Open Tabs No 6

On Makers, Microservices, and Balanced Teams.

Posted by Holger Reinhardt    on October 11, 2016 in Dev tagged with Reading List, Culture, Devops, API

Here is the latest from Open Tabs - my weekly column with links and commentary on my browser tabs.

Innovation

Lets start this week edition with a survey about PropTech-Startups und Digitalizierung in der Immobilienwirtschaft (sorry, German only). If you are more inclined towards the latest fashion in wearables, check out the latest in SnapChat Spectacles and the Future of Wearables.

Emerging Technology

Machine Learning is an area we are actively investigating - here is a somewhat dated but hopefully still relevant survey on What are the most powerful open source sentiment analysis tools?. There has been literally an explosion of voice-enabled interfaces - and some interesting thoughts from the CEO of IFTTT can be found in Why voice is the catalyst for compatibility. And obviously no week goes by without one more blockchain based services showing up on my radar - this weeks featured blip is Pikcio - Blockchain-based messaging and transaction platform. And for an interesting new entry under the serverless topic, check out webtask.io.

Devops

Might as well been posted under Microservices or Container, but Automating the continous deployment pipeline with containerized microservices is broader than just Container or Microservices. Something similar could be said about API First Transformation at Etsy – Operations, but again API here is just a means to a cultural shift in operations.

Microservices

One of the most vexing questions in Microservice Architecture is how to find bounded context’s. I owe Daniel from OpenCredo the link to Code as a Crime Scene. My friend and former collegue Irakli also keeps exploring it in Microservices: Rule of Twos. And even though I have metioned already in my report from QCon 16 in NYC, you really should Meet Zipkin: A Tracer for Debugging Microservices.

Maker

For those of you who are not content in building things with bits and bytes, check out The complete 3D guide to joinery.

Frontend

On the topic of conversational interfaces, this weeks frontend link goes to Amazing Chat Interface Inspiration.

Product & Marketing

In the product section, I definitly plan to read On Writing Product Specs as well as Drive development with budgets not estimates. And for hiring the new Product Owner for our Foundational Services team I would like to brush up on my interview skills with the The Ultimate Guide to Product Manager Interview Questions.

Container

Always a popular topic for containers in production: Assessing the current state of container security

Culture

So here is a bit more controversial article on Agile in management and leadership. The one principle which caught my eye was the first one. The one I struggle with is number 3. Who am I to know who the right team members are for any given situation? Instead I prefer to take a lesson from buffer (again from QCon) and take the responsibility to create a balanced team instead.

API

Atlassian joins Open API Initiative, open sources RADAR doc generator is the first link under the API heading. GraphQL continues to occupy significan tab space in my browser: 5 Potential Benefits of Integrating GraphQL and GitHub Dumps REST Calls for Facebook’s GraphQL. It is also always a good sport to keep an eye on our competition: Introducing Postman for the QuickBooks Online API. APIEvangelist is at it again with Github Needs Client OAuth Proxy For More Complete Client-Side Apps On Pages.

This should cover it for this week. Plenty to read, think and catch up on. See you again next week.