” She is developing Learning Paths, which will be released on Safari in 2018, on how to get started with ARKit using Unity and XCode.

Discussion points:

On the distinction between virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), Wise says that in VR, “the virtual world is painted completely over everything and it obscures your eyes completely from the outside world. In AR, you have a view of the real world, with computer-aided content laid on top of that, augmenting actual reality.”
Apple’s ARKit, which allows developers to create augmented reality applications that work on the newer iPhones and iPads, “opened up the augmented reality landscape to billions of people who can now use AR apps without having to purchase any specific hardware,” Wise says. “Developers in the Apple framework and the Google framework can now develop AR apps and have access to billions of users.”
Why Wise says that “the service industry is going to be really impacted by augmented reality in a positive way.”
Wise predicts there will eventually be standardization regarding AR and VR because developers are going to demand it. “The hardware and software industries haven’t standardized any tools, interfaces, or programming languages,” she says. “Until that time, there’s an opening in the market for innovative companies or startups to step in to try to create some sort of standardized tool set.”

Other links:

Wendy Wise’s book Anyone Can Create an App
Unity, Xcode, and Unreal Engine are among the tools for developing AR or VR apps that Wise discusses.
Developers for the HoloLens can start with Unity, and then use Visual Studio to test and deploy the application, Wise says.

Katharine Jarmul on using Python for data analysis Nov 30, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Wrangling data with Python’s libraries and packages.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Katharine Jarmul, a Python developer and data analyst whose company, Kjamistan, provides consulting and training on topics surrounding machine learning, natural language processing, and data testing. Jarmul is the co-author (along with Jacqueline Kazil) of the O’Reilly book Data Wrangling with Python, and she has presented the live online training course Practical Data Cleaning with Python.

Discussion points:

How data wrangling enables you to take real-world data and “clean it, organize it, validate it, and put it in some format you can actually work with,” says Jarmul.
Why Python has become a preferred language for use in data science: Jarmul cites the accessibility of the language and the emergence of packages such as NumPy, pandas, SciPy, and scikit-learn.
Jarmul calls pandas “Excel on steroids” and says, “it allows you to manipulate tabular data, and transform it quite easily. For anyone using structured, tabular data, you can’t go wrong with doing some part of your analysis in pandas.”
She cites gensim and spaCy as her favorite NLP Python libraries, praising them for “the ability to just install a library and have it do quite a lot of deep learning or machine learning tasks for you.”

Other links:

Check out the video Building Data Pipelines with Python, presented by Jarmul.
Check out the video Data Wrangling and Analysis with Python, presented by Jarmul.
Jarmul is one of the founders of the group PyLadies, which focuses on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open source community.

Nathaniel Schutta on succeeding as a software architect Nov 16, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: The skills needed to make the move from developer to architect.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Nathaniel Schutta, a solutions architect at Pivotal, and presenter of the video I’m a Software Architect, Now What?. He will be giving a presentation titled Thinking Architecturally at the 2018 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, February 25-28, 2018, in New York City.

Discussion points:

How Schutta sees the role of the software architect: “I like to say that as architects, we’re like the Rosetta Stone of an organization,” he says. “We’re the ones playing the translation game between the development side, the management side, and the business side. We have to be able to fit comfortably between those groups.”
On the challenges in moving from being a software developer to becoming a software architect: “As developers, we’re largely insulated from much of the politics of the organization,” Schutta says. “As an architect, you have to craft your message for many different audiences, and take the core central idea and spin that yarn so it resonates for all these groups.”
The “soft skills” that are needed to succeed in the architect role, including communications, leadership ability, self-promotion, and investing in personal relationships.
How to “think architecturally”: “As developers, we have this tendency to chase the shiny new thing, but as an architect, we can’t afford to do that,” Schutta says. “The decisions we make have long-lasting impact, so architects have to be thinking about trade-offs.”

Other links:

Schutta’s presentation Architect as a Storyteller at the 2017 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference in London
Schutta’s presentation Modeling for Architects at the 2016 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference
The video Presentation Patterns, presented by Neal Ford and Nathanial Schutta
The book Building Evolutionary Architectures, by Neal Ford, Rebecca Parsons, and Patrick Kua
Spring One Platform, December 4-7, 2017

Matt Stine on cloud-native architecture Nov 02, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Applying architectural patterns and pattern languages to build systems for the cloud.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Matt Stine, global CTO of architecture at Pivotal. He is the presenter of the O’Reilly live online training course Cloud-Native Architecture Patterns, and he has spoken about cloud-native architecture at the recent O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference and O’Reilly Security Conference.

Discussion points:

The importance of creating a shared understanding of core architectural terms: “There are probably 20-30 conflicting definitions of ‘microservices’ floating around,” Stine says. “If we try to build some complicated software on top of a poor shared understanding, basically we’re all going to be confused.”
How patterns can make sense of an ongoing paradigm shift in software architecture: “The industry is learning quite rapidly that this ‘design thinking’ and this ‘language thinking’ is really important,” he says. “We’re taking a much more holistic view of software engineering.”
Stine explains six key architecture concepts that can be used as guideposts in a journey to the cloud: modularity, observability, deployability, testability, disposability, and replaceability.
Stine’s three principles of cloud-native security are: rotating user credentials frequently, repaving servers and applications from a known good state often, and repairing vulnerable software as soon as updates are available.

Other links:

The video Designing Cloud-Native Architecture for Continuous Delivery, presented by Matt Stine
The video Designing Cloud-Native Architecture for DevOps, presented by Matt Stine
The O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, February 26-28, 2018, in New York City—best price ends December 1, 2017
The Software Architecture Radio podcast, hosted by Matt Stine

Michael Nygard on architecture without an end state Oct 19, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Embracing late changes, plurality, and decentralization.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Michael Nygard, a software architect at Cognitect. He has spoken about “architecture without an end state” at numerous O’Reilly Software Architecture events, and he is the author of the book Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software.

Discussion points:

Architecture without an end state means accepting that “changes you’re starting now will co-exist with changes that started last year and the year before,” Nygard says. “If you adopt that perspective, then you stop trying to rip up the pavement and do something completely new, and you focus a lot more on incremental change.”
Quoting Mary Poppendieck, Nygard says that changes in scope should be embraced as an opportunity. “It’s not only reality that we’re going to have technical disruptions to our systems; we’re going to have business disruptions as well,” he says.
“Embracing plurality” is one of Nygard’s eight rules for architecting systems that are built to accept change. “When you build a service, it should allow for many consumers, some of whom you have no prior knowledge about— they just show up and start using your system,” he says.

Other links:

Nygard’s presentation Maneuverable Architecture from the 2016 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference
Nygard’s 2016 blog post on the “twilight period” in software development and deployment for cloud native systems
Nygard’s workshop at QCon San Francisco on November 16th
The book The Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald Reinertsen

Mark Bates on Go and Buffalo Oct 05, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Inside the development of a new Go ecosystem.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Mark Bates, presenter of a number of videos and Learning Paths on Go (including Go Core Techniques and Tools and Go Web Framework and Techniques), a frequent speaker at Go conferences, and an organizer for events including GopherCon and Gotham Go. Bates is also the creator of the Go web ecosystem Buffalo.

Discussion points:

Bates describes Buffalo as an ecosystem rather than a framework. “Buffalo is more than just a framework,” he says. “It’s a seamless set of tools and experiences. Buffalo helps you through the entire process from creating a brand new app to deploying your app.”
How Buffalo can make writing web applications in Go quicker and easier. “To be up and running and to see business logic so quickly is exciting,” he says. “Everything works together and you can get to the enjoyment of coding.”
Why Bates considers Go to be a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) language.
What’s happening in the Go community now, including the August release of Go 1.9 and discussions about what Go 2 should be and how it should work.

Other links:

The Learning Path Go Database Frameworks and Tools, presented by Mark Bates
The video Mark Bates on CoffeScript Techniques, Frameworks, and Tools
The video Mark Bates on Ruby Techniques, Frameworks, and Tools
Bates’ presentation Butterfly in reverse: From SOA to monolith at OSCON 2016
-Russ Cox’s GopherCon 2017 keynote address on the future of Go

Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff on Rust Sep 21, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: A look at a new systems programming language.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff, both of Mozilla, where Blandy works on Firefox’s web developer tools and Orendorff is the module owner of Firefox’s JavaScript engine. They are the authors of the new O’Reilly book Progamming Rust.

Discussion points:

How Rust helps developers avoid common errors such as dangling pointers and buffer overruns
The differences between Rust and C++: “In C++ you get undefined behavior,” Orendorff says. “Rust avoids having undefined behavior, making it easier to write secure, correct software.”
Concurrency in Rust: “With Rust, when you write multi-threaded code, the language itself catches data races at compile time,” Blandy says. “So, by the time your project compiles, it is free of data races.”
Rust’s learning curve: “If you assume you can learn it the same way you learned other languages, you’re going to be disappointed,” Orendorff says. “But once you have the right ideas about Rust in your head, it snaps and it makes sense.”

Other links:

The video The Rust Programming Language: Fast, Safe and Beautiful, presented by Jim Blandy
Jim Blandy’s OSCON 2017 presentation Networked gaming in Rust
Jim Blandy’s OSCON 2015 presentation Concurrency first in Rust
Mozilla’s Servo browser engine
The Tokio asynchronous I/O framework for Rust
Graydon Hoare, Rust's original designer

Ken Kousen on Java, Spring, and Groovy Sep 07, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: A look at what’s new in Java 9 and Spring 5.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Ken Kousen, an author, instructor, and consultant who is presenting the live online training courses Functional Programming in Java 8 and Getting Started with Spring Boot in September and October. He is also the author of the newly published O’Reilly book Modern Java Recipes: Simple Solutions to Difficult Problems in Java 8 and 9.

Discussion points:

The impact of Java 8’s functional programming-related changes, including Lambda expressions, method references, and streams
The issues surrounding Project Jigsaw and Java modularization in the forthcoming release of Java 9. “The biggest issue that will affect the open source world and your own code is that public and private no longer really mean what they sound like they should mean,” Kousen says. “This has widespread ramifications, especially for library developers.”
Why learning Groovy is easy for Java developers: “You don’t have to change any of your existing Java code to adopt Groovy,” Kousen says. “You can simply add a Groovy module, and the Groovy compiler understands how to compile Java.”
What’s new in the upcoming releases of Spring 5 and Spring Boot 2

Other links:

The live online training course Groovy Programming for Java Developers, presented by Ken Kousen on October 25-26, 2017
The series of videos on Grails 3, including Starting a Grails 3 Project and Understanding the Grails 3 Domain Model, presented by Ken Kousen
The book Gradle Recipes for Android by Ken Kousen
The Groovy Podcast, hosted by Ken Kousen and Baruch Sadogursky

Adam Scott on ethical web development Aug 24, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Building applications that work everywhere for everyone.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Adam Scott, who has authored a series of ebooks on the topic of ethical web development, the most recent of which is Collaborative Web Development. He is also the presenter of the video Introduction to Modern Front-End Development. Scott is the web development lead at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he focuses on building open source tools.

Discussion points:

How ethical web development encourages developers to make user-centered decisions
Scott’s principles for ethical web development, including: building applications that work everywhere, work for everyone, and respect users’ privacy and security
Why developers should consider accessibility from the start of a project, not just at the end of the development process
Scott says that web developers represent “the first line of defense” in protecting users’ privacy and security; he stresses awareness of attack vectors, and the use of only well-tested options for authentication and encryption.
The importance of open source in achieving the goals of ethical web development

Other links:

The Learning Path Introduction to the Modern Front-End Web
Scott’s free ebook Building Web Apps That Work Everywhere
The web accessibility checklists from the A11Y Project and WebAIM
Open source web accessibility tools from Pa11y

Mike Roberts on serverless architectures Aug 10, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: The next technological evolution of cloud systems.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk serverless architecture with Mike Roberts, engineering leader and co-founder of Symphonia, a serverless and cloud architecture consultancy. Roberts will give two presentations—Serverless Architectures: What, Why, Why Not, and Where Next? and Designing Serverless AWS Applications—at the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, October 16-19, 2017, in London.

Discussion points:

Why Roberts calls serverless “the next evolution of cloud systems,” as individual process deployment and the resource allocation of servers are increasingly outsourced to vendors
How serverless architectures use backend-as-a-service (BaaS) products and functions-as-a-service (FaaS) platforms
The similarities and differences between a serverless architecture and microservices, and how microservices ideas can be applied to serverless
Roberts explains that serverless is “not an all-or-nothing approach,” and that often “the best architecture for a company is going to be a hybrid architecture between serverless and non-serverless technologies.”
Recent advances in serverless tooling, including progress in distributed system monitoring tools, such as Amazon’s X-Ray

We also get a preview of JupyterCon, August 22-25, 2017, in New York, from conference co-chair Fernando Perez. Our discussion highlights the sessions on JupyterLab, and the UC Berkeley Data Science program, an introductory-level course in which the students use Jupyter Notebooks.

Other links:

Video of Roberts’ presentation An Introduction to Serverless at the April 2017 Software Architecture in New York
The free eBook What Is Serverless?, by Mike Roberts and John Chapin
The video AWS Lambda, presented by Mike Roberts and John Chapin
Video of Roberts and Chapin’s OSCON 2017 presentation Building, Displaying and Running a Scalable and Extensible Serverless Application Using AWS
Sam Newman’s book Building Microservices

Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson on design patterns Jul 27, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Creating designs that are more flexible and resilient to change.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson, presenters of the live online training course Design Patterns Boot Camp, and co-authors (with Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra) of Head First Design Patterns, among other books. They are also co-founders of WickedlySmart, an online learning company for software developers.

Discussion points:

How to use design patterns, which are solutions that have been repeatedly applied to particular object-oriented problems
Examples of the types of “non-obvious solutions” that can be achieved through design patterns
How design patterns can help create a shared vocabulary that can improve teams’ collaborations
The difference between design patterns and design principles
WickedlySmart’s projects, including “Game of Life,” which explores the area of cellular automata by building a generative application

Other links:

Freeman and Robson’s book Head First HTML and CSS, Second Edition
The live online training course Introduction to JavaScript Programming, presented by Elisabeth Robson
The landmark “Gang of Four” Design Patterns book
The O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, October 16-19, 2017 in London
The sessions on serverless architecture that will be presented by Mike Roberts at the upcoming O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference

Aaron Maxwell on the power of Python Jul 13, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Using Python decorators, generators, and functions.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk all things Python with Aaron Maxwell, presenter of the live online training courses Python: Beyond The Basics, and Python: The Next Level. He is also the author of the book Powerful Python: The Most Impactful Patterns, Features and Development Strategies Modern Python Provides.

Discussion points:

The importance of writing code that others developers want to use, and how Python’s features (particularly its object model hooks) enable developers to write more useful code
What Python decorators do, and how the process of learning to write Python decorators can help a developer master understanding of Python as a whole
How Python generators are an excellent tool for implementing highly scalable software
The ever-increasing transition from Python Version 2 to Version 3: Maxwell notes that over the last year, the percentage of his course attendees who say they are coding in Version 3 has increased from 20% to more than 50%.
Python’s popularity is fueled by its use by people who are not professional software engineers. Maxwell says that “Python is a language that people who are not trained in programming can quickly pick up and be productive with.”

Other links:

The Oriole online tutorial Magically Crafting Your Own Python Syntax, presented by Aaron Maxwell
The video What are f strings in Python and how can I use them?
The video How do I handle missing dictionary keys in Python?
Pandas, the Python data analysis library

Sam Newman on moving from monolith systems to microservices Jun 29, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Principles for the successful adoption of microservices.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk about microservices with Sam Newman, presenter of the O’Reilly video course The Principles of Microservices and the online training course From Monolith to Microservices. He is also the author of the book Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems.

Discussion points:

For organizations considering migrating from monolith systems to microservices, Neman suggests moving gradually, by starting with one or two services at the beginning, getting them deployed, and assessing the outcome.
Newman identifies independent deployability as one of the key principles for doing microservices well. “If you create a system architecture with independent deployability, so many benefits flow from that,” he says.
He recommends a “consumers first” focus for microservices, with designs based on how software will be implemented by customers.
How microservices can enable cost-effective scaling
In discussing modularity, Newman says “If you want to look at a system that gets modules right, look at Erlang, which was built from the ground up to be a language and a runtime for building distributed systems.”

Other links:

Videos of presentations from the 2017 O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, held in New York in April
The work of modular programming pioneer David Parnas
Microsoft’s Azure Service Fabric

Ben Evans on Java 9 Jun 15, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Thoughts on performance, modularity, and what’s next for Java.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Ben Evans, co-founder and technology fellow at JClarity, and co-author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book Optimizing Java: Practical Techniques for Improved Performance Tuning. We discuss the upcoming release of Java 9, Java performance issues, and Evans’ experience as an organizer for the London Java Community.

Discussion points:

While praising the engineering work that’s been done for Java 9, Evans says he sees “nothing desperately compelling” to encourage developers to upgrade. “It’s a fairly bare cupboard for developers who want new productivity features,” he says.
That said, Evans sees Java 9 as a stepping stone that will possibly enable radical new features to be delivered in Java 10 and 11. “It would not surprise me to see a world where very few people make the jump from 8 to 9, and a lot of people go straight from 8 to 10,” he says.
We discuss the controversy surrounding the Java Platform Module System, Project Jigsaw, which has led to the delay of the release of Java 9.
On the topic of measuring Java performance numbers, Evans cautions against microbenchmarking. “Over optimizing for microbenchmarks is actually harmful,” he says, noting Google’s recent decision to retire the Octane benchmark.

Other links:

The video course Introduction to Java 8, presented by Ben Evans and Martjin Verburg
The video course Practical Scala for Java Developers, presented by Julian Templeman and Ben Evans
The Learning Path Beginning Java Second Edition
Evans’ recent InfoQ article “Under the Hood with the JVM’s Automatic Resource Management”

Jason Hibbets on open source cities Jun 01, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Applying open source practices beyond software.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk with Jason Hibbets, senior community evangelist in corporate marketing at Red Hat, where he is a community manager for Opensource.com. We discuss how the open source model can be applied to other disciplines beyond technology, especially in the area of open government.

Discussion points:

Hibbets describes OpenSource.com as an open source storytelling platform and discusses some of the stories published there, including coverage of an open high school in Utah and brain cancer patients who advocate for the sharing of health data.
His book, The Foundation for an Open Source City, covers the experience in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he has been active in numerous civic hacking projects.
The characteristics of an open source city, according to Hibbets, include a culture of citizen participation, an effective open government policy, and an open data initiative.
Hibbets cites as a successful example of civic hacking the "Adopt-a" programs ("a bug tracking tool for city infrastructure"), which started in Boston and have since expanded to other cities.
How programmers can get involved in civic hacking through the Code for America Brigade program and other means.

Other links:

A video of the presentation How Does Raleigh Use Open Source, by Jason Hibbets and Gail Roper, from the 2014 O’Reilly OSCON conference
The book Crowdocracy, by Alan Watkins and Iman Stratenus
The OpenStack Summit, held in Boston May 8-11

Paris Buttfield-Addison on what’s new in Swift programming May 18, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Applying the latest language features to build video games and containerized microservices.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk about Swift with Paris Buttfield-Addison, co-founder of Secret Lab, a mobile development studio that builds games and apps for mobile devices. He is the co-author of Learning Swift, and a presenter of the Learning Path Getting Started with Swift on the iPad and the video Ultimate Swift Programming.

Discussion points:

The Swift Playground app, which Buttfield-Addison calls “a great programming testing environment and a concise way to get people up to speed with the language.”
The appeal of the Swift language to game developers. “Swift is one of the few opportunities we have to develop games in a modern language for a platform we know people will actually use,” he says.
Building containerized microservices with Swift: “It’s really interesting to see how far Swift has come in the three years it’s been around. You’re able to write a fairly full-fledged web framework, put it in a container, and deploy it,” he says.
Buttfield-Addison explains why it’s easy to build a game in Unity: “You have to write less code, so fewer mistakes are on your side, and more is taken care of by the engine.”

I also talk with Brian Foster, content lead at O’Reilly and co-chair of O’Reilly’s Software Architecture Conference, about some of the most discussed topics (including microservices, serverless architecture, and reactive architecture) at the conference in April 2017.

Other links:

The free report What’s New in Swift 3, by Paris Buttfield-Addison, John Manning, and Tim Nugent
The next O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference, October 16-18, 2017, in London
IBM’s Kitura framework for building microservices written in Swift
Apple’s SpriteKit for game design
The books Mobile Game Development with Unity and Swift Development for the Apple Watch, co-authored by Buttfield-Addison
Buttfield-Addison is part of the organizing team for the /dev/world/2017 conference, August 28-30, 2017, in Melbourne

Neal Ford on evolutionary architecture May 04, 2017

The O’Reilly Programming Podcast: Building an architecture that can adapt to change.

In the first episode of our new O’Reilly Programming Podcast, I talk about software architecture and the concept of “evolutionary architecture” with Neal Ford, director, software architect, and meme wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy that focuses on end-to-end software development and delivery. Ford is presenting two sessions at OSCON 2017, O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention, and he is a co-author of the forthcoming O’Reilly book Building Evolutionary Architectures.

Discussion points:

Software architecture’s increasing popularity over the last few years; Ford says that “companies such as Netflix and Amazon showed that if you do software architecture really well, you build a competitive advantage over everybody else.”
The non-functional requirements and soft skills needed to successfully implement software architecture.
How evolutionary architecture enables you to adapt to the future rather than predict it; Ford notes the pitfalls of “trying to do predictive planning against an incredibly dynamic ecosystem.”
Why guided change and incremental change are the two characteristics of an evolutionary architecture.
The difference between evolutionary and adaptive systems.

I also talk with Ally MacDonald, O’Reilly editor and a program chair of O’Reilly’s Fluent Conference, June 19-22, 2017, in San Jose, California, about the topics of the event’s sessions and training courses.

Other links: