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What Are Some Big “No-No’s”​ For Junior Software Engineers?

Publishing here on LinkedIn a question I answered on Quora that went viral.

I mentored some Junior Software Engineers in the past 4 years. I figured like anything in this world, they come in all flavors.

Some of them could be easily molded to fit a team’s requirements and others are hard work.

Some of them will start contributing towards team backlog from day one and some of them will take…

Find out why, After Linux, Kubernetes is the most popular open-source project on the internet.

Kubernetes is an open-source tool used for the deployment, maintenance, and scaling of containerized apps. After Linux, Kubernetes is the most popular open-source project on the internet. Google open-sourced it in June 2014 and since then Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has maintained its projects.

Kubernetes does “Desired State Management” through configuration code. Efficiency,…

7 Critical Factors that Influence a Software Engineer’s Choice of a Language, Tool or Framework.

I heard a Software Engineer curse the C# Language in the office recently. He used the 4 letter word in anger. I didn’t know which part of C# pissed him off. But watching him get frustrated tickled my curiosity. I wonder if it would have made him happier if he had a say in the selection of the Language.

I have been in similar frustrations where I hated the tool that was picked for a project. I…

What Exactly are Cloud Native Applications?

Say you are a manager at a Pizza Hut, and your company allocates $75,000 for the delivery vehicle. Which one is a better ROI, 5 Ford Fiestas ($15,000 each) or 1 Tesla Model S ($75,000 each)? Obviously, 5 Ford Fiestas, as you can make more trips to deliver more Pizzas in Parallel.

Similarly, to maximize cloud ROI, we should re-architect monolithic web apps into Microservices, so we can develop,…

How to quickly improve the resilience of Microservices?

We buy groceries from stores and not from farms. Stores are located near housing communities. Farms are not. You can get your groceries faster from stores because of this close proximity in a single visit.   Similarly, Microservices can get data faster from cache than from dependencies. Cache resides closer to app compared to dependencies. This close proximity helps in faster retri…

How to generate a model from JSON string?

Microservices architecture consumes data from other Microservices and processes requests. These days most Microservices provide RESTful endpoints. Backend developers setup HTTP requests and check responses. JSON string is obtained from Response content, and deserialized into an Object (Example ‘PowerballDraws’), as shown in the code below.

You can find the complete code in Github at jsonutils_de…

The easiest way to get started with Docker in cloud

PaaS is awesome.

We can provision a web app in 5 minutes.

We can scale apps in 2 clicks.

We can monitor apps easily.

No Hard drive setup is required.

No need to set up network security groups.

No need to Load balance.

It is the best way to get started with cloud.

Yet, Azure PaaS for Java is not up to the mark.

Azure deploys Java apps on Windows machines in PaaS. IIS manages requests in front of…

How Feature Toggles expedites feedback loops

“Responding to change” is the purpose of closer feedback loops. Feature Toggles, Continous Deployment, and Continous Integration are processes that serve this purpose. All these make up for the Agile Manifesto.

What are Feature Toggles?

Feature Toggles are switches to manage control flows in software systems.

Meaning, we can turn ON or OFF any feature in production without re-deploying.…

  MoviePass is a cinema subscription service that lets you watch one movie per day @ $9.95 per month. Meaning, you could watch 30 movies in a month for a price of single movie ticket.

Subscribing:

When you subscribe for a MoviePass, they will send you a MoviePass Debit card in 7 days. You will require a smartphone to check-in at theater (within 100 yards), then ticket money will be added to your…

You can get started with a bachelor’s degree in computer science or self teach. Bachelor’s degree will not guarantee a job, but can distinguish from others when too many high-school drop outs are applying for the same position.

Self taught professionals have difficulty getting the first job. However it is possible to Crack a job if you are good at what you know.

A lot of programming knowledge can…

The purpose of shortening time to market is to get quicker feedback from customers. There are 3 major practices that can help us to shorten time to market.

MVP: Teams should identify and get started on Minimally viable product components. MVP will help shorten time to market by reducing time required to develop. It will supply quicker feedback, which is the purpose to shorten time to market.

Auto…

The simple truth why Git is replacing TFS

Git has been generating a lot of buzz in recent times. It is slowly replacing TFS everywhere. Even Microsoft switched “Windows” to Git.

Why would Microsoft spent 3 months to move 350 million files to Git?

Was it worth the pain of moving 300 GB size repository?

What prompted Microsoft abandon its own version control ?

What is Git?

According to git documentation

Git is a free and open sourcedistrib…

GraphQL – A query language for API’s.

Last week I was awestruck by the idea of using GraphQL in API’s. I was surprised how we could totally eliminate some of the RESTful problems in modern Microservices environments.

RESTful architecture has inherent disadvantages like multiple round trips, over-fetching, and versioning. GraphQL addresses these concerns by shifting these non-essential complexities to the client side. Wiring up custom…

Securing Microservices using HTTPS

Microsoft Azure App Service provides PaaS (Platform as a Service) model for hosting web applications. Azure also supports wildcard based SSL certificates for every App Service we create. Communication to this website is encrypted by using wildcard SSL’s.

The Risks In Wildcard Certificates

Traffic to the website is not visible to naked eye, however, you are at risk of getting spoofed.

According…

Caching in Microservice – A highly effective way to maximize performance

Caching improves availability, scalability, and performance of Microservices by reducing roundtrips to dependencies.

Querying database every time is nonessential. Perhaps we can save our applications a little compute by serving data from the buffer. This is profitable when the nature of data is static, and don’t change very often.

Frequently calling dependent Microservices is also redundant. We…

If this then that

IFTTT is an acronym for “If This Then That“. IFTTT is a new way to connect your services, mobile apps, and IoT devices among each other. Absolutely no programming experience necessary to use IFTTT services.

IFTTT is community driven service and it’s absolutely Free. You can setup your own Applets. You can select Applets created by others.

Simplest examples:

You can setup “Applet” to remind you…

Queue centric pattern – failing gracefully in Microservices!

Have you wondered why there are gaps between bridge segments? Because materials used in constructions of bridges usually expands in summer and contracts in winter. Without these “breathing” spaces, the bridges develop deep cracks that could lead to dangerous path holes. Worst, destabilize the bridge support and strength.

Similarly, developing tightly coupled Microservices creates friction between…