Jason Packer

OK, let's talk about Platform Engineering. Good grief. Platforming is a topic that has grown into a life of its own in tech, and not in a good way. I'm going to row against the current. Platform teams are an anti-pattern. If your developers don't know how to properly provision and maintain infrastructure that is both supportable and minimizes cost and emissions, then you need better developers. Maintaining infrastructure in a consistent, supportable, optimized fashion does not require a team of people. A platform is not infrastructure nor is it the automation to maintain said infrastructure. A platform is a collection of APIs and messages that bind applications together. Again, this does not require a dedicated team of people. Platform teams are waste. Platform engineering is cover for justifying that waste. #platformengineering #platforms

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When I first started writing about APIs ten years ago, most executives didn't even know what APIs were. Pitching from the bottom up was a hard sell. But nowadays, the conversation has changed. "There's no more need to convince," Kin Lane told me. "The trick now is how you educate, align, and keep them investing in the right areas and not getting distracted." "Most organizations already have dozens, hundreds, or more APIs," says Adam DuVander. "They’ve had a chance to see the benefits. They’ve also noticed the downsides of API sprawl. Both of these things bring more awareness at the executive level." My latest post on the Treblle blog looks at why there's increasing interest in API strategies at the executive level. I think leadership is realizing the operational benefits, seeing the monetization potential, and coming to terms with the need to govern a burgeoning catalog of services. There are even new roles in the c-suite emerging to oversee API strategies. Hope people enjoy reading this one! And I hope it reflects the final nail in the coffin of articles about 'why we need APIs.' 😉 https://lnkd.in/e8k9xvpr

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Reviewed A Much Feared Book = My first degree connection, Junade Ali, is a much reviled expert on Software NotWorking and NotWaysOfWorking also known as Agile. You can have your software fast or in a state where it won't blow up in your face. But getting both at the same time in an era of layoffs and restructuring is, at best, challenging and, at worst, impossible. So says Dr Junade Ali, who spoke to The Register in the wake of the furor generated following a study that found that all was not well in the state of Agile. Ali points to research (commissioned by himself) that shows British adults would much rather software worked properly than was chock full of new features. "They actually rank getting the latest features as quickly as possible as the least important thing for them when using computer systems. According to Dr. Ali, this stands in stark contrast to several metrics used in DevOps and Agile methodologies. "They're very much about the speed of delivery of software on one hand, and then on the other hand, the speed of resolving issues." It has been a golden era for anyone covering outages, as banks, retailers, mobile networks, and cloud vendors have all been hit recently, something Ali attributes to pushing out updates with inadequate reliability. He goes on to worry about the impact incidents, such as the recent CrowdStrike problems, will have on the trust of users. After all, legitimate security patches arising from 0-days and the like will need to be installed as soon as possible. However, according to Ali, a loss of trust could result in user resistance. A lot of the Agile fundamentalists will argue that user stories are sufficient. These essentially just describe functional behavior, but they lack a generalizable specification or nonfunctional requirements. Ali has quite the library of doom and has written extensively on the topic, covering multiple engineering catastrophes over the years. Yet his take is that the problem does not necessarily lie in the testing process: "What you often find is that the typical catastrophic computer failure starts with there being a flaw in the initial requirements engineering process. "And then what happens is that it cascades because often those issues are covered up or engineers won't feel as if they're able to be safe to raise the alarm. And so that snowballs throughout the entire software development process until a catastrophe happens." CrowdStrike is an example of a disaster so visible that trying to quietly cover it up was simply not an option. Frameworks and processes - Is this the fault of Agile? Engineers being afraid to speak up was certainly not what the authors of the original manifesto had in mind. However, the ideals of the original Agile Manifesto have been eroded over the years as frameworks and processes have sprung up around them. Full Disclosure: I paid $ 0.99 to buy the digital book from Amazon. I was paid at the rate of 0.0 $ per day to write this favorable review.

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▓▓▓▓▓ DESIGN SYSTEMS DIE IN DARKNESS ▓▓▓▓ When you don't hear from teams using your design system, we've learned over the years that it's typically not a sign of "everything is going great" but "something is probably wrong." We teach our client teams to be very skeptical about silence, and to be proactive in reaching out to teams who ought to be using the design system. We help our clients set up the right collaborative channels, model the process, and frankly help our teams embody the vibes of a friendly and successful design system team. You can master design system governance with this one weird trick: when in doubt, talk. https://lnkd.in/eghbE3c4 #designsystems #governance #design #ui #uxdesign

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In a sea of bullshit-heavy marketing, it is such a joy to read how Steve breaks down the challenges that developers face as we all try to balance on top of this moving animal of AI. He calls me out as a "CHOP" detractor but in reality, I'm a beehive kicker too. I don't actually have a beef with tools that add value, and right now, chat ABSOLUTELY has a ton of value for developers. So long as those developers are willing to use the tool enough to understand how to use the tool, they'll get value out of completions, chat, agents, and whatever modalities we discover tomorrow. I believe that's what unites the groups that he points to, junior or senior: a willingness to learn how to dance this new dance with the models pays off, but you have to get over an initial learning curve. Ever it was thus. Seriously, read this. Also, man Steve is cool 💖

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If you're the kind of person who's excited about all the recent S3 feature announcements (bucket policy unlocks via temporary root sessions, up to millions of buckets per account, pagination and region filtering for ListBuckets, conditional writes, ListCallerAccessGrants API) and you're attending re:Invent, then you should come to our storage track session, STG306 Advanced security patterns on Amazon S3. Learn how to use all the exciting new stuff securely in the most interactive format available at re:Invent!

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I don't see a lot of research on the cart drawer vs. cart page front. Some will say you should test this. That's not the best advice. 99% of the time a good cart drawer will outperform a bad cart page and vice versa. So testing the default designs won't be enough. The solution is to figure out the weaknesses of each and eliminate them, then test. For example: - Cart drawers by default usually don't work well with browser navigation. Make sure the back button closes it. - Cart drawers are modals, make sure scrolling down doesn't scroll the main page, elements of the main page don't appear on top of the drawer, etc. - Cart pages on mobile typically don't have a fixed "Checkout" button, you can easily fix that. - Cart pages can't "close", make sure to have a "Back" or "Continue shopping" button that actually gets you exactly to where and how you were. - Cart pages can be slow, make sure they load immediately and in full. Perfect one or the other, and there's not much difference on mobile. Desktops are another story. On one hand you can have a simple side drawer that doesn't interrupt the user journey. On the other hand you might have a lot of interaction on the cart page, which makes a drawer difficult to use. That's worth testing. Finally, something else worth testing is a small cart popup. When you add a product or click the cart header icon, it pops up and shows a short summary of your items, with a link to go to the main cart. #ecommerce #shopify #shopifyplus

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How do you make technical folks trust your marketing? The mistake we notice companies make, again and again, is to promote a solution before they’ve shown they know about the problem developers want to solve. What strategies have you found effective to demonstrate you understand dev problems?

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The death of tech debt. The emergence of highly capable AI models, like the O1 from OpenAI, is reshaping how we approach software development. Yesterday, I developed a port of the Drupal CMS system using O1, focusing on foundational elements like data, taxonomy, and other key systems. What’s interesting is Drupal, being such a complex piece of software, is full of technical debt. Over time, you can see how layers of band-aids and shortcuts were applied, resulting in a system that's difficult to maintain. Technical debt refers to the extra work created when developers choose a quick solution over a long-term one. It accumulates over time, slowing down progress and making future updates harder. Traditionally, dealing with this debt required significant time and effort, but these new AI systems are changing that. With Ai tools powered by agentic models like O1, you can refactor and optimize systems like Drupal almost instantly. AI's ability to identify and solve problems with little oversight means we’re no longer bound by technical debt in the same way. As we move forward, the choice between speed and quality becomes less of a trade-off. AI gives us the ability to build, refactor, and scale without the baggage of past decisions.

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🔥 Interesting insights from Search Off The Record with the Product Manager overseeing Google Search. Lots of good stuff in here. Like did you ever wonder about the origins of EEAT? It turns out, it was a mnemonic device for Quality Raters, created by them, as a shorthand for concepts used in their early evaluations. It was later added to the QRG. Tucker confirms that EEAT is NOT IN THE ALGORITHMS; rather, it serves as a useful reminder of general concepts. Interestingly, this concept didn't even originate with Google but is now included in the QRG to prompt evaluators to think in those terms. Remember the QRG is for Raters not SEOs. She also highlights that EEAT is not always crucial as a concept either. 🔗🔺 Search Off The Record https://lnkd.in/gjU2mViF

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I've worked on a number of libraries in my career, some open source and some not. One thing I've learned is that it's hard to design good library interfaces! This was stuck in my drafts for a bit and was on the verge of getting too long, so I edited it down and published it. Here's a quick read on the lessons I've learned along the way that might be helpful to folks. #softwareengineering #programming #softwaredesign https://lnkd.in/gFVpPA8F

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Hey there, a question for my content architect chums out there - and concerning a conundrum I'm sure you too face, like, daily. That question being, what is the correct degree of separation between types when building a content model? Does any difference between elements warrant a new type, or is it better to consolidate types as much as possible - even if this means overloading it for some users? To what degree should content authoring be a consideration, and should authoring requirements allow duplicative types for the sake of comprehensibility? Image and Icon, or just Image? Link and Call to Action, or just Link? For the record I favor parsimony in model design, and am loathe to mint overly-duplicative variants. But I also understand that Carousel, Tabs and Gallery are all more comprehensible types than Item List. Yet I don't want to have to update and otherwise maintain three types when one will do the trick. (BTW, if ye olde CMS's model was based on formal semantics you'd be able to spit out new classes simply with subclasses, where changes to a parent would be inherited by its children.:) So how granular are your types? Looking forward to everyone's thoughts - and war stories!

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Are you tired of me publicly criticizing the ICMA? If so, please read this post because I promise I will stop if one simple condition is met. This isn't a gotcha. This isn't a bait and switch. This isn't clickbait. I am not going to make an unreasonable demand or request of the ICMA - International City/County Management Association or the executive board members. So, what is this condition? It is very simple. This morning at 8:30 AM, Jessica Cowles will give a presentation on ethics at #ICMA2024. She will be joined by Jeff Towery and Valmarie Turner - two members of the executive board who voted to publicly censure James Freed. She will also be joined by three other executive board members (Pam Davis, Jessi Bon, and Steve Bartha) who have had access to the Freed depositions for nearly a year. Members are encouraged to ask questions of Jessica and the other presenters. Today, you have a historic opportunity to confront key players in the James Freed scandal. You can hold them accountable. I have exposed the unethical behavior of Cowles numerous times. If Cowles & Company are allowed to spend an entire hour blowing smoke up your ass about the importance of ethics without being held accountable for her/their actions then I will cease and desist. That is my simple condition. If no member of the #ICMA has the guts to stand up and demand answers from the ethics director about her own unethical conduct then I will stop publicly criticizing the organization. If nobody has the guts to confront the executive board members about their votes or when (if ever) they read the depositions given by ICMA staff then I will stop. NOTE: Someone has to send me a recording of the entire session to prove it. I will gladly pay $100 to the first person who sends me the recording so that I have proof that all the talk about accountability and higher ethical standards is bullshit. _________________ P.S. I would love for someone to ask Cowles & Company if they agree with the September 9th statement by Jason Grant, Ph.D., CPM that public censures are not punitive.

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These "prodverbs" (aka production proverbs) capture general beliefs that SREs have (or, IMHO, should have) that I've collected over the past few years. These prodverbs provide insight into running services in production, and working as an SRE. Each prodverb links to a talk or article that describes the principles in more detail. This is our first collection of prodverbs — look for more here in the coming months! #GoogleCloudNext

If you’re lucky, Agile today is very much like... Been there. Done that. Works. The agile community has had a massive impact on how work gets done today. Many younger people have no idea how broken IT organizations were 15 years ago. Does anyone still remember how project managers and requirements engineers spent months predicting a future that never materialized? Meanwhile, dev teams built things no one needed because they had no chance to talk to users. This created insane costs of failure, delays, and frustration. The agile community created the "operating system" for future-proof organizations. That was before the Big 5 consultancies swooped in and started selling their hallucinations, turning agile into "lots of useless roles and meetings for micromanagers." Many important questions have been left unanswered:  - Does creative entrepreneurial spirit have a place in our organizations?  - Are we attracting the talent that might otherwise disrupt our business elsewhere?  - Is it safe to fail, or will I get roasted when our assumptions prove wrong?  - Are we running experiments with real users effectively and in a structured way?  - Will I get funding for my bold ideas, or will the HIPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinions) always win?  - Is it a viable career path to become an innovator/intrapreneur, or will I end up in an "innovation department" playing innovation theater until retirement? I’ll leave it to Schrödinger’s crowd to decide if the agile cat is dead or alive. But it’s definitely time for some to move forward. If you're an agile transformation coach and haven’t figured out the path forward, feeding the cat is going to get tough — and it won’t be long before it’s very much dead. Innovation theater never works for long. The real treasure for most organizations today is knowing what *not* to do and executing the right things at full speed. Stop the innovation theater. Getting stuff done in sprints and testing the waters with real users still works best.

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Recently, I was given the opportunity to try out a tool called Faddom. If you haven't heard about it, it is a tool for application dependency mapping. I have to say that I was blown away with the visibility it provides and just how quickly it returned valuable insights to my environment. As someone, that has tried many different monitoring and application visibility tools in this space, Faddom is definitely the easiest and most effective I have tried. Very cool software! 🚀 https://bit.ly/3yZ7GgI #visibilityposture

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We're going to figure out how to build serious software using LLM's. Not crappy bootstraps that don't scale. Not sub-par language and frameworks choices. Not unmaintanable crap. We're going to figure out how to build clean, scalable, high quality code bases, and then build on top of them. There's 15 of us, not including PollBotPlus, your_life_assistant and variable_not defined. Want to join, and learn how? Comment interested for an invite.

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