I'm slowly making my way through the back episodes of the podcast Linear Digressions. Normally it's about machine learning, but there are a couple of episodes (one big episode chopped into two) about auctions. As in, how do eBay and Google make money (not the same way) and which is better? There is some interesting … Continue reading Auctions and adverts
Category: Links
S.E. Radio podcast on latency
I'm still slowly working my way through the back catalogue of the Software Engineering Radio podcast. One episode that I particularly liked is 277: Gil Tene on Tail Latency. It has interesting and useful stuff that helps you see things clearly. For instance: How there's more than one measure of latency (mean, median, 90th centile, … Continue reading S.E. Radio podcast on latency
A German being funny and instructive about microservices
No posts for ages - sorry. I thought this was excellent in many ways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0tjziAQfNQ
Fault tolerance
Introduction I am slowly working my way through the 300+ back issues of the podcast Software Engineering Radio. I've got as far as a couple of excellent episodes on fault tolerance with Bob Hanmer. I recommend that you listen to them, even if (like me) you don't have to worry about this kind of thing … Continue reading Fault tolerance
Psychology, not technology, is the key to Google’s reliability
An excellent video by a Google Site Reliability Engineer, from Goto Conference 2017. What I liked in particular were three key points: Being honest that trying to have operations act as border guards, who attempt to vet code changes with an increasingly-long checklist before they go live, is a path to failure and frustration. Agreeing … Continue reading Psychology, not technology, is the key to Google’s reliability
Trying to not get too ranty about documenting software architecture
This article is my thoughts on a video about documenting software architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8XedJTEww A summary of the video is: Domains other than software architecture, e.g. maps or electrical circuits, do a good job of capturing useful and important information in a way that communicates this well – this is mostly in pictures. Software architecture does … Continue reading Trying to not get too ranty about documenting software architecture
A video with some practical security stuff
Another good Gotocon video, although the first few minutes are a bit bumpy until the speaker gets into the main part of the talk. The key points for me: Think about what security and risk mean for your system Add nasty strings from Fuzz DB to your existing tests Read OWASP Prepare for attacks and … Continue reading A video with some practical security stuff
I couldn’t possibly comment
While there is always some new tool or technique to learn in programming, there are other things where you think you've already got it sorted. Commenting your code is one of those things for me. When I read a recent article on comments, that asked if comments were good or bad, I thought "Obviously, they're … Continue reading I couldn’t possibly comment
UX Design: Good out of bad
Jared Spool has an excellent technique for helping people of varied backgrounds work on improving user experience. He starts off by deliberately pointing them in the wrong direction, gets them to enjoy themselves being nasty to their users, and then turns that into improvements.
How to mess up A/B tests
An excellent talk about A/B tests from someone who knows - Martin Goodson. My favourite part is an A/B test that found a 2.5% improvement to (sales) conversions between the two versions of the software being tested. Unfortunately there was a bug in the A/B testing framework, such that the old version was being tested … Continue reading How to mess up A/B tests
Random Tech Thoughts 