Check out the latest Serverless Framework v1.35 release, featuring Ruby invoke local support, CloudFormation config, and more.
17 Dec 2018
Change in the industry As we look back at the last 25 years of Thoughtworks, it is impossible to separate the evolution of the organization from the evolution of the technology industry. When we were first founded, there was little evidence in place to demonstrate just how prevalent technology would become to us – as individuals, businesses, and society.
Let’s start with one of my favorite quotes. Thoughtworks’ Chief Scientist, Martin Fowler has this to say on automation test coverage analysis, “...it helps you find which bits of your code isn't being tested. It's worth running coverage tools every so often and looking at these bits of untested code.” Low automation code coverage definitely affects product quality and puts…
15 Dec 2018
I have developed a bad habit of picking up vanity domain names and not really doing much with them. Last month at AWS Re:Invent I picked up ServerlessSecurity.org and really wanted to do something with it but didn’t feel like maintaining, or paying for, a VPS so after doing some looking around I found that is was possible to point…
I have written some exporters to observe things on GitHub. This is how and why.
14 Dec 2018
We’ve discovered that the gradient noise scale, a simple statistical metric, predicts the parallelizability of neural network training on a wide range of tasks. Since complex tasks tend to have noisier gradients, increasingly large batch sizes are likely to become useful in the future, removing one potential limit to further growth of AI systems. More broadly, these results show that…
3 surprisingly straightforward ways everyone can gain access Direct Debit.
MapTiler Desktop 10 can now render vector data into map tiles.
12 Dec 2018
Deploy a simple Slackbot powered by Functions for basic chatbot message receiving and response.
Deploy a simple Slackbot powered by Functions for basic chatbot message receiving and response.
Still Looking Good While Testing: Automated Testing With a Visual Regression Service Part II
BazaarvoiceIf you’ve followed our blog regularly, you’ve probably read our post on using visual regression testing tools and services to better test your applications’ front end look and feel. If not, take a few minutes to read through our previous post on this topic. Now that you’re up to speed, let’s take what we did […]
GoCardless is now live in Canada, the 30th country in our global network.
11 Dec 2018
As businesses grapple with vast quantities of data, emerging from batch-based and streaming sources, it’s truly exciting to see the dominant data processing frameworks embrace the Kappa Architecture, that unifies batch and stream processing. With Kappa Architecture, the batch processing is completely removed and is treated as a special case of streaming.
10 Dec 2018
Here is a list of my favorite security books from 2018 if you are looking for that last minute gift or have some extra time around the holidays to catch up on some reading. The GCHQ Puzzle Book 2 I just got The GCHQ Puzzle Book 2, and like the original, it has quickly become the book that I always…
7 Dec 2018
Annotation processors can be useful as a hacky workaround to get some language feature into the Java language. jOOQ also has an annotation processor that helps validate SQL syntax for: Plain SQL usage (SQL injection risk) SQL dialect support (prevent using an Oracle only feature on MySQL) You can read about it more in detail … Continue reading How to…
Direct Debit isn't just for regular, fixed-amount payments.
I grew up in the Midlands in the UK, a little town called Brackley, which is close to Oxford. I didn’t notice any diversity there because there wasn’t any! It was a very white town. I also didn’t notice the amount of privilege I had. Looking back, there are so many things that don’t sit well with me now, particularly…
6 Dec 2018
Building a SaaS product, a system to handle sensor data from an internet-connected thermostat or car, or an e-commerce store often requires handling a large stream of product usage data, or events. Managing event streams lets you view, in near real-time, how users are interacting with your SaaS app or the products on your e-commerce […] The post Manage Real-time…
Our newest demo showcases PubNub in its simplest form, blazing-fast pub/sub messaging to any number of connected users.
Our newest demo showcases PubNub in its simplest form, blazing-fast pub/sub messaging to any number of connected users.
We’re releasing CoinRun, a training environment which provides a metric for an agent’s ability to transfer its experience to novel situations and has already helped clarify a longstanding puzzle in reinforcement learning. CoinRun strikes a desirable balance in complexity: the environment is simpler than traditional platformer games like Sonic the Hedgehog but still poses a worthy generalization challenge for state…
Ever wanted to validate your Packer image with Goss? Well, you can!
DynamoDB On-Demand allows truly serverless billing for your applications. Learn how to use it here, and when you should or shouldn't go on-demand.
5 Dec 2018
We are happy to announce two major improvements to our SSO experience for Heroku Enterprise customers: easier SSO login for users via the Heroku CLI, and the ability for admins to add more than one certificate at the Enterprise Team level. Logging into all your different cloud applications can be a pain. We know that […] The post Improving the…
★★★★★ Review of the manga “Opus” by Satoshi Kon. “Opus” is a brilliant postmodernist introspection of the challenges of writing, creativity, and the cliches of pop culture; delivered in a manga format. Author Satoshi Kon worked on this manga between 1995-1996 as it was serialized in “Comic Guy” manga magazine until the magazine closed abruptly in 1996. The final 3…
European Space Agency awarded the MapTiler team for our work on the the seamless satellite map made from the Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.
When the California Camp Fire displaced thousands of people from their homes, I built a simple serverless Twitter bot to help people get placed in temporary housing!
4 Dec 2018
Your at-a-glance view of all the available 2019 Bacs processing dates.
AWS Lambda now supports Ruby! Here's how you can get started and build an API with the Serverless Framework.
I want to brag a little - my npm packages have been downloaded more than 1 million timesStats are coming from npm-stat.com. this year! And I finally got a real domain: https://muffinman.io/ I've been quiet for the last couple of months. Mostly because I was busy with other things, both work and personal. But I do have a few small…
3 Dec 2018
For the system at work, I am on call one week every seven weeks. For most of the past ten years, I have been on organized on call rotations for the systems I have been developing. I think being on … Continue reading →
1 Dec 2018
For the last four years I’ve been working on a book for programmers who want to learn mathematics. It’s finally done, and you can buy it today. The website for the book is pimbook.org, which has purchase links—paperback and ebook—and a preview of the first pages. You can see more snippets later in the book on the Amazon listing’s “Look…
I spent this last week in Las Vegas attending AWS Re:Invent. This event is mind-numbingly massive with classes happening at 4 or 5 hotels all over the strip. I personally spent over an hour every day on their (nice but extremely slow) shuttle buses between the MGM Grand, Aria and the Sands Expo Center. It would be impossible to see…
Meet Charlotte Just three years ago, Charlotte was studying for her Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies at King’s College London, researching academic practice in Latin America. So how - and why - did she go from there to being a Consultant Developer at Thoughtworks? How did you decide to move into coding?
30 Nov 2018
How integrating GoCardless with your finance software can help your business.
AWS has just announced “Bring Your Own Runtime” to AWS Lambda. We’re launching the Serverless Open Runtime to take it to the next level.
29 Nov 2018
What business advice would these practice owners, advisors and tech specialists give their younger selves?
Learn about AWS's recently introduced Lambda Layers and how to publish and use them with Serverless Framework.
AWS just announced API Gateway WebSockets support, and the serverless community got pretty excited. Here's why.
28 Nov 2018
AWS open-sourced Firecracker, the Lambda and Fargate core. Here’s what it means for the serverless community.
27 Nov 2018
How can Direct Debit impact the numbers you care about most? Find out as we explain the relationship between Direct Debit and three key subscription success metrics.
While the dust is yet to settle, GoCardless is prepared for every outcome.
Not at AWS re:Invent? That's ok; we're compiling all the most important serverless announcements and updates. Updating live all week.
Works on my machine… and also everywhere else: local build and testing environments as code
Thoughtworks InsightsWhether it’s a build environment for compiling and testing the application, or a test environment with other parts of the stack for integration, or end-to-end testing, developers waste an extraordinary amount of time setting up and maintaining environments. Thanks to Docker and a tool called batect, I’ve successfully eliminated this waste on a number of teams.
26 Nov 2018
The in-depth guide for optimising your subscription payment page.
Poor cash flow is responsible for almost half of small business insolvencies in Australia. In this guide, we ask small business leaders to tell us how they took control of cash flow, and what lessons they learned along the way.
Find out what does JAMstack mean, and the advantages of this set of technologies
We’re closing out #NoServerNovember with a special-edition virtual hackathon for AWS re:Invent. Participate from anywhere, win cool prizes.
23 Nov 2018
They may seem similar, but here are the key differences.
Almost every company accumulates tech debt as time goes on. Tight deadlines, changing requirements, scaling issues, poor or short-sighted system designs, knowledge silos, inconsistent coding practices, turnover of key staff — these things all happen and can contribute to tech debt. So what can be done about it once it’s there?
We write a lot of unit tests while working on the SoundCloud iOS application. Unit tests are obviously great. They’re short, they’re…
22 Nov 2018
Reporting a bug takes time, and trust me, every vendor appreciates your reporting of a bug! Your voice counts as many voices, for all the other customers of a product who do not want to or cannot take the time to report the same bug are numerous. So, first off, thanks for taking that time … Continue reading How to…
“Red Lines” by Evan Roth, on display on the 12th floor of 99 Madison Avenue, NY.
20 Nov 2018
Top tips to help you build a winning pricing strategy for your firm.
Business can often be a driver of social change, but some organisations are started specifically to further a social mission. The social enterprise sector in the UK employs approximately one million people, in 70,000 organisations, contributing more than £24 billion to the economy. All these organisations are using the power of business as a force to drive social change.
19 Nov 2018
If you couldn't attend the show, let us run you through our highlights.
Let's build a chat app using AWS AppSync and the Serverless Framework! Plus: info on data sources, metrics and logs, and authentication.
16 Nov 2018
A customer of my popular SQL training (which you should book!) has recently challenged me to optimise a hierarchical query that merges an archive log’s deltas in order to obtain a snapshot of some record at a given point in time. In this article, I will reproduce their problem statement in a simplified version and … Continue reading How to…
FAQ Friday – What is involved when switching to GoCardless from another Direct Debit provider?
GoCardlessIt needn't be daunting - here's what the process involves.
Useful for screenshots and screencasts, or just to increase the real estate of your screen
15 Nov 2018
Virgil Security, Inc. enables developers to encrypt everything without having to become security experts.
Virgil Security, Inc. enables developers to encrypt everything without having to become security experts.
What do you do if its the late 1950’s and you need to project live video? Overhead LCD projectors–let alone the computers to drive them–haven’t been invented yet. The answer is the Eidophor, the most bonkers overhead projection system you’ve probably never heard of. Original link
Inktober is a project where artists make an ink drawing every day for the whole month of October. This year I did an inktober but ignored all the rules, and made Internet Stuff™️ instead. That experiment lives here, but I want to tell you why I did it before you go ahead and judge it. I think that it’s also…
14 Nov 2018
Employee compensation is probably your biggest expense, but the total cost of an employee goes beyond their salary. Use this total compensation calculator to accurately budget!
In today’s hyperconnected world, innovation happens pretty fast. For a technologist, whatever your specialism, there’s always something new to discover; a new tool that looks promising, maybe a technique that piques your interest. But, given the variety and pace of innovation, how do you know what to follow up on? How can you predict which innovations will be worthwhile and…
Twice a year we create the Thoughtworks Technology Radar, an opinionated look at what’s happening in the enterprise tech world. We cover tools, techniques, languages, and platforms and we generally call out over one hundred individual ‘blips’. Along with this detail we write about a handful of overarching ‘themes’ that can help a reader see the forest for the trees,…
13 Nov 2018
Last October, we announced the ability for you to deploy pre-built Docker images to Heroku via Container Registry. Today, building Docker images with heroku.yml is generally available; you can now: Use git push heroku master to build your Docker images on Heroku Take advantage of review apps in Docker-based projects For most teams, using containers […] The post Building Docker…
Learn how we fixed a nasty bottleneck in a large Node.js Microservices infrastructure, and how we scaled it so it could serve 1000s of requests per second. The post Serving Millions of Users in Real-Time with Node.js & Microservices [Case Study] appeared first on RisingStack Engineering.
Automation needn't be expensive and SMBs could be benefiting.
From reducing admin to providing a better customer experience, here are the 6 most important reasons to integrate GoCardless with your existing software.
12 Nov 2018
The small business perspective on Direct Debit – how Direct Debit can help your business, the advantages and disadvantages and how to get started.
I’m working in a project that uses Chef, so it has a lot of JSON files.
Technology, people and business aren’t separate. Improving a legacy technology situation forces you to re-examine business processes and organizational structures as well as technical systems.
11 Nov 2018
This article explores how to simulate multiple return values in JavaScript using arrays and objects. It covers use cases like React Hooks and async/await error handling. The pattern enables elegant APIs but has performance implications.
Do you want to lie back on your death bed and say, Well, at least I didn’t make a fuss? Please consider supporting archivists like Jason by donating to the Internet Archive. Original link
10 Nov 2018
I love my Nintendo SwitchI have a huge draft about Switch, and how it have put the fun back in gaming for me. I hope to publish it at some point. Unfortunately, tonight I noticed that one of my Joy-Cons has two weird lumps on it. (This is the image from the internet, not mine.) On multiple forum threads, people…
9 Nov 2018
How do you compare the top five FaaS on K8S runtimes? Write the same web app design pattern on all of them. Read more on FONK, a Serverless LAMP stack for K8S.
8 Nov 2018
We’re releasing Spinning Up in Deep RL, an educational resource designed to let anyone learn to become a skilled practitioner in deep reinforcement learning. Spinning Up consists of crystal-clear examples of RL code, educational exercises, documentation, and tutorials.
I have started using the Burp Suite 2.0 beta full time recently, and some of the new features I knew I wanted to explore more was the API and the CI Integration. I took a few hours this last week and built a small POC shell script that will scan a website and open Github Issues for all findings. Here…
7 Nov 2018
We’ve developed an energy-based model that can quickly learn to identify and generate instances of concepts, such as near, above, between, closest, and furthest, expressed as sets of 2d points. Our model learns these concepts after only five demonstrations. We also show cross-domain transfer: we use concepts learned in a 2d particle environment to solve tasks on a 3-dimensional physics-based…
Magenta.js is a JavaScript library that helps you generate art and music on the web. It’s also the team that I work on now! One of the things that I do whenever I join a new team is learn a bunch of things, and then make a bunch of tutorials that past Monica would’ve loved to stumble over. This is…
Jared Short has joined the Serverless, Inc. team as Head of Developer Relations and Experience. Here's why.
6 Nov 2018
Processing, chasing and reconciling payments doesn't have be time consuming. In this guide, we compare three automated payment methods, and identify the pros and cons of each, to help you choose the right one for your business.
Sending out invoices, collecting payments and reconciling cash are time consuming tasks – costing SMBs 120 hours a year. In this guide, we’ve highlighted 5 hacks to help your cash collection process run more efficiently.
The average small business is owed over 63k in outstanding payments, which means spending extra time, money and resource chasing payments. In this guide, we look at 5 ways Direct Debit can help solve these problems.
Improving a legacy technology system forces you to re-examine business processes and organizational structures as well as technical systems.
5 Nov 2018
While jOOQ is not a full fledged ORM (as in an object graph persistence framework), there is still some convenience available to avoid hand-writing boring SQL for every day CRUD. That’s the UpdatableRecord API. It has a few very useful features, including: A 1:1 mapping to the underlying table Every UpdatableRecord is mapped on a … Continue reading How to…
Doing Continuous Integration is a lot easier if you have the right tools. In our project at a german car manufacturer, we were tasked with developing new services and bringing them to the cloud. We had a centralized Jenkins instance, shared by all the teams in the department. It didn’t fit our needs and made it harder for us to…
4 Nov 2018
Do you need something to cheer you up? You got it: I should explain this costume a little bit. At the US Digital Service, we do a thing called “crab claws.” Crab claws is like visual applause–you pinch your fingers up and down to say “great job” or “congratulations” or “way to go.” We do […]
3 Nov 2018
Every since I started giving my High Performance Go workshop I’ve been fascinated with the physics of semiconductors. This presentation from Hope Conference ’09 doesn’t cover the latest EUV shenanigans, but does an excellent job of detailing the difficulties in semiconductor manufacturing ten years ago. The problems have only become more complicated as semiconductor fabs attempt […]
2 Nov 2018
Try maps in augmented reality running from the browser without a need to install any mobile app.
The current SoundCloud iOS App was built back in 2014, resulting in a huge codebase consisting of both Objective-C and Swift, with multiple…
The most radical period of change in industrial history is nearly upon us. Technology is evolving faster than humanity is able to keep up with it. There is now a need for rapid, sustained and growing innovation in what the World Economic Forum has dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The first industrial revolution brought in steam to mechanize power; the…
1 Nov 2018
How to utilize the SendGrid Block with Functions to trigger transactional email based on an event.