Learn By Doing Newsletter

I have some awesome content for you this week. There is a lot of tips that center around optimization and performance, two topics that I really enjoy reading about.

The folks at Berkeley released their view on Serverless Computing which reveals a lot of summaries of use cases, pitfalls, and what the future holds. It's a very good read, so check it out if you get a chance. There is a great read on the philosophy of testing and why we often put it on the back burner. The folks at Apollo put out their version of the Twelve Factor App, but for GraphQL. It centers around 10 best practices separated into three different categories, they may be a bit controversial but I think any place to start is better than starting from scratch. We also have some other awesome tools like instant.page and DeskGap to speed up your web apps and desktop apps.

Check out all of those articles and many more in this 42nd edition of the Learn By Doing newsletter. See you all next week.

☁️ Cloud

Cloud Programming Simplified: A Berkeley View on Serverless ComputingThis is a fantastic read into serverless from the folks at Berkeley. They have a lot of detail about some of the limitations of serverless in its current form but also some great insights into what it could become in the future. If you read one article this week I would suggest this one.

Lambda optimization tip — enable HTTP keep-aliveThe serverless blogging legend, Yan Chui, makes his return. This week with a handy optimization tip for those AWS Lambda functions, use HTTP keep-alive. Cut your latency by more than half by using this simple optimization tip.

When AWS Autoscale Doesn'tThis is an interesting read from the folks at Segment who have been making use of target tracking autoscaling in some of their workloads. There is some gotchas when you are using that type of scaling and Segment does a great job of explaining the most common things you can run into. The battle of underscaling and overscaling is very real in this scenario.

🔨 Tools

instange.page - Make your page load speed nearly instantThis is a very cool project I came across while looking to speed up a project of mine. It's a small JavaScript file that you include in your HTML and it will then prefetch any links that are hovered over. The snappiness this adds to your site is quite noticeable.

DeskGap - Build cross-platform desktop apps with web technologies You've heard of Electron and maybe your a fan or maybe your not. Either way there is another platform available to you that aims to be more lightweight. DeskGap bundles a Node.js runtime and leaves the HTML rendering to the operating system.

Principled GraphQLThe folks at Apollo put out this guide that tries to mimic the Twelve Factor App, but for GraphQL. It is broken down into three different categories and encompasses 10 best practices for your GraphQL workloads.

Code && Languages

How to Breakthrough the Old Monolith Using the Strangler PatternMy most recent blog post came out a few weeks ago but I kept forgetting to include it in the newsletter. In this post I introduce the Strangler Pattern and how it can be used to incrementally break down your old monolithic application and bring into the new world. This is a pattern I love to use as it can be done over time with care instead of all at once.

Lessons learned scaling PostgreSQL database to 1.2bn records/monthApplaudience has billions of records in their Postgres database. This is a good read on how that database started, evolved, and shifted across different cloud providers. It also dives into the nitty gritty bottlenecks and issues you can run into when scaling a workload of that size.

Superior Testing: Stop StoppingWhen asked about testing most developers are going to say I love having tests. However, a lot of developers won't take the time to write them. It's an interesting paradigm that you have no doubt encountered and it certainly has validity. But what I like about this post is that it puts that paradigm aside and dives into why tests can make for healthier teams.

😎 Cool find of the week

Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar CompanySahil Lavingia, creator of Gumroad, deep dives into his journey building a company from an idea, failing, and then continuing on instead of quitting. This is a deep read but definitely worth it for those that are interested in building their own entrepreneur projects.

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