Issue #24: 10 Reads, A Handcrafted Weekly Newsletter For Software Developers

The time to read this newsletter is 155 minutes.

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed – Orhan Pamuk

1. The “Bug-O” Notation: 10 mins read. In this post, you will learn how you can write clean code by cleanly separating out logic that manipulates state from the logic that performs action. If the code is written in way that makes it easy for the reader to figure out all the possible states of a program then developers can maintain it and fix bugs quickly.
2. Design Patterns for Managing Up: 20 mins read. This is a good read for all professional people. This post shares four difficult work situations that we encounter at workplaces. I will be honest I had a hard time dealing with political situations. I have burnt myself multiple times by being honest and showing my displeasure publicly. I agree with author suggested approaches. Two situations that I can relate to are 1) Someone ask you something you don’t know 2) There is a decision you don’t agree with.
3. What is the space overhead of Base64 encoding?: 5 mins read.
4. Serverless And The Evolution In Cloud Security, How FaaS Differs From IaaS: 10 mins read. This post covers how Serverless benefits customers by moving security related responsibilities to the cloud provider. As mentioned in the post, with Serverless more than 50% of the security related tasks are handled by cloud providers while on the other hand with IaaS only 8% of the security tasks are handled by cloud provider.
5. Serverless Watermark using AWS Lambda Layers & FFmpeg: 20 mins read. I was not aware of layers in AWS Lambda. Layers makes it easy to use custom binaries in your lambda functions. Before layers, developers had to bundle binaries along with the lambda code. This post covers how author used ffmpeg layer to add watermark to his videos. The post contains all the source code that you will need to do it yourself. I love these kinds of post as they teach you how to solve your itch by using new technologies.
6. HTTP/3: From root to tip: 30 mins read. This is a long read. I will be honest I only scanned the post. This post talks about history of HTTP from version 0.9 to 3. HTTP/3 is new HTTP syntax that works on IETF QUIC, a UDP based multiplexed and secure transport.
7. Introducing AresDB: Uber’s GPU-Powered Open Source, Real-time Analytics Engine: 20 mins read. This is another long post. In this post, you will learn about AresDB, a GPU powered real-time analytics engine. The use case for AresDB are realtime dashboard, making automated decisions, making ad hoc queries to diagnose and troubleshoot business operations issues. The post covers architecture of AresDB and give an insight into how it works.
8. Two Years of Elixir at Podium: Thoughts: 10 mins read.I need to give Elixir a try. I have heard many good reviews about it. The post gives three main reasons that you should use Elixir. These are 1) Easy to learn 2) Makes it easy to build reliable systems 3) Great community support.
9. Lessons learned scaling PostgreSQL database to 1.2bn records/month: 20 mins read. This post will teach you a lot about scaling PostgreSQL. The author compares different PostgreSQL cloud options and why he finally went with self-hosted solution. He also explains why having granular materialised views can provider better performance. If you are using PostgreSQL then I will recommend reading the post.
10. How to Be Prolific: 10 mins read. This post shares few tips on how to become a prolific writer. Author shares his approach to becoming a prolific writer. He has three step process: 1) Create a vocabulary of your work 2) Master the atomic skills of producing stuffs 3) Make failure cost less.