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As with every release, PHP 8.1 adds some nice new features. Keep in mind that this list will grow over the year. By Brent.

The article then goes over these new features in the language:

• Enums
• Fibers
• Performance improvements
• Array unpacking with string keys
• in initializers
• Readonly properties
• First-class callable syntax
• Pure intersection types
• New never type
• New array_is_list function
• Final class constants
• New fsync function
• Explicit octal integer literal notation

While PHP 8.1 is a minor version, there will be some changes that might technically be a breaking change, and deprecations as well. Let’s discuss them one by one. There is much more info in the article. Good read!

This article will not discuss the different types of database systems, like RDBMS and so on. We will, however, focus on two concepts: SQL Databases and NoSQL databases. By @peteradeojo.

Tha article contains information on:

• NoSQL databases
• MongoDB
• Creating/inserting data
• Retrieving multiple records
• Selecting one record - by ID and by attribute
• Updating records
• Deleting records

MongoDB is the most popular solution for developers looking to benefit from features like scalability and speed. Unlike MySQL, MongoDB returns data as a well-organized, JSON document with helper methods that help to execute more complex queries on the data.

We’ve taken a look at the common operations that can be performed by querying a SQL database and the ways they can be implemented in MongoDB using mongoose. Don’t stop there. There are many other things we could discuss such as implementing the LIKE query by passing a regex as the find condition and implementing JOIN queries with the populate method. You will also get query examples in the article. Good read!

This article explains the smart manufacturing concept through definitions commonly used in industry. Older but still relevant article by Dr. Ananth Seshan.

The common notion about smart manufacturing is that it involves the application of digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things, wireless networking, artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics, augmented reality, cloud computing, etc. While this may not be factually incorrect, smart manufacturing is not just about implementing digital technologies. The technologies are simply enablers. This article explains the smart manufacturing concept through definitions commonly used in industry.

The article covers these topics:

• Definition of smart manufacturing
• What is intelligence?
• Real-time orchestration
• Synchronization of physical and digital processes
• Integration of the entire value chain

The combination of all of the above, enabled by smart technologies such as the Internet, WiFi, bluetooth, AI, augmented reality, simulation, big data, etc., allows continuous optimization of manufacturing performance (such as maximizing productivity and quality while minimizing costs), improvement in the return on assets, and thus a better competitive advantage and increased market share. Good read!

An article explaining how to integrate AWS Cognito with React for user authentication. Cognito collects a user’s attributes, it enables simple, secure user authentication, authorization and user management for web and mobile apps. By Carlos Zuniga.

In the article you will find:

• Overview of Cognito
• Integration with React
  • Setup
  • useAuth hook
• Usage
• Secure routing
• Login page
• Using Terraform to provision Cognito

AWS Cognito is a good option when it comes to user authentication and management. It’s specially useful when you are already bought into the AWS ecosystem and it’s also cheaper than some other alternatives.

It’s not too difficult to integrate React and Cognito, however Cognito’s reference documentation for their Javascript/Typescript package lacks some in-depth detail, they also have several seemingly overlapping packages (amplify, @aws-amplify/auth and amazon-cognito-identity-js) that make it hard to pinpoint exactly which one is necessary for Cognito to work. Amazon also tends to push Amplify as a whole for the auth solution when it’s not really necessary to add all that code to your app. Excellent read!

Over the past few years, data storytelling has taken off. This is not only because data and the role it plays in our lives is increasing. It’s also because storytelling is the way we as humans have always come to understand ourselves and the world we live in. By Lydia Hooper.

Source: @venngage.com https://venngage.com/blog/data-storytelling/

The article does a great job explaining:

• What is data storytelling?
• Why is data storytelling important?
• What makes a great data story?
• Steps to creating a great data story

Data storytelling is the best way to use data to create new knowledge and new decisions or actions. It is an integrative practice that incorporates knowledge and skills from several disciplines, including communication, analysis and design. It is practiced across many fields and is used to address a variety of challenges. You will also get templates to help you with crafting your own stories. Nice one!

The digital transformation is in full swing. Digitalization is not only changing technology and processes, but also the way we work together, i.e., the organization, leadership, and culture in companies. The companies that recognize these connections and continuously develop them are successful in the changes. But the reality is also: Many of these transformation projects fail, do not have the expected successes or are still waiting, because the associated changes and resistances are seen as too high hurdles. By Klaus Peren.

In a transformation project, you will involve your managers and other key players at an early stage. Managers are usually familiar with change projects and know from other companies that digital transformation entails major changes for them. These changes are greatest for executives. Starting with the need to learn new technologies, tools, to work with other processes and responsibilities and often also to adapt to a new leadership model.

The article then explains following:

• What types of resistance are there?
• How do you recognize opportunist resistance?
• How you should deal with resistance

As you discuss your transformation initiative with your leaders, you may encounter the following negative reactions (in addition to positive and supportive ones), which author divided into three clusters - Appeasing or evading, Necessity is questioned, Threat scenarios are constructed. These feedbacks may be correct in parts. In addition, they are a mirror of the emotional state of your managers. And especially at the beginning of a change process, the resistance expressed in this way is not only conscious, but also happens unconsciously. Good read!

Thanks to their excellent performance, unikernels have always had a great deal of potential for revolutionizing the efficiency of virtualization and cloud deployments. However, after many years and several projects, unikernels, for the most part, have not seen significant, real-world deployment. By Hugo Lefeuvre, Gaulthier Gain, Daniel Dinca, Alexander Jung, Simon Kuenzer, Vlad Bădoiu, Răzvan Deaconescu , Laurent Mathy, Costin Raiciu, Pierre Olivier, Felipe Huici.

Source @usenix.org: https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/unikraft-and-coming-age-unikernels

In this article we argue that several factors contributed to this in the past, including lack of POSIX compatibility and the resulting lack of support for applications and languages, difficult or not widely adopted tooling ecosystems, lack of basic security features, and sometimes less-than-stellar performance. After many years of work on the Linux Foundation’s Unikraft project, whose explicit goal is to tackle these issues directly, we believe that the time for unikernels to finally enter the main stage is now.

Unikernels have always had great promise: high performance (sometimes even higher than Linux), lightweightness in the form of incredibly fast boot times (a few milliseconds) and severely reduced memory usage, as well as strong security benefits, to name a few metrics. Great and detailed article well worth your time!

Nearly every company now produces software or applications to enable it to do business. That can include using software as an interface to customer support, enabling e-commerce channels, and powering internal operations to serve customers and keep the business running. By Brian Rue.

If you’re not paying attention to code, that inattention can create problems down the line for your business. Here’s why – and what you can do to avoid such problems, improve your code to stay competitive and grow, and engage and retain your customers and employees. The article then reads about:

• Learn how code is different from physical products
• Use data to improve your code
• Plan with continuous improvement in mind
• Recognize that you need quality code to be competitive
• Keep in mind that your people make your code

Avoid thinking about your code and engineering teams as a black box. Developers are people who are interested in helping you improve your products and code. But without the right tools, developers become frustrated and disengaged. According to “Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering”, being stuck in problem-solving and time pressure are the two most frequent causes of unhappiness for developers. The book adds that “the third most frequent cause of unhappiness is to work with bad code and, more specifically, with bad code practices.”

That’s a real problem, considering that, as TechRepublic reported this year, 61% of human resources professionals believe that hiring developers will be their biggest challenge in 2021. Good read!

I like TypeScript, but I prefer the JSDoc syntax for writing it. That should be obvious if you’ve read any of my JavaScript articles, especially Get Started With TypeScript the Easy Way. By Austin Gil.

/**
 * @template numOrStr
 * @param {numOrStr} input
 * @returns {numOrStr extends number ? number : string}
 */
function double(input) {
  if (typeof input === 'number') {
    return input * 2
  }
  return input + input
}

Function overloads are when you define the same function more than once in order to capture different functionality.

The article makes a good job explaining:

• What is function overloading?
• Defining function overloads in JSDoc

We liked: TypeScript also offers generics which you can combine with conditional types to determine the input type and conditionally return a specific type based on what the input is. All of that can even work with JSDoc thanks to the @template keyword (which is not well documented). TypeScript is great, and JSDoc is great, but once in a while, the documentation for complex things is sparse. Good read!

As you increase the number of objects in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), you’ll need the ability to search through them and quickly find the information you need. By Jiwan Panjiker, Haider Naqvi, and Muthuvelan Swaminathan.

In this blog post, we offer you a cost-effective solution that uses a serverless architecture to search through your metadata. Using a serverless architecture helps you reduce operational costs because you only pay for what you use.

The article describes:

• Using Athena to search Amazon S3 objects
• Building a serverless file metadata search on AWS
• Reference architecture

You will get info how to set up Amazon S3 Event Notifications, Lambda, AWS Glue Catalog, and Athena. You can use this approach to maintain an index in an Apache Parquet file, store it in Amazon S3, and use Athena queries to search S3 metadata.

Authors solution requires minimal administration effort. It does not require administration and maintenance of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, DynamoDB tables, or Amazon OpenSearch Service clusters. Amazon S3 provides scalable storage, high durability, and availability at a low cost. Plus, this solution does not require in-depth knowledge of AWS services. When not in use, it will only incur cost for Amazon S3 and possibly for AWS Glue Data Catalog storage. When needed, this solution will scale out effortlessly. Good read!