Introduction If you can visualize a system, you can probably implement it Means greatest limitation is the  ability to understand the system we are creating Over time, complexity accumulates, leading to bugs which slows development two general approaches to fight complexity making code simpler and more obvious encapsulate complexity software design continual process, waterfall rarely… Continue reading A Philosophy of Software Design

Act with Prudence take extra care to avoid tech debt if you must accrue it, track cost appropriately Apply Functional Programming Principles learn to apply functional principles to make your code simpler and easier to debug Ask, “What Would the User Do?” (You Are Not the User) the user may not think like you best… Continue reading 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Applications Intro applications today more data-intensive than compute intensive need to store data (dbs), remember expensive operations (cache), allow users to search (indexes), send a message to another process async (stream processing), periodically crunch a large amount of data (batch) Thinking About Data Systems wide-ranging requirements handled by stitching different tools… Continue reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Changing Software Four reasons to change software adding a feature fixing a bug improving design optimizing resource usage Adding features and fixing bugs some argue whether something is a bug fix vs feature more important distinction is behavior i.e. adding or changing Improving Design (Refactoring) keep behavior intact programmers avoid because easy to lose behavior… Continue reading Working Effectively with Legacy Code

A Scalable Language Intro “scalable language” mix of oop and fp flexible: good for scripts or complex systems A language that grows on you feel of modern scripting language can extend and adapt library abstractions like bazaar: designed and extended by users can define classes that look like built-in types e.g. BigInt can build customized… Continue reading Programming in Scala