Coding Blocks

Well, this is awkward.Coding Blocks is signing out for now, in this episode we’ll talk about what’s happening and why. We have had an amazing run, far better than we ever expected. Also, Joe recommends 50 games, Allen goes for the gold, and Outlaw is totally normal. (And we’re not crying you’re crying!) Thank you for the support over the last 11 (!!!) years. It’s been a wild ride, and the last thing we ever expected when starting a tech podcast was getting to meet so many fantastic people. View the full show notes here:https://www.codingblocks.net/episode242 Tip of the Week UFO 50 is an odd collection of 50 pseudo-retro video games made by a small group of game developers, most notably including Derek Yu of Spelunky. It’s a unique and specific experience that reminds me of spending the night at your friend’s house who had some console gaming system that you’d only ever heard rumors about. The games seem small and simple at first blush, but there is surprising depth. Favorites so far are Kick Club, Avianos, Attactics, and Mortol. (Steam) Use JSDoc annotations to make VSCode “understand” your data (jsdoc.app) Can you change your password without needing current password? (askubuntu.com) Did you know you can use VS Code for interactive rebasing? How to enable VS Code Interactive Editor (StackOverflow) GitLens (marketplace.visualstudio.com)

It’s time to talk about the types of things you should consider when diving into multi-tenant applications and things to be especially aware of if you attempt to make things faster by going multi-threaded at the same time. Join us as Allen continues is non-winning / non-losing streak, JZ is taken out by a storm, and Outlaw continues to ignore the notes for the intro to the show… News Reviews Spotify – Colum Ferry Upcoming Events Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ DevFest Central Florida on September 28th, 2024https://devfestflorida.com/ Episode Single vs multi-tenanted applications and multi-threaded programming Be very careful about sharing state when doing anything in multi-threaded AND multi-tenanted applications What are some important things to consider when writing multi-tenanted applications – per Claude As mentioned in the episode, Claude’s answers seem to be very database heavy Data isolation: Ensure that each tenant’s data is securely separated and inaccessible to other tenants. Authentication and authorization: Implement robust systems to verify tenant identity and control access to resources. Scalability: Design the architecture to handle growth in both the number of tenants and data volume per tenant. Performance: Optimize database queries and resource allocation to maintain speed as tenant count increases. Customization: Allow for tenant-specific configurations and features without compromising the core codebase. Monitoring and logging: Implement comprehensive logging and monitoring to track usage, errors, and performance per tenant. Maintenance and updates: Design the system to allow for upd

Grab your headphones because it’s water cooler time! This episode we’re catching up on feedback, putting our skills to the test, and wondering what we’re missing. Plus, Allen’s telling it how it is, Outlaw is putting it all together and Joe is minding the gaps! View the full show notes here:https://www.codingblocks.net/episode240 Reviews Thank you again for taking the time to share your review with us! iTunes: Yesso95 Spotify: Auxk0rd, artonus News Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ DevFest Central FloridaSeptember 28th, 2024https://devfestflorida.com/ Two water coolers walk into a bar… Several folks share their origin stories in the Coding Blocks slack – especially in episode-discussion Example of dealing with legacy code / hiring people that will work on it (Episode 239) Intentional architecture…what’s the worst that could happen? What’s the sentiment like on Hacker News? (outerbounds.com) Cat8 is not small! Why isn’t anything easy? Kubernetes trivia, where are your blind spots? (proprofs.com) Ask Claude: Can you give me an example of the kinds of competitions that might exist in a humorous version of the Olympics for programmers? Data gathering and parsing – it doesn’t seem to have gotten much better in decades…are we wrong? Tip of the Week 8 Top Docker Tips and Tricks for 2024 (docker.com) Have you tried Eartlhy, like Dockerfiles for all of your builds that you can run locally? (earthly.dev) Java’s JavaAgent Explained (<a href="https://bito.ai/resou

We were asked in one of our recent reviews in Apple Podcasts if we would share our career paths and how we got started and how we arrived where we are today. We took some of that info, threw it at Microsoft’s CoPilot / DALL E 3 and that’s the artwork for this episode – you may be a little surprised at how the 3 of us got started as software developers. We also have some fun things to share about recent purchases, tweaks, mistakes made and some information about the CrowdStrike outage that recently occurred. Reviews Thank you again for taking the time to share your review with us! iTunes: Ksed_NJ News Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ DevFest Central FloridaSeptember 28th, 2024https://devfestflorida.com/ This Episode Career paths – someone asked that we talk about our career paths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Pearlman Enabling trace caused a bug that didn’t happen otherwise – in other words, errors in your code (such as in a toString()) could cause unforseen problems when working with other libraries and enabling verbose logging Upgraded the fans in my Omada switch…may have done something stupid – ie. you should never mess aorund inside electrical components when they were powered on else you may risk injury or even frying some expensive equipment The travel router experience has been awesome – we mentioned this thing in a recent episode and it really is awesome<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="344" height="300" class="wp-image-46191" style="width: 344px;" src="https://www.codingblocks.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/travel_router_cas

It’s Water Cooler Time! We’ve got a variety of topics today, and also Outlaw’s lawyering up, Allen can read QR codes now, and Joe is looking at second careers. View the full show notes here:https://www.codingblocks.net/episode238 News As always, thank you for leaving us a review – we really appreciate them! Almazkun, vassilbakalov, DzikijSver Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ DevFest Central Florida on September 28th, 2024Interested? Submit your talk proposal here:https://sessionize.com/devfest-florida-orlando-2024/ Water Cooler How many programmers are there now? (statista.com) Are we still growing? What will it be like when we stop growing? What will people be doing instead? AI music generators are being sued! (msn.com) Curse of the Blank Page Naming things is important, gives them power…but also the power to defeat them! Don’t make any one specific technology your hammer Client libraries that completely change with server upgrades What’s the most important or relevant thing to learn as a developer now? Do you research or learn on vacation? Tip of the Week Curated, High-Quality Stories, Essays, Editorials, and Podcasts based around Software Engineering. It’s more polished and less experimental than PagedOut (Github)Also, there’s a new Paged Out, complete with downloadable art. It’s more avant-garde than GIthub’s Readme project, featuring articles on Art, Cryptography, Demoscenes, and Reverse Engineering. (pagedout.institute</a

In the past couple of episodes, we’d gone over what Apache Kafka is and along the way we mentioned some of the pains of managing and running Kafka clusters on your own. In this episode, we discuss some of the ways you can offload those responsibilities and focus on writing streaming applications. Along the way, Joe does a mighty fine fill-in for proper noun pronunciation and Allen does a southern auctioneer-style speed talk. View the full show notes here:https://www.codingblocks.net/episode237 Reviews As always, thank you for leaving us a review – we really do appreciate them! From iTunes: Abucr7 Upcoming Events Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ DevFest Central Florida on September 28th, 2024Interested? Submit your talk proposal here:https://sessionize.com/devfest-florida-orlando-2024/ Kafka Compatible and Kafka Functional Alternatives Why? Because running any type of infrastructure requires time, knowledge, and blood, sweat and tears Confluent https://www.confluent.io/confluent-cloud/pricing/ We’ve personally had good experiences with their Kafka as a service WarpStream https://www.warpstream.com/ “WarpStream is an Apache Kafka® compatible data streaming platform built directly on top of object storage: no inter-AZ bandwidth costs, no disks to manage, and infinitely scalable, all within your VPC” ZERO disks to manage 10x cheaper than running Kafka Agents stream data directly to and from object storage with no buffering on local disks and no data tiering. Create new serverless “Virtual Clusters” in our control plane instantly

Topics, Partitions, and APIs oh my! This episode we’re getting further into how Apache Kafka works and its use cases. Also, Allen is staying dry, Joe goes for broke, and Michael (eventually) gets on the right page. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode236 News Thanks for the reviews! angingjellies and Nick Brooker Please leave us a review! (/review) Atlanta Dev Con is coming up, on September 7th, 2024 (www.atldevcon.com) Kafka Topics They are partitioned – this means they are distributed (or can be) across multiple Kafka brokers into “buckets” New events written to Kafka are appended to partitions The distribution of data across brokers is what allows Kafka to scale so well as data can be written to and read from many brokers simultaneously Events with the same key are written to the same partition as the original event Kafka guarantees reads of events within a partition are always read in the order that they were written For fault tolerance and high availability, topics can be replicated…even across regions and data centers NOTE: If you’re using a cloud provider, know that this can be very costly as you pay for inbound and outbound traffic across regions and availability zones Typical replication configurations for production setups are 3 replicas Kafka APIS Admin API – used for managing and inspecting topics, brokers, and other Kafka objects Producer API – used to write events to Kafka topics Consumer API – used to read data from Kafka topics Kafka Streams API – the ability to implement stream processing applications/microservices. Some of the key functionality includes functions for transformations, stateful operations like aggregations, joins, windowing, and more In the Kafka streams world, these transf

We finally start talking about Apache Kafka! Also, Allen is getting acquainted with Aesop, Outlaw is killing clusters, and Joe was paying attention in drama class. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode235 News Atlanta Dev Con is coming up, on September 7th, 2024 (www.atldevcon.com) Intro to Apache Kafka What is it? Apache Kafka is an open-source distributed event streaming platform used by thousands of companies for high-performance data pipelines, streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications. Core capabilities High throughput – Deliver messages at network-limited throughput using a cluster of machines with latencies as low as 2ms. Scalable – Scale production clusters up to a thousand brokers, trillions of messages per day, petabytes of data, and hundreds of thousands of partitions. Elastically expand and contract storage and processing Permanent storage – Store streams of data safely in a distributed, durable, fault-tolerant cluster. High availability – Stretch clusters efficiently over availability zones or connect separate clusters across geographic regions. Ecosystem Built-in stream processing – Process streams of events with joins, aggregations, filters, transformations, and more, using event-time and exactly-once processing. Connect to almost anything – Kafka’s out-of-the-box Connect interface integrates with hundreds of event sources and event sinks including Postgres, JMS, Elasticsearch, AWS S3, and more. Client libraries – Read, write, and process streams of events in a vast array of programming languages Large ecosystem of open source tools – Large ecosystem of open source tools: Leverage a vast array of community-driven tooling. Trust and Ease of Use Mission critical – Support mission-critical use cases with guaranteed ordering, zero message loss, and efficient exactly-once processing.<

Joe Zack was on a brief holiday so Allen and Michael took over the helm for an episode. What would a new episode be without a little something regarding AI, some more love for Kotlin, and a number of excellent tips throughout (as well as at the end of) the episode. Reviews iTunes: ivan.kuchin News Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ Topics People trying to remove their answers from StackOverflow to not allow OpenAI to use their answers without permission/recognition?https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/stack-overflow-bans-users-en-masse-for-rebelling-against-openai-partnership-users-banned-for-deleting-answers-to-prevent-them-being-used-to-train-chatgpt Obfuscate data dumps with PostgreSQLhttps://github.com/GreenmaskIO/greenmask/ Kotlin Coroutineshttps://kotlinlang.org/docs/coroutines-overview.htmlhttps://kotlinlang.org/docs/coroutine-context-and-dispatchers.html#dispatchers-and-threads Reminded Outlaw of the Cloudflare Workers we mentioned a while backhttps://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/ Please leave us a review!https://www.codingblocks.net/review You can control if YouTube keeps track of your history (at least that you can see) 100 Things You Didn’t Know About Kuberneteshttps://www.devopsinside.com/100-things-you-didnt-know-about-kubernetes-part-1/ Do the IDE AI’s re

In this episode Joe introduces us to more security items you should be aware of in the world of CWE’s, Michael bends to the will of Joe and Allen in his favorite portion of the show, and Allen pontificates on the time spent setting up IDE’s and environments. Reviews – Thank You! iTunes: Vlad Bezden, Mom in VA, Make1977 Spotify: chutney3000, Xuraith Upcoming Events Atlanta Dev ConSeptember 7th, 2024https://www.atldevcon.com/ Topics Open Telemetry The backend mattershttps://opentelemetry.io/ecosystem/integrations/ Some backends are more fully featured than others Splunk Trace Analyzerhttps://docs.splunk.com/observability/en/apm/apm-spans-traces/trace-analyzer.html Google Trace Explorerhttps://cloud.google.com/trace/docs/finding-traces Azure OTel Guidehttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/opentelemetry-enable?tabs=aspnetcore AWS OTel Informationhttps://aws.amazon.com/otel/ The processor can decouple youhttps://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/configuration/#processors CNCF – Cloud Native Computing Foundation If you’re working in a cloud environment, you should know the projects herehttps://www.cncf.io/projects/ Super cool visualization t

Picture, if you will, a nondescript office space, where time seems to stand still as programmers gather around a water cooler. Here, in the twilight of the workday, they exchange eerie tales of programming glitches, security breaches, and asynchronous calls. Welcome to the Programming Zone, where reality blurs and (silent) keystrokes echo in the depths […]

In this episode, Allen, Joe and Michael finally make it back to record together! Allen revisits the basics, Michael kicks off boomer hour nicely, and JZ let’s us know that the dream of an 8-bit looking keyboard is not dead. News Topics Tips

This time we are missing the “ocks”, but we hope you enjoy this off…ice topic chat about personalizing our workspaces. Also, Joe had to put a quarter in the jar, and Outlaw needs a cookie. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode230 News Thank you for the review Szymon! Want to leave […]

We are mixing it up on you again, no Outlaw this week, but we can offer you some talk of exotic databases. Also, Joe pronounces everything correctly and Allen leaves you with a riddle. The full show notes are available on the website at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode229 News Multivalue DBMS Spatial DBMS Event Stores Resources we like […]

We have a different combination of the hosts for this episode where we continue the series on the types of database systems available and why you might choose one over another. Michael continues impressing by recalling everything we’ve ever said on our 500+ hours of podcasts, Allen enjoys learning about a database system he’d never […]

You asked, we listened! A request from one of our Slack channels was to go over the various types of databases and why you might choose one over another. Join us in another information filled episode where Joe won’t be attending the event he’s been promoting and Allen tries to keep his voice together for […]

This episode we are talking about keeping the internet interesting and making cool things by looking at PagedOut and Itch.io. Also, Allen won’t ever mark you down, Outlaw won’t ever give you up, and Joe took a note to say something about Barbie here but he can’t remember what it was. The full show notes […]

It’s that time of year…the time we (reluctantly) look back at what we said we were going to do this past year and see if we actually did it. Then, we repeat history and set some goals we’ll likely look back and wish we’d accomplished this time next year. In addition, we continue with the […]

This episode we are talking about the future of tech with the Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends 2024. Also, Allen is looking into the crystal ball, Joe is getting lo, and Outlaw is getting into curling. The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode224. News Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends 2024 No surprise, […]

It’s that time of year again when the three of us reflect on the things we’ve bought and loved, or the things we want to get…and want to love…So, come join us in this episode for our usual amount of fun while seeing if there’s anything that might make your shopping list! A small note […]

Ever looked at a Gartner report? We talk about the Technology Adoption Roadmap for Midsize Enterprises 2022, and the cloud services you’re married to in this episode. Also, Joe’s drumming up business ideas, Allen’s laying down the law and Outlaw never forgets. See the full show notes a https://www.codingblocks.net/episode222 News Technology Adoption Roadmap for Midsize […]

Join us as we get back into the world of Open Telemetry. Piggy-backing on previous conversations from the Google SRE series as well as DevOps, metrics and instrumentation is a key component of understanding what’s happening with your systems. Follow along as Michael, Allen and Joe dive into Open Telemetry’s Metric offerings. Reviews Huge thanks […]

We’ve got a smorgasbord of delights for you this week, ranging from mechanical switches to the cloud and beyond. Also, Michael’s cosplaying as Megaman, Joe learns the difference between Clicks and Clacks, and Allen takes no prisoners. See the full show notes a https://www.codingblocks.net/episode220 News The Show Resources We Like Tip of the Week

We’ve mentioned in the past that the code we write isn’t maintaining heartbeats or being used in life-critical settings, but what if your code is? NASA happens to be a company who has code that is life and mission critical and it’s very possible it won’t even be accessible once it leaves earth. In this […]

In this episode, we are talking all about GitHub Actions. What are they, and why should you consider learning more about them? Also, Allen terminates the terminators, Outlaw remembers the good ol’ days, and Joe tries his hand at sales. See the full show notes at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode218 News What are GitHub Actions? Workflows Jobs Steps Actions […]

Get a behind the scenes intro to some of the interesting conversations we have before we even get into the content. We’ll be jumping into the meat of this episode and looking at the specifics of tracing using OpenTelemetry. Before we do that though, we should probably find out what special 2-liter containers Outlaw uses […]

In this episode, we’re talking all about OpenTelemetry. Also, Allen lays down some knowledge, Joe plays director and Outlaw stumps the chumps. See the full show notes at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode216 News What is OpenTelemetry? It’s all about Observability Reliability and Metrics Distributed Tracing To truly understand what distributed tracing is, there’s a few parts we have to […]

In this episode, Allen, Michael and Joe discuss the latest update with the Reddit saga, software for designing audio and reproducing analog sounds, an open-ended interview question and tips on how to be a great leader. Reviews Huge thank you for that! News Episode If you were going to create a web service / api […]

In this episode, we’re talking about the history of “man” pages, console apps, team leadership, and Artificial Intelligence liability. Also, Allen’s downloading the internet, Outlaw has fallen in love with the sound of a morrvair, and Joe says TUI like two hundred times as if it were a real word. See all the show notes […]

Last episode, it might have been said that you can become a senior engineer in just one short year. Our amazing slack community spoke up and had some thoughts on that as well…we revisit that, and what does senior even mean?! Join us for that and much more as Allen plays more with ChatGPT, Michael […]

In this episode, we’re talking about lessons learned and the lessons we still need to learn. Also, Michael shares some anti-monetization strategies, Allen wins by default, and Joe keeps it real 59/60 days a year! The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode212. News Exceptions vs Errors in Java Question from Twitter: (thanks […]

We’re back after a brief break for a busy month of May, and we’re here to talk about some pretty cool stuff happening in the developer world. Outlaw took vacation and can remember nothing, Joe introduces us to Sherlocking, and Allen discovered what all the fuss was about with Chat GPT as a software developer. […]

In this sequence of sound, we compute Joe’s unexpected pleasure in commercial-viewing algorithms, Michael’s intricate process of slicing up the pizza, and Allen’s persistent request for more cheese data augmentation. Will you engage in this data streaming session? The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode210. Resources we like Tip of the week

In this episode we talk about several things that have been on our mind. We find that Joe has been taken over by AI’s, Michael now understands our love of Kotlin, and Allen wants to know how to escape supporting code you wrote forever. News Visited with Jamie Taylor from the .NET Core Podcast, Tabs […]

We’re doing a water cooler talk today. Also, Allen can tell you how not to leak secrets, Michael knows how to work a spreadsheet, and Joe has been replaced by an AGI. The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode208. Topics Resources we like

We’ve got a new / old opening…Allen goes off / on script? Michael denies Joe the “swing” vote, and Joe is all in on AI assistance Testing for concurrency issues is hard because it’s non-deterministic – basically you get unlucky due to the timing of things Serializability Common Implementations Actual Serial Execution Encapsulating transactions in […]

What are lost updates, and what can we do about them? Maybe we don’t do anything and accept the write skew? Also, Allen has sharp ears, Outlaw’s gort blah spotterfiles, and Joe is just thinking about breakfast. The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode206. News Preventing Lost Updates Detecting Lost Updates […]

There’s this thing called ChatGPT you may have heard of. Is it the end for all software developers? Have we reached the epitome of mankind? Also, should you write your own or find a FOSS solution? That and much more as Allen gets redemption, Joe has a beautiful monologue, and Outlaw debates a monitor that […]

Ever wonder how database backups work if new data is coming in while the backup is running? Hang with us while we talk about that, while Allen doesn’t stand a chance, Outlaw is in love, and Joe forgets his radio voice. The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode204. News Thanks for […]

It's time we learn about multi-object transactions as we continue our journey into Designing Data-Intensive Applications, while Allen didn't specifically have that thought, Joe took a marketing class, and Michael promised he wouldn't cry.

We decided to knock the dust off our copies of Designing Data-Intensive Applications to learn about transactions while Michael is full of solutions, Allen isn't deterred by Cheater McCheaterton, and Joe realizes wurds iz hard.

Michael spends the holidays changing his passwords, Joe forgot to cancel his subscriptions, and Allen's busy playing Call of Duty: Modern Healthcare as we discuss the our 2023 resolutions.

We step back and look at how things have changed since we first started the show while Outlaw is dancing on tables, Allen really knows his movie monsters, and Joe’s math is on point. The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode200. News Thanks for the review nickname222Apple<3! Want to help us […]

We talk about career management and interview tips, pushing data contracts “left”, and our favorite dev books while Outlaw is [redacted], Joe’s trying to figure out how to hire junior devs, and Allen’s trying to screw some nails in. The full show notes for this episode are available at https://www.codingblocks.net/episode199. News Thanks for the reviews […]

We take a peak into some of the challenges Twitter has faced while solving data problems at large scale, while Michael challenges the audience, Joe speaks from experience, and Allen blindsides them both.

It's that time of year where we've got money burning a hole in our pockets. That's right, it's time for the annual shopping spree. Meanwhile, Fiona Allen is being gross, Joe throws shade at Burger King, and Michael has a new character encoding method.

We gather around the watercooler to discuss the latest gossip and shenanigans have been called while Coach Allen is not wrong, Michael gets called out, and Joe gets it right the first time.

We wrap up Git from the Bottom Up by John Wiegley while Joe has a convenient excuse, Allen gets thrown under the bus, and Michael somehow made it worse.

This episode, we learn more about Git's Index and compare it to other version control systems while Joe is throwing shade, Michael learns a new command, and Allen makes it gross.

It's time to understand the full power of Git's rebase capabilities while Allen takes a call from Doc Brown, Michael is breaking stuff all day long, and Joe must be punished.