Recursion

What's Recursion?

A recursive function solves a problem by solving smaller instances of the larger problem. It does this by calling itself with different parameters until a base case is reached, and the function simply returns vis-à-vis a non-recursive expression. Recursion is most commonly used to traverse data structures with indeterminate depth, such as multi-dimensional arrays and trees. However, it can be used to solve most any problem that is more typically solved with iteration and mutation (albeit with reservations).

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Golang: a Python Killer?

Go is a newer-generation (2012) multi-purpose programming language developed by Google to address the challenges of software-development at-scale and concurrent programming.

The most well-known projects written in Go are Docker and Kubernetes, but many other essential cloud-native tools are also written in Go, including Terraform and influxdb.

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Kubernetes Secret Management

Most apps consume secret data (e.g. API keys, database passwords etc.). We explored managing configuration in the first part of this series using configmaps. However, configmaps are meant
for storing non-sensitive configuration data because they are unencrypted at rest and usually are set by a yaml file, which would likely be checked into source control.

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Local Development in Kubernetes

In this second post of my Exploring Kubernetes series we're going to make our k8s development environment less onerous. The code can be found here.

There's continuing debate whether you should local k8s development at all. One camp says that you should develop on a remote cluster in order to mimic production as much as possible. While this has merits, there are two big disadvantages to remote development: cost and availability.

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Exploring Kubernetes

With cloud native and microservice architectures gaining traction, Kubernetes (k8s) has become the standard tool for managing deployments. But what is it, do I need it, and how do I most effectively get started with it? That's what this post aims to clarify.

I'm no k8s expert. I've been picking it up because I'm interested in the devops space and because I see the problem domain it solves in my daily work. I've found the best way to learn something is to simply start working with it. Even better, is to write about it, as writing reinforces what you learned. If you can't explain something clearly, then you don't really understand it.

In this series of posts we'll develop a basic expressjs server, use k8s to develop locally and deploy it to a production environment. We'll take it step-by-step. After the first post we'll have an expressjs server running and be able to deploy it via k8s to a development environment. In further posts we'll explore local development, secret management, production clusters and stateful components, like databases.

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Evaluating an Existing Tech Project

A dilemma often faced by professional programmers is whether to work with what they have, or start fresh when inheriting others' code.

They say it's easier to write code than to read it (especially other people's code). Why is this?

  1. Unless the code is perfectly readable, it's challenging to put yourself in someone else's head.
  2. Every project has context and baggage that is often not documented.
  3. As a new developer you have the luxury to be a critic. The former developer had deadlines to meet, family crises etc. You will also, soon enough...

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The Essence of Functional Programming

This post is aimed toward giving a basic understanding of functional programming (fp) for the beginning to intermediate JavaScript developer with a few years of experience. This is not an endorsement of applying such techniques in arbitrary circumstances. Other factors, such as existing code, co-workers' experiences and preferences etc. are important factors when deciding to use this style.

Functional programming (fp) is getting a lot of attention in the webdev/JavaScript community, due to the visibility of libraries such as ReactJs, Redux and Rxjs.

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