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© Tomasz Nurkiewicz
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Podcast for developers, testers, SREs... and their managers. I explain complex and convoluted technologies in a clear way, avoiding buzzwords and hype. Never longer than 4 minutes and 16 seconds. Because software development does not require hours of lectures, dev advocates' slide decks and hand waving. For those of you, who want to combat FOMO, while brushing your teeth. 256 seconds is plenty of time. If I can't explain something within this time frame, it's either too complex, or I don't understand it myself.
By Tomasz Nurkiewicz. Java Champion, CTO, trainer, O'Reilly author, blogger
By Tomasz Nurkiewicz. Java Champion, CTO, trainer, O'Reilly author, blogger
98 Episodes
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Yukihiro Matsumoto, the creator of Ruby programming language,
famously said: “I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the
world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy.”
Honestly, not many programming languages were built with developer’s
happines in mind. And to be honest, Ruby is a joy to work with. It’s
fairly easy to learn, easy to read, yet, very powerful. Also, with the
appearance of Ruby on Rails, it became insanely productive. But first
things first.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/97
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Border Gateway Protocol, BGP for short, is probably the most
important protocols you might have never heard of. Well, you did at
least once, in October 2021. When Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and
Messenger all went down because of BGP misconfiguration. Or that one day
back in 2008 when all YouTube traffic was accidentally routed to
Pakistan. Because of BGP… misconfiguration. So what’s the big deal with
BGP? First we must understand how the Internet works.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/96
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SQLite is by far the most common SQL database ever deployed. Are you
lsitening to this on iPhone or Android device? It runs SQLite. Or maybe
through a web browser? Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and Android
Browser all use SQLite underneath. Are you running MacOS or Windows?
It’s built-in. Most Linux distributions have it as well. “But I’m
listening to your podcast while driving a car”, you say. Well, most
automotive systems use SQLite internally. If you happen to listen to my
podcast while coding in PHP or Python, they include SQLite out-of-the
box. Oh, and it’s the default choice for Ruby on Rails as well. I’m
pretty sure SQLite is used somewhere on the International Space Station
and it maybe even landed on other planets? So, what makes this unsung
hero so popular to run at least one trillion databases
worldwide?
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/95
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Scala is a programming language running on the Java Virtual Machine.
It’s statically typed, and you can use it both as functional and
object-oriented language. Even at the same time. The functional side of
Scala supports higher-order (and higher-kinded) types. For those of you
know what it means. On the other hand, object-relational features of
Scala are equally strong. Including powerful trait composition, that you
can somewhat compare to multiple inheritance. Combine than with great
Java interoperability and no wonder why Scala became a go to language
for many ex-Java developers.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/94
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K-means clustering is an algorithm for partitioning data into
multiple, non-overlapping buckets. For example, if you have a bunch of
points in two-dimensional space, this algorithm can easily find
concentrated clusters of points. To be honest, that’s quite a simple
task for humans. Just plot all the points on a piece of paper and find
areas with higher density. For example, most of the points are located
on the top-left of the plane, some at the bottom and a few at the
centre-right. However, this is not that straightforward once you can no
longer rely on graphical representation. For instance, when your data
points live 3-, 4- or 100-dimensional space. Turns out, this is not that
uncommon. Let me clarify.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/93
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Clojure is a dynamically, strongly typed programming language. It’s a
dialect of Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine. Lisp is 6
decades old and has a really weird syntax. That weird syntax is called
Polish prefix notation. Basically, in every other language
you’ve used math operators like plus or minus are infix. It means they
are placed between operands. For example, 1 + 2. In
Clojure, you always put the operator (or any other function for that
matter) in front. So simple addition becomes… + 1 2.
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There are two main ways to communicate between components in your
distributed system: synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous
communication is like making a phone call. The system on the other side
must be present and you actively wait for a response to your every
question. Examples of this style include REST, SOAP and GraphQL.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/91
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After many dramatic events around Twitter lately, many people,
including myself, began experimenting with Mastodon. Superficially it’s
an open-source clone of the former that anyone can deploy and host.
However, once you look deeper, it’s actually a completely different
philosophy and architecture. Let’s focus on how Mastodon federated
network is built. To understand the difference, we’ll start from
scratch.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/90
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RabbitMQ is a message broker, allowing asynchronous communication in
distrubuted systems. The key advantages of RabbitMQ include: 15 years of
open source history, battle proven Erlang implementation and support for
industry standard protocols. RabbitMQ is among the most popular
implementations of message brokers. Others include ActiveMQ for Java, celery for Python and Kafka - if you consider it a message
broker. Also, pretty much all cloud providers have their proprietary
implementations, like, Google
Pub/Sub, Amazon
Kinesis, Azure
Service Bus and so on. RabbitMQ at its core implements AMQP, a standard protocol for
information interchange. So not only it’s open source, it’s also built
on top of open standards.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/89
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Many people, when asked about SLA, simply shout 99%. The correct
answer to that question is probably a long, boring PDF, written by
lawyers. Yes, SLA is a legal obligation. Not a metric or a number. You
probably meant SLI or SLO.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/88
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An artificial neural network is a computer algorithm somewhat
inspired by our brains. Superficially, our brain is a network of neurons
connected with each other and communicating via electrical impulses.
Artificial intelligence experts implemented a similar concept purely in
software. An artificial neuron is basically a function that takes a set
of inputs and has an output. Just like the biological one. By connecting
hundreds of such neurons in a network, we can observe quite
intelligent behaviours. For example, artificial neural networks
can recognize what’s in the image. Or quite the opposite - generate
images from text.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/87
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p>A few weeks ago Ethereum blockchain moved from proof-of-work to a
proof-of-stake algorithm. This step alone reduced global energy
consumption by 0.2%. It’s as much as an energy usage of Austria. At this
point, Ethereum, the second largest blockchain after Bitcoin, is using
barely as much electricity as a few hundred households. How is that
possible? How does the proof-of-stake algorithm work, avoiding
catastrophic energy waste?
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/86
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A genetic algorithm is a heuristic approach to solving complex
computational problems. This includes various optimizations, especially
around scheduling and design. For example, NASA designed a radio antenna
for their spacecraft using a genetic algorithm. Its shape is quite
complicated, like nothing that could be designed by hand. So how do
genetic algorithms work their way to the solution? Well, they are
inspired by the natural selection process in living creatures (!)
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/85
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Non-fungible tokens, NFTs for short, are financial instruments
implemented on top of the blockchain. They can be bought and sold, just
like cryptocurrencies. However, unlike bitcoins, each NFT is unique and
traded individually. Whereas Bitcoins or ether are interchangeable, just
like hundred-dollar bills. So what makes each NFT unique? Why would you
purchase this particular NFT rather than the other one? Well, an NFT has
an associated piece of data. That data is typically a hyperlink to a
digital piece of art. What you actually purchase is… well… that
link?
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/84
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We all know this feeling. You search for a hotel in Paris and you
keep getting ads for hotels and flights for weeks to come. Or something
even scarier. You visit a blog post highlighting the first symptoms of a
pregnancy. An hour later every single website on the planet advertises
diapers and baby formulas. How is that possible? How do they know? And
how did we get into this dystopia? All of this became possible with
real-time bidding. The billion-dollar industry that tracks our every
movement.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/83
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MongoDB is a NoSQL database. Precisey speaking, it’s a
document-oriented database. It stores arbitrarily complex key-value
objects. For example, in a single Car object you can store
as much information as you want. Not only license plate or manufacturing
year. But also information about each individual part, history of
repairs, insurance and all owners. No matter how much information you
want to keep, you just put that in a single, easily accessible document.
Contrast that to relational databases, where each relationship has to be
modelled as a separate table. So the same Car would have
been spread across tens of tables. Imagine all these SQL JOINs! No
wonder why MongoDB is one of the most popular databases.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/82
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Quarkus is supersonic, subatomic Java. What does that mean? It means it’s Java, but really, really small. And really, really fast. Quarkus is a runtime framework which gives you access to programming models you’re probably familiar with. Like Microprofile, JAX-RS, CDI dependency injection. And also access you’re probably less familiar with, like reactive programming.
Author: Holly Cummins
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Ethereum is a network of computers with no central trusted authority.
They achieve consensus by running computation-intensive algorithm, known
as proof-of-work. The agreed state is added to an append only ledger,
known as blockchain. Yes, Ethereum is yet another blockchain. And it’s
used to track transactions in a cryptocurrency, known as Ether. However,
unlike Bitcoin, it’s much more than a simple log. Bitcoin accounts
simply hold currency. Ethereum accounts can run programs as well.
Ethereum network is actually one, huge computer!
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/80
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QUIC can be thought of as the third fundamental protocol of the
Internet. Next to UDP and TCP/IP. Let’s talk a little bit about these
two. They both build upon IP, Internet Protocol. IP supports exchanging
packets of data between two machines having… IP addresses. UDP adds
ports. Port is a logical concept. It’s simply a number within one
machine that identifies a certain process. Thanks to ports, many
different processes on the same machine can exchange data.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/79
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Stuxnet was probably one of the most sophisticated pieces of software
ever built. I can easily imagine a Hollywood movie about it. A computer
program that could change the course of history. Ironically, Stuxnet was
a computer virus. A virus that infected 200 thousand machines. But
activated and damaged only on a fraction of that.
Read more: https://nurkiewicz.com/78
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