Midjourney: a Soviet style poster with a software developer standing triumpantly on-top of a pile of software developers robots.Names are magicI don’t really know what I think about the idea and movement of “platform engineering.” It definitely has the feel of a market and category now. I reference it all the time, as do “us all” in the cloud native world. I suspect over the next year it’s the phrase everyone will be using for whatever it is exactly.
Apple Savings Accounts Funds Withdrawal Concerns - “Customers who have requested withdrawals have reported waiting 2-4 weeks for their money to show up.” // This is the catch with that account. 4.5% interest is great, though. You have to think of the Apple savings account as a weird, 30 day CD.
Take care of your legacy software before it kills your ability to innovate
I want to try a new video format: the Quick Comment. Just one “fact” or idea and 45 seconds or so of commentar. We’ll see if I like it and/or keep it up.
Improving developer productivity with Platform as a Product, from PlatformCon 2023 - Great talk from the Cloud Foundry team at Mercedes-Benz on how they’ve been doing platform engineering. 300 apps, 1,500 platform services, and by my count, about 7 years of running it.
How to keep your new tool from gathering dust - “Learn where your tool can have the biggest impact; Enlist advocates to demonstrate and socialize your tool; Build consensus over time; Minimize friction around adoption”
Microsoft Design - Wallpapers - Fun! Including the old XP one in 4K somewhere.
Netherlands enables contactless payments on entire public transport network - Yup, it’s pretty great.
2023-06-08 day note
Today’s newsletter has just a few links, some quirky quotes, and a list of upcoming conferences I’ll be speaking at or attending. My newsletter crossed 600 subscribers this week. Fun! I’ve been trying to build up a more stable place to publish now that social media is FUCKING CRAZY and BLOGS ARE DEAD, and it’s working pretty well. I’ve been trying to come up with some new talks for awhile now.
You can't avoid lock-in
I have a new video, opining on multi-cloud and how Kubernetes might could help with fears of lock-in (a concept that I think is kind…basic?), check it out below:
Relevant to your interestsThe Care and Feeding of Internal Developer Platforms - Five benefits of monitoring and managing internal developer platforms are noted: improved system performance, cost reduction, scalability, enhanced security, and improved feedback loops. Achieving these benefits entails securing deployment environments, establishing system baselines, setting up alerting rules, monitoring application performance, and automating processes.
Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button - If you value writing by the time put into it (“thoughtfulness”), the AI stuff is going to mess with your judgements. // “Now consider all the other tasks where the final written output is important because it is a signal of the time spent on the task, and the thoughtfulness that went into it. Performance reviews. Strategic memos. College essays. Grant applications. Speeches. Comments on papers. And so much more."