Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Enjoying a Down Weekend

    The Oscar nominations were released recently, with quite a few nods to The Black Panther. I did see that one on a plane, and despite the small screen, I enjoyed the story and the visual action. It’s one that I may try to watch again on a larger screen at some point, likely with kids. The family is a group of Marvel fans, and while I’ve mostly stuck to the mainstream movies, the kids have enjoyed some of the series that complete the Marvel Universe. We’ve gone as a group to most of the theatrical movies, and I expect we’ll see the next Avengers when it releases.

    I also saw the best geek movies of 2018, most of which I had not seen. I’m more of an episodic, TV show fan, but I get to a few movies with my wife, who loves them. A good movie is sometimes a great break on the weekend from life, and I wanted to get some recommendations from others. Winter time in Colorado keeps me busy, and I love reading books, but sometimes curling up to watch a movie with the family is something I look forward to enjoying.

    There are more and more movies being released all the time, of all sorts, but it seems the geek, fantasy, science fiction genre has grown quite a bit. As a kid it felt like we had few of these style movies, and settled for the comic book genre to explore amazing imaginary ideas. Now it seems between Amazon, Netflix and other major studios, there are more new sci-fi or tech films than I have time to watch.

    Are there films you enjoyed in 2018? Perhaps there are a few you’re looking forward to in 2019 that you await. Take a minute today and give a quick review of what you’ve enjoyed and what films with technology, fantasy, or just thrilling sections that you think others might enjoy on a night away from work.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.6MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Financial Advice for Techies

    I’m not writing a post here on how to manage your money, but I will point you to Troy Hunt’s post. He wrote a great one called 10 Personal Finance Lessons for Technology Professionals.

    Read it.

    I was lucky enough to be born with lots of advantages, not the least of which was some intelligence. However, as many people can attest, intelligence doesn’t mean you can manage money. There are lots of doctors out there that have gone bankrupt and lost their earnings.

    My parents taught me a bit about money and I’ve tried to do that with my kids. I’ve tried to be open and honest and help my kids grow up and at least understand the implications of their decisions.

    Troy has good advice, and I think he’s written a great post. I’ve followed a similar path, investing in real estate, though perhaps not with the focus of Troy. It’s put my wife and I in a good place, and as our kids leave the house, we are prepared to live a comfortable and enjoyable life.

    Read the post. Ask me, or Troy, questions if you are looking for help.

  • The Downside of Tool Autonomy

    I am a big believer in letting teams of people work in a way that allows them some autonomy to solve a problem. I think this is especially important in the software world, where developers need to experiment and learn from the new ideas that they investigate. They need to be able to try new techniques, technologies, and platforms. Yes, that includes NoSQL data stores.

    At the same time, this can lead to developers becoming captivated by new tools and techniques, all of which are good for advancing skills and code maturity, but can also lead to a very disparate environment where there are no best of breed solutions, or no standards for writing features. As the number of developers grow, this also raises the bar for each individual to know and understand more languages or technologies.

    While I do think it’s easy to pick up logic and syntax, when writing production code, we want to ensure we’re optimizing the way we work. The way in which we might write some code when we start with a new API, SDK, language, etc. is often not the way we’d write that code after a year or experience. At least, I hope it’s not the same way. There are nuances, tips, and tricks in how to better structure code that we learn as our experience grows.

    When I was at the Redgate Software office last year, I noticed that there was a short article posted on our internal blog. This noted that there is a set list of tools and technologies to use when building our products. This isn’t intended to be a long term immutable list, and the post noted that other choices are possible, but we want to avoid an unending growing list of tools when we have identified there is a good tool in a space. There is an approval process to propose and new tool and explain why it really is needed.

    At Redgate, we’re pretty flexible and open, so I’m sure this isn’t a tough process. However it does prevent every developer from implementing their special little code into a project. We’ve had people use various different data stores, different types of web technologies, and it becomes a maintenance issue over time. Even the VB.NET component we used for years at SQLServerCentral caused headaches as there wasn’t any experience in the company in this language.

    I think it’s worth having some light overview that ensures an organization isn’t adding technology just for the sake of making one or two developers happy. There is a finite amount of time to spend learning and growing, and while it’s important that technology workers do this, we also want to developer more experience and expertise in a few areas. Limiting tools and technologies helps preserve a balance that allows for growth, but ensures the expansion isn’t unchecked.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.6MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • Webinar next week on Database DevOps

    Next week is my webinar on why the database is the heart of DevOps. You can still register today to discuss and debate why we need to ensure that database development is integrated into any DevOps work we do for other software.

    Webinar social_Heart of DevOps

    Register: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3005019550714731265?source=KB