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Why Apache Flink is not going anywhere

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Tags apache data-science big-data devops software-architecture

Flink’s complexity stems from supporting a variety of use cases and having a rich set of features, but can be simplified with proper tooling. By Yaroslav Tkachenk.

The article covers these topics:

  • Flink’s complexity comes primarily from supporting many different use cases (analytics, integration, ETL) and having a large feature set that enables these capabilities.
  • The complexity is manageable with proper tools like the Flink Kubernetes Operator which simplifies deployment and management.
  • Focusing on specific workflows can minimize Flink’s complexity by not using all its features at once.
  • While Flink requires more effort upfront to learn and deploy compared to proprietary solutions, its richness of capabilities far surpasses any one-size fits all tool.
  • The claims that Flink is “complex” are overblown considering other tools also have complexity, especially when supporting a wide range of use cases.

Flink is not going anywhere due to its rich feature set and support for a wide range of data streaming use cases, but requires proper tools like the Kubernetes Operator and focused workflows to minimize complexity compared to proprietary solutions. While the claims that Flink is "complex" are overblown considering other tools also have their own complexities, its richness far surpasses any one-size fits all tool for data processing. Nice one!

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Post-deployment tests: Your safety net after the code shipswhy apache flink is not going anywhere

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Tags devops cicd programming software

Automating post-deployment testing with GitHub Actions and Playwright provides rapid feedback, automatic rollbacks, and increased production confidence. By Türkçe Yazılar.

Tou will read about a robust post-deployment testing strategy using GitHub Actions and Playwright to ensure system health in production. It automates tests against the live environment after deployment, catching environment-specific issues, third-party service failures, performance problems, and configuration drift. The setup includes immediate Slack notifications for success or failure, and automatic rollback capabilities with Vercel integration.

The main points presented are:

  • Why post-deployment tests matter
  • Setting up GitHub actions
  • What about the tests, what and how?
  • The real value: Fast feedback and automatic recovery

This article provides a highly practical and valuable approach to post-deployment testing. The combination of GitHub Actions, Playwright, and Vercel’s API offers a compelling solution for automating critical checks and ensuring production stability. It represents incremental progress on existing CI/CD practices but significantly enhances confidence by incorporating real-world test execution. Its simplicity and effectiveness make it highly applicable across various development teams. Good read!

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AWS Lambda enhances event processing with provisioned mode for SQS event-source mapping

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Tags aws serverless queues messaging app-development

Provisioned mode for SQS ESM enables dedicated resources (event pollers) that scale up to 1000 per minute to handle traffic spi kes and low latency processing, maintaining up to 20K concurrency. This improves performance and responsiveness of event-driven apps, making it a viable option for high throughput scenarios. By Micah Walter.

The article points out these improvements with new integration:

  • 3x faster scaling (1K per minute)
  • Up to 20K concurrency (16x higher capacity)
  • Configurable minimum/maximum pollers
  • Low latency processing during traffic spikes

Provisioned mode represents a significant advancement in the capabilities of SQS ESM for Lambda functions. The dedicated event pollers provide 3x faster scaling and up to 16x higher capacity, enabling developers to build highly scalable, responsive event-driven applications with precise control over resource usage. The configurable minimum/maximum pollers allow optimization of costs during low traffic periods while maintaining consistent performance. With these improvements, provisioned mode opens new possibilities for high throughput Lambda workloads that require predictable, sub-second processing times even during traffic spikes. Good read!

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Laravel optimization: The complete performance guide for faster application

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Tags performance php web-development app-development

This article provides a comprehensive guide to optimizing Laravel applications for speed and performance. It covers caching strategies, database query optimization, server-level configurations, and hosting considerations. By implementing these techniques, developers can reduce load times, enhance scalability, and improve user experience. By Carrie Smaha.

The main points in this article:

  • Implement eager loading to avoid N+1 query problems.
  • Optimize database queries with select statements, limiting results, and using raw SQL where appropriate.
  • Use caching strategies like route, config, view, and session caching effectively.
  • Leverage InMotion Hosting’s Redis for fast data storage and sessions.
  • Employ server-level optimizations such as OPcache and PHP-FPM on VPS and dedicated plans.
  • Utilize tools like Debugbar and Telescope for monitoring and diagnosing performance issues.

This guide underscores that while Laravel provides powerful tools for application development, achieving optimal performance requires a holistic approach encompassing both code optimization and infrastructure tuning. By implementing the outlined strategies and leveraging InMotion Hosting’s capabilities, developers can ensure their applications are not only fast but also scalable and resilient to future growth. You will also get further

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How I solved a distributed queue problem after 15 years

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Tags messaging queues software-architecture distributed web-development app-development

Reddit’s early use of RabbitMQ highlighted the critical need for robust, durable task queues to handle high-volume, asynchronous operations – a lesson that continues to resonate in modern distributed systems. By DBOS.

This article details Reddit’s experience with a distributed queue architecture using RabbitMQ, exposing vulnerabilities related to data loss and workflow interruptions due to system failures. The core problem was the lack of durability within the queue – meaning tasks were lost if workers crashed or queues went down. The solution involved adopting “durable queues” which checkpoint workflows to a persistent store (like Postgres), enabling recovery from failures and improved observability, ultimately leading to more reliable task execution.

Some key points and takeaways:

  • Durable Queues: Employ persistent storage (e.g., Postgres) as both the message broker and backend for task queues.
  • Workflow Checkpointing: Enable recovery from failures by storing and resuming tasks from their last completed state.
  • Improved Observability: Provide detailed logs and metrics for monitoring workflow status in real-time.
  • Tradeoffs: Durable queues offer higher reliability but may have lower throughput compared to traditional key-value stores like Redis.

This article represents a significant evolution in distributed task queueing, moving beyond simple scalability to prioritize resilience and data integrity. While the specific implementation details may vary, the core principles of durable queues – checkpointing, persistence, and observability – are increasingly vital for building robust and reliable systems in today’s complex environments. This isn’t just incremental progress; it addresses a fundamental weakness in earlier architectures, offering a more dependable approach to managing asynchronous workflows. Nice one!

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A gentle introduction to event driven architecture in Python, Flask and Kafka

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Tags cloud messaging queues software-architecture python

A Gentle Introduction to Event Driven Architecture in Python, Flask and Kafka. In today’s fast-paced and scalable application development landscape, event-driven architecture (EDA) has emerged as a powerful pattern for building systems that are decoupled, reactive, and highly extensible. By Sefik Ilkin Serengil.

Event-driven architecture is a pattern for building systems that are flexible, resilient, and highly extensible. By using events to communicate between services, EDA promotes scalability, observability, and maintainability. This article demonstrates how to implement an event-driven system in Python and Flask using Kafka as a message broker.

The article dives into:

  • Key concepts in Event Driven Architecture
    • Event
    • Producer
    • Consumer
    • Broker
  • More reasonable in Python
  • Common tools and technologies
  • Real-life example scenario
  • Traditional approach vs. event-driven approach

The article concludes that event-driven architecture represents a shift towards flexible, scalable, and resilient system designs. By leveraging tools like Kafka, developers can decouple services, enable parallel processing, and gain better visibility into data flow, ultimately leading to improved maintainability and fault tolerance. The source code is available on GitHub, with instructions provided in the Readme file for running the service locally. Nice one!

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Streaming responses via AWS Lambda

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Tags serverless streaming devops messaging app-development

In this blog, we will look at how Lambda function’s Response Streaming would be helpful and identify when it would be ideal to use Response Streaming for your workloads. By Jones Zachariah Noel N.

AWS Lambda launched support for response streaming where this new pattern of API invocation allows the Lambda function to progressively send the response in chunks of data back to the client. Improved time to first byte (TTFB) that improves the performance where the latency of the API requests is reduced and response is received as chunks of data as and when they are available.

This blog post will help you to understand:

  • Lambda Response Streaming
  • What does this pattern bring in?
    • Gotchas of this pattern
  • Building AWS Lambda with Response Streaming
  • Node’s write()
  • Lambda’s pipeline()
    • IaC to publish Lambda Function URL
  • Response Streaming is the best fit in

Lambda functions’ Response Streaming is ideal for web applications and monitoring systems where near real-time data is crucial. However, considering the limitations, you need to use Lambda Function URL with NodeJS runtime and be aware of constraints on cost and network bandwidth. Nice one!

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How to write blog posts that developers read

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Tags programming miscellaneous teams career

Effective blogging for technical audiences: lessons from developer-centric content. By Michael Lynch.

Technical audiences value efficiency. Start with the article’s purpose and relevance to the reader. Example: A Go testing guide immediately clarifies its audience (Go devs) and benefit (30-second technique). Avoid meandering; answer “Who is this for?” and “Why should I read this?” within the first few sentences.

The article highlights these key learnings:

  • Prioritize Clarity: Cut fluff, state the value upfront, and use relatable terminology.
  • Expand Audience Scope: Simplify jargon to appeal to broader technical groups.
  • Map Readability Paths: Ensure articles are discoverable via search, communities, or social shares.
  • Visuals Drive Engagement: Screenshots, graphs, or diagrams improve retention and skimmability.
  • Optimize for Skimmers: Use bold headings and visual cues to guide readers through content.

For CTOs/CIOs, these principles translate to creating content that educates, influences, or markets tech solutions. A well-crafted blog post on cloud migration can position a CIO as a thought leader while guiding engineering teams. Similarly, developer-centric documentation improves onboarding and reduces support costs. The key is aligning content strategy with business goals: whether attracting contributors for an open-source project or training internal teams on AI Ethics frameworks. Good read!

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Practical use cases writing, refactoring, and testing code with GitHub Copilot

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Tags programming app-development code-refactoring teams career web-development

In today’s fast-paced software development environment, efficiency and code quality are paramount. Developers are constantly seeking tools that can accelerate coding tasks without compromising quality. One tool that has rapidly gained popularity among programmers is GitHub Copilot. By John Edward.

The article walks reader though explaining how Copilot can be used to:

  • Productivity Boost: Automates boilerplate code, reducing development time and freeing developers for complex problem-solving.
  • Quality Enhancement: Suggests best practices, modern patterns, and comprehensive tests, minimizing errors and technical debt.
  • Versatility: Supports diverse domains (web, data science, games, DevOps) and languages, adapting to developer style.
  • Best Practices: Maximize via clear comments, critical reviews, and integration with code reviews—not a full replacement.
  • ROI for Teams: Ideal for juniors (learning) and seniors (scale), enabling faster delivery without quality trade-offs.

GitHub Copilot transforms workflows, boosting efficiency 20-50% (implied via examples) while upholding quality—critical for competitive dev cycles. For CTOs/CIOs: Pilot in high-repetition teams, measure via DORA metrics, train on prompt engineering. Implications: Reduced TCO, faster MTTR, scalable talent. Adopt strategically to future-proof engineering. Nice one!

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Is a CIAM Certification Beneficial?

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Tags programming app-development infosec teams career

This article covers the benefits of obtaining a CIAM certification, what it entails, and who it’s most useful for. We’ll walk through the core competencies, career advancement opportunities, and how these certs stack up against other security and development credentials, it also help you decide if it’s the right move for your career in authentication and software development. By Victor Singh.

This blog post outlines:

  • Understanding CIAM and its growing importance
  • CIAM Certifications: An overview
  • Benefits of obtaining a CIAM certification
  • Weighing the costs and alternatives
  • Who should consider a CIAM certification?

Wrapping up, it’s not a simple yes or no, is it? Deciding if a CIAM certification—well, a certification related to CIAM—is right for you really depends on a bunch of factors. Consider if you genuinely need it. Are you looking to climb the ladder, or just beef up your knowledge? Certs are great for showing employers you’re serious, boosting your resume, and potentially landing you more interviews.

Think about the costs. Exam fees, study materials, and your time all adds up. Is that money better spent on, say, a killer online course or a real-world project? It is a valid point.

Don’t forget continuous learning. The tech landscape is always shifting. A cert is cool, but staying updated on the latest trends and getting hands-on experience is even cooler, honestly. Good read!

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