Learn By Doing Newsletter

Week 23 has arrived and with it are some choice articles spanning our traditional cloud and code topics to a very interesting development in the SEO world.

This week we explore the questions most folks have about serverless, how do I move my monolith to serverless? We also have a very interesting take on using Kubernetes for personal projects in Google Cloud. If web accessibility is your jam, we have a great article from Lindsey this week that explores the impact of design and color. Ali Spittel also returns this week with an interesting piece on how code can be leveraged to create generative art.

I am working on a new blog post of my own as well that is going to explore how I created parler.io entirely serverless. If you haven't tried out the Alpha release of the platform, click the link and give it a try.

☁️ Cloud

How to Migrate Existing Monoliths to ServerlessThe push to serverless is in full force. However, a lot of the content coming out about serverless is talking about the benefits it provides or about how you can get started with it. This post dives into how we can migrate existing monoliths into serverless and the steps necessary to do so.

Amazon EKS Simplifies Cluster SetupThis was a pain when EKS first launched, having to manually add/update a kubeconfig file was less than ideal. However, the team over at AWS clearly heard the complaints and introduces a new CLI call to streamline this operation.

Kubernetes: The Surprisingly Affordable Platform for Personal ProjectsKubernetes has gotten a lot of heat in the past about how expensive it can be to run for side projects. It has often been deemed a platform that is only suitable for large deployment applications. However, this post from Caleb Doxsey aims to refute that claim and demonstrates how you can provision a K8s cluster in GCP for minimal cost each month.

🔨 Tools

postgraphile - Highly performant GraphQL API for PostgresSQLThis is a very cool tool that can be used to add a GraphQL API to any of your PostgresSQL databases. You can either run it in a Docker container or mount it as middleware in your API framework like Express.

UnQLite - An in-process self-contained transactional NoSQL database engineThis is like your NoSQL database without the engine. UnQLite is an embedded NoSQL database that doesn't have a separate server process and writes directly to ordinary disk files.

molten - Modern API framework for PythonThis is another alternative to Flask and Django that pieces of the Python community are supporting. It looks like a nice blend between the lightweight Flask and the heavyweight Django. It is meant to be minimal, extensible, and fast for HTTP APIs.

Code && Languages

Design Tips - Color and AccessibilityWeb accessibility is critical to making content accessible to everyone. This new blog from Lindsey is delivering some high quality content about how we as developers can make our content more accessible. This post dives into design tips and the importance of color for a11y.

Do You Really Know CORS?We've all seen the CORS error in our Dev Tools console at least once. If you have ever built an API that needed to be accessed from a different domain then you have likely come across CORS as well. But how much do you actually know about cross origin resource sharing?

Intro to Generative ArtAli Spittel is back it with another great post on creating art via code. This is an introduction into the concept of generative art which introduces autonomous concepts into your more traditional code art.

😎 Cool find of the week

How One Website Exploited Amazon S3 to Outrank Everyone on GoogleIt's not a huge secret that power house domains like Google and Amazon impact SEO results. However, it looks like someone devised a way to manipulate search results by offering coupon codes served over S3 urls. This is an interesting development that will surely have repercussions over at Google.