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Unit tests are the worst. Don’t get me wrong, they are an invaluable part of any CI pipeline or automation. But man are they a pain to write.
Latest: Test-Driven Development with AI: The Right Way to Code Using Generative AI
I look forward to the first of December every year. Not because we’re squarely in the Christmas season, but because of AWS re:Invent. It’s always a highlight of my year professionally because I get to see a lot of people I interact with in the community in person. In many cases this is the only time of year I get to see them face to face. This year was extra special because I took part in the first-ever “road to re:Invent” hackathon, which put me and 49 other developers on a bus and drove us from LA to Vegas.
Latest: Road to re:Invent Hackathon: How Not to Build a Serverless App
Episode Summary Have you ever wished you could quit your job and go create content all day long while working for yourself? You can! In this episode, Yan Cui joins Allen Helton to talk about full-time content creation and consultancy within the serverless world. The two discuss Yan’s journey to greatness, weigh in on the use of generative AI in content creation, and cover tips and tricks to get better engagement.
Latest: Becoming a full-time serverless content creator with Yan Cui
Yesterday was my birthday. I just turned 34, landing me on the soft side of the “mid-30s”. I’ve always had a hard time with birthdays because in my head I have that feeling of “I’m going to be young forever.” But aches, pains, and hangovers are beginning to tell me otherwise.
Latest: Show your personality
Once a quarter, my company puts on an internal conference for continued education. It covers a wide breadth of topics, from quality assurance to mobile development to security. I am responsible for the cloud sessions.
Every year I give my brother his Christmas gifts in an untraditional way. It started off as just a way to be funny on Christmas day, but eventually escalated to the point where I make it a whole ordeal.
Latest: I Made the Best Christmas Present Ever... Again. This Time With Alexa, WebSockets, and Mobile Apps
Last week I ran an experiment. I had a sticky note on my desk labeled “Architecture Diagrams”. Whenever I was in a meeting, if I said I can draw a diagram for that, I wrote a tick mark.
Latest: Solutions Architect Tips - How to Build Your First Architecture Diagram
Last week I was updating the public workspace for Momento in Postman when I saw a little helmet icon in the corner of my screen. I hadn’t seen that icon before, and being curious by nature, I stopped what I was doing and clicked on it. Much to my surprise, it opened up Postbot - the native AI helper inside of Postman.
For years I’ve been proud to say I build 100% serverless cloud applications. I wore it as a badge of honor that the software I designed could elastically scale at every tier and cost virtually nothing to run at small to medium scale.
A few years ago my dad told me he wanted a “chainsaw mill” for Christmas. After learning that meant he wanted a contraption that holds a chainsaw in a way that he can cut logs into dimensional lumber, I asked him for a link so I could do my research.
I’m about to tell you something and I don’t want you to judge me for it. I have a Windows machine. Always have. I’ve never had a Mac or anything Apple, really. Just some Airpods. But my phone is Android, my work laptop is Windows, my home PC is Windows, and I’m not sorry about it.
In 2023 I spent a lot of time learning about real-time notifications. I learned about the concepts, the different protocols, and how to implement them to seamlessly push updates to a user interface. I won’t claim to be an expert, but I definitely feel comfortable with the different ways to get a message from a server to an end user.
Latest: Building For Interactivity: When Async Is Not Enough
Today is my last day at Tyler Technologies. I’ve been here for just about 11 years.
Serverless applications are known for a few things. They scale to meet demand, including down to 0. They are fault-tolerant in the event of a transient network outage. They cost almost nothing to run when compared to containers or traditional software deployments in most cases. And they’re known for speed. Serverless applications are fast.
Latest: How a Centralized Cache Elevates Serverless Applications
Hey everyone, it’s been a while. I feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes since the last time I posted something. In case you missed it, a few weeks ago I faced the hardest tragedy a parent can go through. I still have no words. It’s an indescribable pain that I genuinely hope nobody reading this will ever go through.
Latest: I'm back!
I’ve been blogging since 2019. I started off intermittently posting articles maybe once a month, as we all do. As I got more and more comfortable with writing, I started setting goals for myself. I tried to write 3 articles a month. I mostly hit it, but didn’t quite reach it. However, I was bitten by the writing bug.
Latest: Making Sense of Cross-Posting: Knowing Where And Why to Publish Your Content
I’m a software engineer and writer focused on building practical cloud and AI systems with community.
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