Author: Andrew Freed

Developers are always looking for a shiny new toy but we spend most of our working lives working on “legacy software”.  I’m glad to see Chris Birchall tackle this important subject.  He notes that most…

The Netflix documentary “The Speed Cubers” inspired me to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.  I followed the guide from Robbie Gonzalez and one piece of advice stuck out at me: “Solve pieces, not…

I don’t typically think of software and art in the same sentence.  After reading Jerry Cuomo’s Art of Automation book, I’m going to think differently!  Jerry Cuomo leads an all-star cast of contributors (“Gang of…

Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann is a tour de force, a wonderful book for anyone interested in learning about the kinds of applications where data is the key constraint.  Kleppmann’s central thesis is that…

I’m glad I read this “one-stop” microservices book: Microservices in Action by Morgan Bruce and Paulo A. Pereira.  If you have time for just one microservices book, I think you can do well with this…

I’ve heard many good things about microservices but have had only limited opportunities to try them out.  I wanted to learn more and Microservices Patterns by Chris Richardson was the perfect opportunity. I know there…

Book Review: Site Reliability Engineering I’ve just finished reading the 2016 book Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems.  I’ve spent 20 years as a developer and I’ve appreciated the DevOps philosophy, but this…

Java 8 has been out for long enough – I needed to go learn the new features!  I read Java 8 In Action by Manning Publications.  (There’s a newer version, Modern Java in Action, covering…

I recently published a three-part post on the IBM Watson publication on testing and improving chatbots (also known as virtual assistants) using both pre- and post- deployment techniques. Each post is accompanied with an embedded…

I recently published a two-part post on the IBM Watson publication titled “Why Overfitting is a Bad Idea and How to Avoid It” Part 1: Overfitting in General introduces the general topic of overfitting with…