57. Discussing Docker Containers and Kubernetes with a Docker Captain
Docker has emerged as an extraordinarily popular way to safely and predictably deploy applications. But because of its rapid evolution, changing business targets, and technical composition, it can still be a bit daunting to understand when to use it versus other container runtimes, let alone the task of managing it via Kubernetes and other orchestrators. This episode takes a deeper look at the components of Docker, with a strong emphasis on developer productivity in smaller organizations, not massive enterprises. Bret Fisher is our guest, and as a certified Docker expert—a Captain, actually—his job (and passion) is to share his technical expertise.
56. Updating Legacy Code
Legacy code is everywhere. Software is also being modified, whether as a result of new requirements, new security issues to patch, or new hardware and operating systems to target. Whether you're working with code from three months or three years ago, the upgrade process doesn't need to be painful. Joe Leo is here to help us conquer our fears of fixing legacy systems. He's the CEO of Def Method, a software consultancy in New York. He'll teach us the effective strategies he's learned over his years of experience with upgrading plenty of code he didn't write. We're also going to give away a 40% discount code for Joe's new book on Ruby development!
55. When Side Projects Become Real
Developers can't help themselves from implementing their ideas with every new language and framework that comes along. Sometimes, we discover that the itch we wanted to scratch was a problem for many other teams, too. Ben Curtis found this out when he built Honeybadger, an exception monitoring service. It started as a side project which he eventually turned into a full-time business. He guides us through this journey, and the discoveries he made about work-life balance along the way.
54. Building a Business by Teaching Developers
We're fortunate to live in an age with access to nearly unlimited resources for information. Sometimes, though, reading a tutorial isn't enough: you've got to see how someone builds something to fully grasp it. Geoffrey Grosenbach certainly thought so. Back in 2006, he built PeepCode and sold screencasts guiding watchers through his work building Ruby on Rails apps. He's currently at Hashicorp as their Director of Product Education. He joins Mike Mondragon on this episode to talk about launching a business aimed at developers, and how he learned to teach others.
53. Scaling Telecommunications Data with a Service Mesh
When you're one of the largest telecommunications companies in Canada, you're responsible for building and maintaining services that can handle a volume of data many times greater than the average web server. Julián Duque had a chance to sit down with Luca Maraschi, a chief architect at TELUS Digital, during NodeConfEU. On this episode, they talk about the frameworks and tech stack Luca has chosen to build the service mesh which facilities data flow between their microservices and clients.
52. Building and Scaling a Heroku Add-on
Heroku applications big and small run on dynos, virtualized Linux containers fine-tuned to execute your code. As the load on a server increases, you must add dynos to keep up with demand—but how do you know how many more to add? And how can you be sure that you are saving costs by reducing the amount of dynos after spikes in traffic settle? To solve that problem, Adam McCrea developed Rails Autoscale, a Heroku add-on that auto-scales Rails apps hosted on Heroku. He'll talk with Corey Martin about how he came up with the idea, how he built it, and how he got word out amongst his network to make it a must-have add-on.
50. High Energy, Low Power: A Bluetooth Christmas Story
Chris Castle has a two year nephew who, like most two year olds, likes pushing buttons—especially ones that turn lights on. When a Christmas tree appeared a few weeks ago, and lights were put up, he was very excited. At the same time, Chris was experimenting with Puck.js, a programmable low-power bluetooth button, and had a brainwave—he could combine his nephew's love of buttons and of lights. A true Christmas miracle.
51. Best Practices in Error Handling
Errors are a fundamental part of the programming experience. Learning how to receive and react to them, as well as responding to the user who may have encountered one, is essential to building a great application experience. Ruben Bridgewater, a core member of the Node.js team, talks us through various error handling strategies, both those that are specific to JavaScript as well as those applicable to anyone building a production-grade service.
49. Building Effective Distributed Teams
Running a start-up is hard. Running a start-up with teammates spread across the world is even harder. Juan Pablo Buriticá is the VP of engineering at Splice. He believes there's a fallacy that remote teams ought to be treated differently than non-remote ones. He argues that, given enough time, every team becomes distributed, whether that means they're in a different room or office or floor or country. He expounds on this philosophy, as well as how to set up your team for success early, whether they're comprised of four or four hundred people.
48. From NodeConf EU 2019
NodeConf EU is one of the main conferences for the Node.js community. Community members from all over the world share their projects, leader workshops, and discuss the direction of the world's most popular programming language. congregate to discuss best practices, upcoming language changes, cool implementations, and more. Julián Duque chats with several attendees about what they're working on.