Posts tagged with notes

• API Style Guide

  Nov 17, 2018

  Using a microservice architecture allows development teams to work separately, delivering work faster and focusing on a specific part of the business domain. Working independently means that developers are free to make their own choices. While that’s great, there’s the risk of building the tower of Babel.

• Code review guidelines

  Sep 29, 2018

  In this post, I’m describing some do’s and dont’s about code reviews. I’m not focusing on the technical side, which depends on the technology stack, but on the process and the etiquette.

• CI requirements

  Sep 24, 2018

  There are so many programming languages out there and so many frameworks to choose from. From a continuous integration perspective, I think that there a couple of requirements that one should check before jumping onto something brand new.

• On versioning

  Dec 18, 2017

  According to Wiktionary, the word version means “a specific form of variation of something”. In computing, it’s “a particular revision of something” (e.g. software). The word has French and Latin roots. The Greek translation, έκδοση, can also be translated as publication.

• Developer Utopia

  Nov 5, 2017

  What happens when developers get the full freedom to work on the things they want with the tools they want? “Get the best people, give them the best tools and get out of their way”. That should work. The reason it doesn’t, it’s because we haven’t defined what “best” people means.

• On git branching models

  Sep 23, 2017

  Usually, when you work with a version control system like git, development happens in multiple branches. It’s funny to see people’s faces when you tell them that the author of Continuous Delivery, Dave Farley, advocates “no branches”. I had that same surprised face myself the first time I heard that concept. But, so far, I haven’t really worked somewhere where no branches were used.

• Ergonomics and APIs

  Sep 16, 2017

  According to my Google search, ergonomics is the study of people’s efficiency in their working environment. The developer’s working environment consists of the physical world but also the virtual world. In the physical world you desire a quiet office, good desk and chair, proper lighting, the best tools your budget can buy, etc. In the virtual world, you have software tools, IDEs, etc. But when writing code, the working environment also consists of the APIs you code against, as well as the code you have written for yourself.

• Unicode and Greek accents pain

  Sep 9, 2017

  As a Greek developer, I learned early on the importance of character encodings. But even in the age of Unicode, troubles still exist.

• Keeping it simple with microservices communication

  Apr 29, 2017

  The term microservice has been getting a lot of hype and attention. I have to admit that I fail to understand what’s the big deal about it. The best practices about microservices are similar to the ones we should apply to everyday software design. Avoid tight coupling. Single responsibility principle. Keeping things simple. Even those principles go back to the old Unix mantra of doing one job and doing it well (and that’s from 1978). And even that could in turn be labelled just “common sense”.

• On Code Comments

  Mar 10, 2017

  I recently joined a different team at work, working on a whole different project. For the past one to one and a half year, I did my bit in building up a culture in my old teams regarding code quality and the moral responsibility of a developer towards the codebase (also known as boy scout principle). Now, we have to start all over from scratch with the new team.

• Worked fine in DEV, OPS problem now

  Nov 20, 2016

  During the past year at work, we did a complete rewrite of our websites from scratch. Not only did we aim to build a mobile-first responsive website with high performance, we also tried to do it with continuous integration and continuous deployment in mind. All that on a proprietary platform not built with CI in mind. This was a very big challenge, which involved a culture change in a lot of people. Unfortunately, the project had a hard deadline. Things were left out. Corners were cut.

• Backup Strategy

  Oct 1, 2016

  Taking a backup was arguably easier back in the days. You had only one computer, your data could fit inside a few floppy disks and the only cloud in your life was the one that would indicate chances of rain later in the afternoon. Things are a bit different today. Nevertheless, the need to preserve your files, your work, and your digital memories, remains the same.

• 20th Century Code

  Sep 24, 2016

  I spent the previous week migrating some old code I had laying around into GitHub. More specifically, I had a single git repository named “Legacy” that contained all sorts of projects and demos I had created over the years. It’s difficult to find exact dates but I found a few that go as back as 1998, so I can justify the title of this blog post.

• On the left-pad drama

  Mar 26, 2016

  This week the internet exploded in drama after 11 lines of code got unpublished from npm. If you didn’t read about it, the summary is that the developer of left-pad removed his package from npm, after npm renamed another package of his because of some name conflict with some other company’s trademark or so. Lots of other packages broke because of this due to the missing dependency. What is interesting here, is that this removed left-pad package consists of a single function (only 11 lines of code). How can that tiny package break the internet?

• Keepass - open source without VCS?

  Dec 17, 2015

  For reasons that are not important, I have managed to be dependent on two different password managers: Keepass and KeepassX. Wanting to get rid of one of them, I started looking around in their websites.

• Learn Java again

  Sep 24, 2013

  I’ve been doing .NET for a long time. I started working on it exactly when .NET 2 was out, so I was lucky to avoid .NET 1 (almost) completely. I love .NET and C#. I think it’s not a coincidence that the main person behind it is the same person who was behind my favorite products when I was a teenage coder: Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal and Delphi. There is some sort of inexpressible similarity, I think, that reflects the designer’s choices in the framework and the language.

• Sharing a green car

  Dec 14, 2011

  There are some companies here in the Netherlands that rent electric cars. You can pay a subscription (there are various payment models actually) and you can pick up any car that is near you (you can see the available cars on the web). It’s an interesting solution and I happened to share a ride last week.

• Τουλάχιστον ο Κώστας ζει

  Nov 5, 2011

  Δεν υπάρχει κατάλληλος τρόπος να αρχίσεις για να σχολιάσεις όλα αυτά τα θεαματικά που ζήσαμε αυτή τη βδομάδα που πέρασε. Θα ξεκινήσω με την σειρά 24, αυτή με τον Τζακ Μπάουερ και τους τρομοκράτες. Σε κάποιον κύκλο, ο πρόεδρος Πάλμερ (ο αδερφός, με το μουστάκι, κι εκεί οικογενειοκρατία) απειλεί κάποια χώρα της Μέσης Ανατολής ότι θα τη βομβαρδίσει αν δεν δώσει πληροφορίες για τους τρομοκράτες και τελικά όντως εκτοξεύει ένα πύραυλο, υποτίθεται πυρηνικό. Υποτίθεται γιατί την τελευταία στιγμή ο πύραυλος πέφτει στη θάλασσα και ο πρόεδρος λέει «ήταν μπλόφα» για να τους κάνει να μιλήσουν. Και το πετυχαίνει. Και παίρνει όλα τα συγχαρητήρια και τον αγαπάνε όλοι και τον εκτιμάνε για τις ικανότητές του να κυβερνάει.

• Greeks in space!

  Feb 27, 2011

  I just got a video from an event in Paris that shows the Greek vice president of the government [*] been kicked out by several Greek protesters. A few days ago, in Berlin, the Greek prime minister had also troubles with Greek demonstrators that interrupted his speech. I think the one place Greeks haven’t demonstrated yet is… space!

• Τα νέα κατορθώματα των ΜΑΤ και άλλες ιστορίες

  Dec 8, 2010

  Σε κανονικές συνθήκες, όταν κάποιος παρανομεί, η αστυνομία αναλαμβάνει την διερεύνηση του εγκλήματος και παραδίδει τους ενόχους στη δικαιοσύνη. Η δικαιοσύνη δικάζει και απονέμει τις ποινές ή αθωώνει.

• Pomodoro style

  Nov 16, 2010

  Δοκίμασα χθες την τεχνική pomodoro για να κάνω λίγη δουλειά στο ResxTranslator. Την τεχνική την πληροφορήθηκα από αυτό το άρθρο. Η λέξη pomodoro είναι Ιταλική και σημαίνει ντομάτα. Η τεχνική pomodoro λέει ότι δουλεύεις για 25 λεπτά σε ένα task και αυτό το task το λες pomodoro. Μόλις ολοκληρώσεις ένα pomodoro κάνεις 5 λεπτά διάλειμα. Κάθε 4 pomodoro κάνεις ένα μεγαλύτερο διάλειμμα, π.χ. 10 λεπτά.

• Δημοτικές και Περιφερειακές Εκλογές 2010

  Nov 7, 2010

  Το πιο ενδιαφέρον με αυτές τις τοπικές εκλογές είναι το αν το αποτέλεσμά τους θα οδηγήσει σε εθνικές εκλογές ή όχι.

• Protest for Rotterdam zoo

  Nov 6, 2010

  

• Flattr: Social Micropayments

  Oct 23, 2010
  [ Ελληνικά ]

• How to fail your project

  Aug 10, 2010

  The following list presents a few ways to screw up a project. Please use it only to save your project and not otherwise. Using this list for intentionally screwing up a project is forbidden.

• Δύσκολοι καιροί για φιλέλληνες

  Aug 4, 2010

  Τον τελευταίο καιρό η Ελλάδα απασχολεί συχνά πυκνά την επικαιρότητα των ξένων μέσων ενημέρωσης. Για πολλούς ανθρώπους, η Ελλάδα ταυτίζεται με οικονομικά προβλήματα, απεργίες και αναταραχές. Οι Έλληνες παρουσιάζονται σαν τεμπέληδες που βγαίνουν στη σύνταξη στα 50. Συχνά έρχομαι αντιμέτωπος με αυτό το καινούργιο στερεότυπο και πρέπει τότε να εξηγήσω στους δυτικούς φίλους μας ότι ουσιαστικά το 8ωρο δεν υπάρχει στην Ελλάδα για τη δική μου γενιά (εκτός αν είσαι στο δημόσιο) ενώ τα όρια συνταξιοδότησης είναι περίπου τα ίδια (65 για την Ελλάδα, 67 για την Ολλανδία).

• Δεν θέλει να δανείσει η Σλοβακία την Ελλάδα

  Jul 15, 2010

  Διαβάζω ότι η νέα κυβέρνηση της Σλοβακίας αλλάζει την απόφαση που είχε πάρει η προηγούμενη και λέει τώρα ότι δεν θέλει να συμμετέχει στο πακέτο βοήθειας προς την Ελλάδα.

• Backup

  May 30, 2010

  Since I’m hosting this website on my own personal home computer, I have the “opportunity” of worrying about my backup strategy. It won’t be the end of the world if something goes wrong, I have other documents that are far more important. But it’s nice to feel that you have accomplished something that makes you feel safe.