Let’s start with some YAGV (yet another goofy video): Relative to your interestsSpring AI: An AI framework for Java developers - No python? No problem. The Great Data Integration Schlep - ‘Every company has something fucked-up and dumb going on somewhere, no matter how admirable they are in other respects, and if they’re facing an existential crisis there’s definitely something going badly wrong that somebody doesn’t want to face. If you ever want to get all your data in one place, you need to figure out some of the shape of the Badness, in an environment where most of the people you meet are presenting as “reasonable and highly competent professionals” and everybody’s got a different story about the Badness and why it’s unavoidable or someone else’s fault.

Most of the generative AI applications we'll see in the coming years will be just new features added to existing applications. Even more pragmatically, simply improving how existing applications work will drive a lot of the AI benefits. When it comes to applications, this means we should manage AI like we would any other service, both in process and how we run it. That's my prediction at least. I'm as enamored with AI as anyone else, trying out plenty of experiments and ravenously hungry for any real world case studies that are more complex that chatbots, sophisticated search, and (re)writing.

The recording of one of my talks has 8,400 views. That’s a lot more than other talk recordings. How does YouTube work, I sure don’t know! Confusing it more is that the same talk given at a different conference has 85 views. At least I wore a different shirt each time. Oh, and while I’m promoting myself, here’s my lighting talk (5 minutes) from DevOpsDays Antwerp pondering if DevOps is successful.

My daughter’s opinion of platform engineering is “cool story, let’s go get that kibbeling.” Relative to your interestsAsk HN: What happens to “.io” TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands? - Not good. Users engage with only 6% of product features: Product benchmark findings - ”We found that even the best product teams are focusing on features that aren’t being used by their end users. While 6.4% of features are driving 80% of clicks, almost 94% of features are untouched and ignored.

Our new podcast is out, Software Defined Interviews, with me and Whitney Lee. For the first episode, I interview Whitney. I’ve known her and worked with her now for, I don’t know, three years? She’s so great to talk with and so smart on all the cloud native stuff. In our episode, we go over her background, of course, but also plenty of “how you work” type stuff. For you nerds out there, we also talk about the evolution of the Kubernetes community and why security is always such a pain in the ass.

(1) What seems to you like an everyday, boring experience may be totally foreign and inaccessible to other people. It can be delightful and helpful for them to see it, even if you’ve seen it for nine years everyday. This is one of Noah’s stated principles. (2) I like Dutch Golden Age still life paintings. Big wedges of cheese, glassy eyed herring and equally glassy grapes, glowing wine glasses, walnuts, and Instagram-purposefully draped tablecloths.

Platforms have many opinions, app architecture is one of themThis is an excerpt from a new blog post of mine covering a recent panel with platform engineers from Charles Schwab. I’ve made some slight changes. Ensuring platform scalability and resilience starts with making sure applications are architected appropriately. Nowadays, that usually means using a cloud native architecture. The guidelines for creating cloud native applications are well-known and proven. “Generally speaking, follow the 12 factor app pattern, have a stateless application, and deploy it as a microservice to PCF, that is our guidance,” Anis says, “It’s pretty simple.

And software is valuableYou want to maximize the amount of weird stuff you’re doing across the business to generate asymmetry with your competitors, with the admittedly serious caveat that the pathway to this particular ancient ruin is littered with skulls. Pay attention to the skulls. (From the HST or tech.) Software costs very little to make, and you can rapidly try new things. As opposed to manufacturing or setting up a new Starbucks store.

You are a company of one: Click here to watch the video. If you liked that, there’s more of my take on “employee mode” in the ten part video series I did for O’Reilly: “How to Survive and Thrive in a Big Company: Tactics and Practices to Manage Your Time and Relationships.” How about that title, huh?! If you work at a large company, you might even have access. Or, just get 10 days free.

Code to Production: From Cloud to DevOps to Platform Engineering, with Purnima PadmanabhanThere's not that many people who've worked through the early years of cloud, the rise of cloud and IaaS, DevOps, cloud native apps, and now platform engineering...but my colleague Purnima Padmanabhan sure has. So, it was fun to talk with her about the history of all of that - something I've been involved in and equally curious about these past 20+ years.