I started using the Internet in the early 1990s. In those days, other than BBS systems, Compuserve, AOL, and Prodigy, you could get yourself a cheap Unix shell account you could dial into. Neither of those services required much bandwidth. In fact, the first internet navigation tool that I have used was Gopher. It was … Continue reading How We Overcomplicated Web Design
Docker can fundamentally change how you think of server deployments
I got a chance to evaluate Docker over the past few days. This is a type of a toolkit that is going to fundamentally change how you think of application deployments, in the cloud or on-premises. What Docker boils down to is this. Rather than deploying your application in a dedicated VM or hardware, and … Continue reading Docker can fundamentally change how you think of server deployments
Infrastructure in the cloud vs on-premise
I made a comment on twitter saying that if you are still operating an on-premise data center in the second decade of the 21st century you are wasting a ton of money. I was talking specifically about AWS vs on-premise. I got some pushback on that assertion in the form of private messages. Here is the … Continue reading Infrastructure in the cloud vs on-premise
Everyone Wants to Be a Tailor
I was ordering a new suit for myself today. The salesman eagerly showed me 3-4 different suits within the price range and style I was looking for. I am tall and skinny and it's always been a pain to find a well fitted suit for me. We settled on two that seemed to look good … Continue reading Everyone Wants to Be a Tailor
Wall St. wakes up to underinvestment in OMS
Sell-side is waking up to the impact of underinvestment in OMS technology. Consider the headlines in "Trader's Magazine": EXCLUSIVE: Up-to-Date OMS Is a Necessity in Today's Trading Markets: Since 2008, however, budgets have tightened, many large-scale IT expansion projects have been put on hold, and an operational culture of "doing more with less" has taken … Continue reading Wall St. wakes up to underinvestment in OMS
Cassandra: a key puzzle piece in a design for failure
When building out a data center in the cloud (AWS in particular) Cassandra can play a crucial role in the design for failure. SQL and NoSQL databases have drastically different redundancy profiles: A NoSQL database (and I hate the term NoSQL with the passion of a billion white hot suns) trades off data consistency for … Continue reading Cassandra: a key puzzle piece in a design for failure
Software Engineers Are Not Doctors
Doctors undergo a decade of training followed by several years of internships and residency. Software engineers barely have four year college degrees. Doctors sign a Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Software engineers sign no such thing. Most software engineers shouldn’t even be considered engineers. Engineers can build safe bridges and safe buildings, while most … Continue reading Software Engineers Are Not Doctors
Cassandra: Lessons Learned
After using Cassandra for 3 years since version 0.8.5, I thought I'd put together a blurb on lessons learned. Here it goes! Use Cases What works Anything that involves high speed collection of data for analysis in the background or via batch. For example: Logging and data collection Web servers Mobile devices Internet of things … Continue reading Cassandra: Lessons Learned
On anti-loops
I have a friend who for years at his job couldn't get a promotion. Somehow in his team he was perceived as flaky and unreliable and not worthy. When he finally left the company and joined a new one he became a successful team member in a very short period of time. He is a … Continue reading On anti-loops
Things I wish Apache Cassandra was better at
At first I wanted to name this article “My personal list of grievances against Apache Cassandra”, but I decided to take a more positive approach. Only Java developers need apply Surely you can use Cassandra with non-Java clients but the reality is that administering and maintaining Cassandra itself requires very significant knowledge of Java and … Continue reading Things I wish Apache Cassandra was better at
The Dulin Report 
You must be logged in to post a comment.