O'Reilly Programming Podcast - O'Reilly Media Podcast

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

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