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Alagesan Palani tutorial explaining how to make your AWS instance safer by automatically generating LetsEncrypt certificates. Conveniently.

LetsEncrypt is a free certificate provider and myriads of tools and technologies available to automate its certificate generation.

In his solution, he uses HA proxy. You learn how to create Ansible inventory for a proxy server. All the tasks described assumed to have appropriate aws_access_key, aws_secret_key and region setup properly. For proving that you own domain you will be using a dns-01-based challenge, as this is pretty straightforward with AWS Route53, and the dehydrated client can automate that.

He then describes and provides playbook example code for:

• Installing LetsEncrypt/Dehydrated client
• Configuration of the client
• How to generate certificates and
• How to apply certs to HAProxy

Straight to the point tutorial. Nice.

Lars Schmidt article on developing soft skills as main driver for propelling your career. It used to be that the only way to climb a career ladder was to pick up more skills. Today, many of those ladders have fallen and shattered.

In order to move up, over, side to side, and double back when you need to, all while making your way upward, the trait you need most is adaptability, not this or that tech skill. He also advice to focus on:

• Your network is a job skill
• Hit up alumni - tap your university resources and LinkedIn
• Rethink Twitter
• Map it all out - find a person for every passion

And never stop giving. More than any technical skill, one of the best ways to advance your career from the very beginning is to start thinking of networking as part of your day job–even before you land one. Worth a read!

Queirozf.com published this straight to the point tutorial describing how to use Amazon Web Services CodePipeline to deploy and build your app automatically when it is stored on Github as a Docker-based Beanstalk application.

Roughly speaking, CI/CD amount to having an automatic pipeline that compiles, builds, tests and optionally deploys your project every time a new version is finished. This goes hand in hand with philosophies such as agile development and microservices architectures.

Tutorial then describes:

• AWS CodePipeline consisting of 3 parts
• Config files for build definition
• A file specifying where to fetch the Docker image file, which you will use on ElasticBeanstalk
• How to setup CodePipeline pipeline
• How to create a repository for your Docker images on AWS ECR
• How to configure Buildspec.yml and Dockerrun.aws.json

Article also lists other resources to help you with the task in your hands.

Nathan Peck short article and tutorial on topic of high performing nginx reverse proxy in container. The post explains the benefits of a reverse proxy, and explains how to use nginx and Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS) to easily implement and deploy a reverse proxy for your containerized application.

Sidecar containers are a common software pattern that has been embraced by engineering organizations. A sidecar container is simply a way to move part of the core responsibility of a service out into a containerized module that is deployed alongside a core application container.

Author then describes how to use:

• Reverse proxy for security
• Reverse proxy for performance

Running a sidecar container such as nginx can bring significant benefits by making it easier to provide protection for application containers. Example code for nginx config and ecs config are provided. Good reading.

Sage Gerard wrote this interesting article about using git flow with creative writing. Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method makes you start from a crude, yet complete one sentence story and iterate until you are left with a good story.

Snowflow branches behave analogously to their git-flow counterparts, with some added expectations.

• The master branch holds a project that com­piles to PDF and tells a complete story
• An elaborate (develop) branch adds detail to the story
• A concept (feature) branch introduces at least one unique, self-contained concept
• A review (release) branch holds a complete story for review. If the story is of sufficient editorial quality it may merge to master.
• A reconcile (hotfix) branch fixes pressing logical errors such as plot holes.
• A seed (support) branch addresses circumstantial concerns such as differences in story arcs or fictional universes.

Whole article is detailed and interesting read.

Although it seems like documentation should be treated like other features worked on by a Scrum team, frequently it is not. When tech writers try to integrate into engineering Scrum teams, they usually run into a host of challenges. Excellent two part article from Tom Johnson.

In series of articles author reflects on the right integration model for tech writers in software shops that follow Scrum, especially in large companies. Should tech writers try to integrate into Scrum teams just like the other members? He then goes and explore basic mechanics of following a Scrum model (attend daily standups, attend sprint planning, attend retrospectives, etc)

He also points out how tech docs and agile remains one of the hottest discussions in tech writing. Then he describes his experience in detail including:

• floating across multiple projects
• variation across project teams makes for inconsistency
• how scope doesn’t apply to doc tasks
• no co-location means you miss out on undocumented details
• Scrum seems to encourage product-centered documentation
• working in Scrum versus working with Scrum

Excellent article, highly recommended.

Sascha Grunert from quapona take on lief in a containerized world. Applications are getting larger and larger but still need to be as modular as possible. Modularity will boost companies by allowing smaller development teams and giving the possibility to reuse application parts for different kinds of products.

At quapona they call these solutions Self-Contained Systems (SCS). A SCS should work as a whole software solution for a certain problem by splitting it into single parts. One Self-Contained System could consist of:

• the storage solution (Data)
• the storage driver (Logic) and
• the application which generates the data to be stored (Interfaces)

And how this can be achieved? They’ve even built Microservice template which you can utilize to built you architecture built on well known technologies:

• Go: As main programming language
• GRPC: As an interface to another Microservice
• GoMock: As mocking framework for unit tests
• Docker: As containerization solution
• Kubernetes: As module and integration testing, container orchestration and deployment solution

Dan Fabulich, Principal Engineer at Redfin, shares his thoughts on paying technical debt faster. Paradoxically, employees who want to take vacation and/or clean up their code do less of it when they have “unlimited” time.

Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite… Author explains:

Technical debt can’t be measured in mythical man-months. It can only be measured in tears, as engineers weep in frustration over code that they desperately want to refactor.

His advice is to establish a technical debt budget for each engineer, to make sure they actually spend it. Read now to discover more practical advice!

Tips for launching a side project from KJ Jones. As many of us take more lead roles at their workplace, our time writing code will decrease. The main goal was to go through the entire development and deployment process.

Author shares some of the things he’s learned during the process. Some main points mentioned in the article:

• Create a Minimum Viable Product
• Free is a key - do not spend much time thinking about price strategy
• Launching a product takes time

Creators should never see any completed project as a failure. Side projects are one of the best ways to improve your value. The goal is go through the entire development and deployment process. Good read.

Blog post from Sam solutions on topic of migration to cloud. Companies that employ more than 1,000 people assume that their spending on migration to the cloud will go up in 2017.

Author lists useful guide how to prepare for migration. The article is a list of few checklists actually and includes:

• The Basics of the migration to cloud
• What to look in a service provider and how to choose one
• The migration strategy
• Proper preparation and planning for migration
• Migration aspects
• Verification process

Each sections contains detailed tabular information and checklists. To avoid any pitfalls and errors one should not disregard migration security and pay close attention to developing a safe and thorough plan, and following it closely.