In software, simplicity is the key to good design. Users don’t need to struggle with complexity; they want tools that help them work, not get in the way. But tools like dbt Cloud, which should make data transformation easier, do the opposite. Instead of a simple process, they wrap users in layers of Git integration, adding confusion where there should be none.
Whether it’s way back when I used to fumble through htop at work to figure out what’s happening with some on-prem server, or if it’s today when
lazydocker and k9s have grown into critical tools that maximize my productivity,
I’ve always been a huge fan of terminal UIs–especially those that are highly interactive.
In this post I’d like to cover a cool python decorator that’s part of the built-in functools library called @singledispatch. It’s a
favorite of mine and something I’ve been using quite a bit over the past year. I’m surprised how little I see it in projects I come across
so hopefully this post will help it find its way into a repo or two. ;)
For decades, traditionally non-tech/low-tech companies have started to realize the competitive edge to be gained from investing in technology. We’ve seen an explosion of various “must-have” technical capabilities: real-time customer insights, predictive modeling, search engine optimization, personalization AI, just to name a few. The result of this is that the demand for engineers has also exploded and it would be a challenge to find an organization, in any industry, that does not have open positions for engineering roles.
Over the past few months, I’ve been asked about this enough times that I eventually found it a fitting topic for the first post for this blog. Let me start by saying that I loved working at Netflix! Nothing in life is perfect, but my time working for Netflix was a period of immense professional and personal growth. It felt like the first opportunity in my career where I could test the limits of my technical skill set. The culture of personal responsibility taught me how to own my failures and how to understand my successes. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from my colleagues and many of my professional relationships have extended into incredible friendships. Much of this fuels the question many people ask me: “Why did you leave Netflix to join Tabular, a brand new company?”