Category: Web work

These days, most of my work is very related to the online world. Building web sites, reviewing web applications, integrating with web services, coordinating people who are far away from each other, etc. Whenever I find a new tool or service or an innovative, interesting idea about working online, I share it in this category.

API Platform – REST and GraphQL framework to build modern API-driven projects

API Platform is a framework for building API-driven projects. I came across this via this blog post that covers the recent release of v2.4. The list of features and components is quite extensive:

  • Read and write support for MongoDB
  • Read support for Elasticsearch
  • Message queues support via a number of brokers, including Amazon SQS
  • Server Push support for HTTP/2
  • Full compatibility with OpenAPI v3 (Swagger)
  • Automated admin interface and project documentation
  • A variety of components from the Symfony framework

I’m pretty sure that I’ll be taking this for a spin in the nearest future!

Logging best practices

Logging, I think, is one of the least debated subjects in the software development. Everyone does it at least to some degree. Everyone agrees that good logs are important. But beyond that, there’s enough debate on what are the best practices, tools, and options. We need more of blog posts like this one and slides like these.

Paul Le Roux – Criminal Mastermind

Here’s the name I haven’t heard before – Paul Le Roux. He started off as an Open Source software developer, but quickly turned into one of, if not the largest cyber criminals.

Reply All podcast did an episode about him recently, and the story is mind-blowing.

The mention of Paul Le Roux trying to buy a submarine from the North Korea for his drug trafficking affairs reminded me of another crime documentary – Operation Odessa. Here’s the trailer to get you started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpSHbuRC-No

The Grand Theory of Amazon

As a heavy user of Amazon Web Services, I often find myself in deep discussions about Amazon company, its broad portfolio of brands, the way they make money, and their strategy going forward.

Admittedly, that’s not an easy area to understand, let alone explain or argue about. That’s why I really enjoyed this video. It is oversimplifying a lot of things, but it does a nice job of shedding some light on what is going now, where it is heading, and how it is similar and different to some other companies.

BOFH – The Bastard Operator From Hell

The other day I came across the classic “The Bastard Operator From Hell“. I don’t think that anybody knows how many of the BOFH stories were ever written, but this site has a good collection of them.

For those of you, who haven’t heard about BOFH, Wikipedia provides a good summary:

The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) is a fictional rogue computer operator who takes out his anger on users and others who pester him with their computer problems, uses his expertise against his enemies and manipulates his employer.
Several other people have written stories about BOFHs, but those by Simon Travaglia are considered canonical. The BOFH stories were originally posted in 1992 to Usenet by Travaglia, with some being reprinted in Datamation. They were published weekly from 1995 to 1999 in Network Week. Since 2000 they have been published regularly in The Register (UK). Several collections of the stories have been published as books.
By extension, the term is also used to refer to any system administrator who displays the qualities of the original.
The early accounts of the BOFH took place in a university; later the scenes were set in an office workplace. In 2000 (BOFH 2k), the BOFH and his pimply-faced youth (PFY) assistant moved to a new company.

If tech humor in the office is your thing, have a look at Dilbert comic strips as well.