Three Days on the Oregon Coast with No Laptop
We left the devices at home. No pull requests, no Slack notifications, no status meetings. Just fog, tide pools, and an alarming amount of chowder.
Recent Posts
// Retry with exponential backoff
async function retry(fn, opts) {
for (let i = 0; i < opts.max; i++) {
try { return await fn(); }
catch(e) {
await sleep(2 ** i * 1000);
}
}
}
async function retry(fn, opts) {
for (let i = 0; i < opts.max; i++) {
try { return await fn(); }
catch(e) {
await sleep(2 ** i * 1000);
}
}
}
A Retry Pattern That Actually Works in Production
Most retry implementations I see in the wild are either too naive or too clever. Here is the one I have used in production for five years.
My Daughter Asked Me What an API Is
I tried the restaurant analogy. She said, "So it's like a waiter but for computers?" Close enough.
Talk: Zero-Downtime Deployments with Docker Swarm
Recording from my talk at DevOpsDays Nashville. Covers blue-green deployments, health checks, and the rollback strategy that saved us at 2 AM.
Microservices Are Not the Answer (Usually)
After migrating three monoliths to microservices and then two of them back, I have some thoughts. The industry's obsession with distributed systems as a default starting point is costing teams years of productivity they will never recover.
"The best code is no code at all. Every new line of code you willingly bring into the world is code that has to be debugged, code that has to be read and understood."Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror
My Home Lab Rebuild: From Raspberry Pis to Proxmox
The Pis served me well, but it was time for something with a bit more horsepower. Here is the full parts list, configuration, and what I would do differently.
# Quick git alias
git config --global alias.yolo \
'!git add -A && git commit -m "$(curl -s whatthecommit.com/index.txt)"'
git config --global alias.yolo \
'!git add -A && git commit -m "$(curl -s whatthecommit.com/index.txt)"'
On Mornings, Routines, and Letting Go of Optimization
I spent a decade optimizing my morning routine. Then I had kids. Now my morning routine is whatever happens between the first cry and the school bus.
Event Sourcing in Node.js: A Practical Guide for the Skeptical
You have read the theory. You have seen the diagrams. But every example uses a banking app. Here is event sourcing applied to a real e-commerce platform, with all the ugly parts included.
Stop Writing Unit Tests for Your Controllers
Integration tests catch more real bugs with less brittle test code. I will die on this hill.