All Things Distributed

NOVEMBER 12, 2014

'Automated deployments are the backbone of a strong DevOps environment. Without efficient, reliable, and repeatable software updates, engineers need to redirect their focus from developing new features to managing and debugging their deployments. Amazon first faced this challenge many years ago. When making the move to a service-oriented architecture, Amazon refactored its software into small independent services and restructured its organization into small autonomous teams.

Engineering 161

Engineering AWS Java Traffic 161

Nick Desaulniers

APRIL 18, 2014

…“‘Our speech interposes itself between apprehension and truth like a dusty pane or warped mirror. The tongue of Eden was like a flawless glass; a light of total understanding streamed through it. Thus Babel was a second Fall.’ And Isaac the Blind, an early Kabbalist, said that, to quote Gershom Scholem’s translation, ‘The speech of men is connected with divine speech and all language whether heavenly or human derives from one source: the Divine Name.’ T

C++ 98

C++ Programming Code Virtualization 98

O'Reilly Software

APRIL 17, 2014

…"‘Our speech interposes itself between apprehension and truth like a dusty pane or warped mirror. The tongue of Eden was like a flawless glass; a light of total understanding streamed through it. Thus Babel was a second Fall.’ And Isaac the Blind, an early Kabbalist, said that, to quote Gershom Scholem’s translation, ‘The speech of men is connected with divine speech and all language whether heavenly or human derives from one source: the Divine Name.

86

86

The Polyglot Developer

DECEMBER 22, 2014

Many times when developing Android applications, you’re doing it to pair with a web server. You’re planning on creating this awesome web service / Android experience, but you aren’t quite ready to publish the web service to the internet. The following will show you how to connect the Genymotion Android emulator to a locally hosted web application. The post Accessing A Localhost Server From Genymotion appeared first on The Polyglot Developer.

Servers 72

Servers Internet Internet Development 72

Tim Kadlec

OCTOBER 29, 2014

Those smart and clever folks at The Filament Group formally announced yet another useful tool yesterday: a “lightweight, simple DOM utility” they call Shoestring. I’ve been using Shoestring for awhile now, and I’m a huge fan. In fact it has become my go-to solution when I need such a tool. It’s small, powerful, and very, very smart. It’s very rare that I write about a specific tool.

Virtualization 75

Virtualization Code Testing Processing 75

The Agile Manager

JANUARY 31, 2014

The growth in demand for software has consistently outpaced the growth in the supply of software developers. This has been the case for well over half a century. It's worth looking at why. Each major expansion in software development - automation (60s), productivity (80s), internet (90s), mobile (00s) - has been additive to the total stock of software in the world.

Software 73

Software Software Development Government 73

Alex Russell

DECEMBER 11, 2014

IF YOU DO NOT RUN A SITE THAT HOSTS UNTRUSTED/USER-PROVIDED FILES OVER SSL/TLS, YOU CAN STOP READING NOW. This post describes the potential amplification of existing risks that Service Workers bring for multi-user origins where the origin may not fully trust the content or, in which, users should not be able to modify each other’s content. Sites hosting multiple-user content in separate directories, e.g.

Storage 46

Storage Servers Availability Development 46

Wayfair Tech

OCTOBER 2, 2014

Here's our Frontline team at work, in our spiffy network operations center: [caption id="attachment_2043" align="alignleft" width="584"] Wayfair network operations center[/caption] Selling home goods on the internet isn't rocket science, but if you actually wanted to send a couch to the moon, you'd want to plan for and monitor. Read more.

Internet 40

Internet Internet Network Monitoring 40

John McCalpin

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

The High Performance LINPACK (HPL) benchmark is well known for delivering a high fraction of peak floating-point performance. The (historically) excellent scaling of performance as the number of processors is increased and as the frequency is increased suggests that memory bandwidth has not been a performance limiter. But this does not mean that memory bandwidth will *never* be a performance limiter.

Benchmarking 40

Benchmarking Cache Performance Systems 40

ScaleOut Software

AUGUST 19, 2014

Cloud-based applications enjoy the unique elasticity that cloud infrastructures provide. As more computing resources are needed to handle a growing workload, virtual servers (also called cloud “ instances ”) can be added to take up the slack. For example, consider a web server farm handling requests for web users or mobile apps. Being able to add computing resources on demand keeps work queues small and ensures that web users always see fast response times.

Cloud 40

Cloud Azure Virtualization Scalability 40

All Things Distributed

OCTOBER 23, 2014

'Today, Amazon Web Services is expanding its worldwide coverage with the launch of a new AWS region in Frankfurt, Germany. This is our 11th infrastructure region and was built to support the strong demand we are seeing in Europe and to give our customers the option to run infrastructure located in Germany. The new Frankfurt region provides low millisecond latencies to major cities in continental Europe and is also run with carbon neutral power.

AWS 151

AWS Cloud Media Latency 151

Nick Desaulniers

MARCH 1, 2014

Your application just broke, oh no! It couldn’t have been your code, right? I’ve always had trouble spotting mistakes in my own work such as spelling, grammar, mathematical, or even in programming. With spelling or grammar, office applications quickly pick up on my mistakes and underline them for me, but most of my mistakes come from my own hubris.

Testing 51

Testing Programming Open Source Code 51

O'Reilly Software

FEBRUARY 28, 2014

Your application just broke, oh no! It couldn’t have been your code, right? I’ve always had trouble spotting mistakes in my own work such as spelling, grammar, mathematical, or even in programming. With spelling or grammar, office applications quickly pick up on my mistakes and underline them for me, but most of my mistakes come from my own hubris.

Testing 52

Testing Programming Code 52

The Polyglot Developer

JULY 16, 2014

I recently found myself needing to launch external URLs with Ionic Framework. I needed to let my users contact me via my personal website or visit my Twitter page. This is not a task that ends well when trying to execute from an Ionic view. Luckily, with a little help from the Apache Cordova plugin InAppBrowser , I was able to accomplish the task with very little effort.

Website 72

Website Code Development 72

Tim Kadlec

JULY 7, 2014

Myths are powerful things. They certainly have the ability to destroy—we’ve seen that many times. But put the right spin on a myth and you can use it to build up; to create something new and better. Responsive design just can’t seem to shake the rumor that it’s bad for performance. It’s very frequently spouted as a downside of the technique—a reason why you may not want to pursue responsive design for a project.

Performance 75

Performance Design Metrics Analytics 75

The Agile Manager

MAY 30, 2014

Technical debt is a useful metaphor for explaining why some code is faster to complete but more expensive to maintain. It is also helpful in explaining design decisions made for sake of expediency, or because of an outright lack of knowledge. Tech debt can be a real burden on development, particularly as it takes away time that would otherwise be directed toward productive investment in new feature development.

Software 49

Software Software Government Technology 49

Alex Russell

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014

Jeremy Keith is wringing his hands about Web Components. I likewise can’t attend the second Extensible Web Summit and so have a bit of time to respond here. Full disclosure: I helped design Web Components and, with Dimitri Glazkov and Alex Komoroske , helped lead the team at Google that brought them from concept to reality. I am, as they say, invested.

Google 41

Google Cache Tuning Design 41

Speed Curve

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

The way we visualize performance data can have an impact on how we interpret and communicate performance issues within our teams. In this talk from Velocity New York I explored the importance of data visualization and presented some of my own explorations into re-imagining the classic waterfall chart which is the mainstay of front-end performance analysis.

Metrics 40

Metrics Performance Development 40

All Things Distributed

OCTOBER 8, 2014

'Today, I’m thrilled to announce several major features that significantly enhance the development experience on DynamoDB. We are introducing native support for document model like JSON into DynamoDB, the ability to add / remove global secondary indexes, adding more flexible scaling options, and increasing the item size limit to 400KB. These improvements have been sought by many applications developers, and we are happy to be bringing them to you.

Availability 136

Availability Performance Scalability AWS 136

All Things Distributed

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

'When AWS launched, it changed how developers thought about IT services: What used to take weeks or months of purchasing and provisioning turned into minutes with Amazon EC2. Capital-intensive storage solutions became as simple as PUTting and GETting objects in Amazon S3. At AWS we innovate by listening to and learning from our customers, and one of the things we hear from them is that they want it to be even simpler to run code in the cloud and to connect services together easily.

Lambda 126

Lambda AWS Cloud Scalability 126

All Things Distributed

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

'In the 2013 Amazon Shareholder letter , Jeff Bezos spent time explaining the decision to pursue a customer-centric way in our business. As regular readers of this letter will know, our energy at Amazon comes from the desire to impress customers rather than the zeal to best competitors. We don’t take a view on which of these approaches is more likely to maximize business success.

AWS 117

AWS Innovation Energy Best Practices 117

All Things Distributed

APRIL 23, 2014

'We launched Elastic Beanstalk in 2011 with support for Java web applications and Tomcat 6 in one region, and we''ve seen the service grow to 6 container types (Java/Tomcat, PHP, Ruby, Python,NET, and Node.js) supported in 8 AWS regions around the world. The Elastic Beanstalk team spends a lot of time talking to AWS Developers, and in the last few months they''ve noticed a common theme in those conversations: developers tell us they''re interested in Docker , and ask if we are thinking about mak

Cloud 116

Cloud Java AWS Database 116

All Things Distributed

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

'Today, I am excited to announce the Preview of the Amazon EC2 Container Service , a highly scalable, high performance container management service. We created EC2 Container Service to help customers run and manage Dockerized distributed applications. Benefits of Containers. Customers have been using Linux containers for quite some time on AWS and have increasingly adopted microservice architectures.

Cloud 114

Cloud AWS Infrastructure Scalability 114

All Things Distributed

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014

'It’s an exciting time in San Francisco as the return of the. AWS Loft. is fast approaching. We’ve been working round-the-clock, making updates to ensure the experience is more fulfilling and educational than in June. Today we’re excited to announce that…. On Wednesday, October 1 st , we’ll be returning to 925 Market Street! The AWS Loft is all about helping you scale and grow your business by offering free AWS technical resources.

AWS 104

AWS Games Education Innovation 104

All Things Distributed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

'I’m excited to be heading to Las Vegas in less than two weeks for our annual re:Invent conference. One of the highlights for me is being able to host an extensive lineup of startup-focused events which take place at re:Invent on Thursday, November 13. Here’s a quick peak at the startup experience this year: Third Annual Startup Launches. I’m excited to host this event where five AWS-powered startups will make a significant, never-before-shared launch announcement on stage.

AWS 100

AWS Infrastructure Analytics Innovation 100

All Things Distributed

MAY 14, 2014

'I''m excited to announce a new blog dedicated to AWS startups. We''re launching it on Medium , itself a startup on AWS. I kicked off the blog with a Q&A with the Medium CTO Don Neufeld. I really enjoyed Don''s answers to my questions and there are some real gems in here for startup CTOs. Check it out. We''ll be keeping this blog fresh with other startup spotlights and good technical content so follow the collection and keep up.

AWS 83

AWS 83

All Things Distributed

MAY 14, 2014

I’m excited to announce a new blog dedicated to AWS startups. We’re launching it on Medium, itself a startup on AWS. I kicked off the blog with a Q&A with the Medium CTO Don Neufeld. I really enjoyed Don’s answers to my questions and there are some real gems in here for startup CTOs.

AWS 78

AWS 78

Tim Kadlec

MARCH 17, 2014

This morning, Mark Boulton wondered aloud on Twitter about why responsive design “looks” like responsive design: I wonder if #RWD looks the way it does because so many projects aren’t being run by designers, but by front-end dev teams. This certainly isn’t the first time that someone has suggested that responsive sites have a “look” to them. In fact, it seems that particular topic has been quite popular over the last few years.

Design 75

Design Technology Technology Processing 75

Tim Kadlec

JANUARY 6, 2014

Jason Grigsby just wrote an excellent post talking about how he’s wrestled with trying to define “responsiveness”. When a client comes to us to help them make their existing site or app responsive, we know that we’re going to be using fluid grids, flexible images and media queries. But we also know we’re going to be using much more than just those three techniques.

Media 75

Media Design Efficiency Performance 75

The Polyglot Developer

AUGUST 16, 2014

Anyone who has worked with a RESTful API using JavaScript knows that testing can be a complete pain if the API owner hasn’t enabled CORS on their server. So what is CORS? According to Wikipedia , it is the following: Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that allows many resources (e.g., fonts, JavaScript, etc.) on a web page to be requested from another domain outside the domain the resource originated from.

Testing 64

Testing AWS Servers Development 64

Tim Kadlec

MAY 21, 2014

It seems like the idea of performance budgeting has been gaining quite a bit of traction over the past year. This is awesome! The best way to improve web performance is to prioritize it from the get-go, and that’s exactly what a performance budget helps you do. But having the budget set in a document somewhere doesn’t accomplish much. It needs to be enforced to really matter.

Performance 69

Performance Metrics Google Speed 69

Tim Kadlec

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Yesterday Guy Podjarny published his analysis of the use of responsive design among the top 10,000 websites. He found that adoption jumped from 10.8% to 18.7% over the last year. Another recent survey showed that a hefty 90% of publishers are looking at implementing responsive design. However you want to slice it, responsive design is an increasingly popular technique.

Design 58

Design Entertainment Website Testing 58

The Polyglot Developer

DECEMBER 19, 2014

I’ve recently been exploring other options when it comes to web frameworks. I come from a PHP ZendFramework background, but since having upgrading to ZendFramework 2, I’ve not been impressed. Since then I’ve been exploring more of Node.js. However, like PHP, web programming often works best with a framework. This is why I’ve been exploring Node.js with Express as the framework.

Programming 52

Programming Development 52

The Polyglot Developer

DECEMBER 15, 2014

Because of popular request, I decided to make my entire WordPress blog secured behind an HTTPS connection. In addition to requests, I also read that search engines such as Google reward site owners that have complete sites behind HTTPS. In a previous post I made, I explained how to generate and install an SSL certificate to an Apache web server, but things are a little different in terms of WordPress.

Google 52

Google Servers Engineering Development 52

The Polyglot Developer

DECEMBER 11, 2014

Debugging your source code is a critical part of any application development process and Android is no exception. A lot of people post comments or email me asking me to help them with their application that isn’t working. The first thing I try to ask for are the log files. I do this because 90% of the time, the log files have an error message that tells us exactly what line the error is on.

Code 52

Code Processing Development 52

The Polyglot Developer

DECEMBER 6, 2014

When coding, it is good practice to reduce duplicating your code as much as possible. When you build a website, multiple pages may be grouped with specific layouts that are used any number of times. You don’t want to duplicate your layout code across these pages. A common thing to do in web design is to use templating. This exists similarly across many web languages, but in this example I’m going to demonstrate how to do this with AngularJS and the UI-Router extension.

Website 52

Website Code Design Development 52

The Polyglot Developer

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

When you make an app or service, you may find your self wanting to strengthen the user experience by connecting with friends in some fashion. Applications like Facebook and Twitter allow you to search your contact book for friends that are already using their service. If your friend isn’t using the service, you have the option to invite them. Using native Android and iOS code could make this process very painful for the developer as it is lengthy and difficult.

Code 52

Code Processing Development 52