Software Development’s Post

Cast your mind back to a time when software development was a battle with the intricacies of physical computing, devoid of the convenience of an Operating System (OS). Thankfully, that era is behind us, with the introduction of elegant platforms called OS. Platforms excel because they standardize the common basis of tech stacks. Done right, platforms boost innovation, simplify work, and leverage scale to improve cost performance. To foster innovation, platforms need to be meaningfully abstract, allowing the technology on top to thrive. The capabilities served by the platform should benefit from it and not be constrained by it. A good platform is straightforward to use and easily accessible. The platform's purpose would be defeated if it required much effort.  Platforms, by scaling, can drive value to the upper parts of the tech stack in ways no other capability can. An extreme example is the hundreds of millions of dollars AWS, GCP, and Azure spend in computing power, data centre cooling, networks, etc., for us to run Lambdas and Functions for a few seconds and be charged a few cents. In the OS example, it abstracts access to information in disk sectors, giving us another language, such as writing or reading a document. It translates the 1s, 0s, and physical parameters into a language we easily understand to write and run code. Specialized engineers write OSs so that we can download them very cost-effectively. Companies building their in-house platforms must be cautious. The engineering investment and effort can be daunting. They should clearly understand the business domain the platform must abstract for - or, basically, the platform's objective. It can be so complex to build a platform, that companies must select its builders carefully. Many companies believe a platform should be built by the IT infrastructure department because IT infra sits under the software! But they soon find out that the infra team, because it doesn't sit close enough to the business domain, can't abstract the technical complexity, and most IT infrastructure teams deliver a traditional IT service—with a ticket for a Docker container! And here enters Platform Engineering! But this is another fascinating topic we will have to discuss another day. #softwaredevelopment #platformengineering #innovation #buildplatform

Developers invest a significant portion of their time addressing technical debt. And legacy systems tend to have an above-average amount of it; companies should carefully evaluate the ROI of maintaining these older systems. https://bit.ly/3yyyZ0J #TechDebt #DevOps

Legacy systems often rely on outdated languages and technologies, making them hard to support. With original developers gone, current teams hesitate to modify or shut them down, unsure of their criticality. These systems are difficult to integrate with modern solutions, hindering the adoption of faster, more efficient technologies and causing competitive inefficiencies. https://bit.ly/3yyyZ0J #LegacySystems #TechDebt

🚀 New Blog Post Alert! In the race to keep up with the digital evolution, organizations must adhere to the mantra of ”build fast and ship even faster.” However, with a continuous focus on building and scaling faster, the best practices for managing infrastructure are often put on the back burner, eventually leading to a phenomenon commonly known as “infrastructure drift.” Discover the underlying triggers, consequences, and intelligent solutions to prevent infrastructure drift with our VP Engineering, Rohit Raveendran. Read more: https://lnkd.in/dpkr3-ES #infrastructuredrift #IaC #cloudcomputing #cloudnative

Ever wondered how infrastructure drift affects your digital journey? Check out this insightful blog to discover underlying triggers, consequences, and intelligent solutions to prevent infrastructure drift.

Why does good code matter? If it works… it works, right? No. Not at all. Quality in software development isn't just about functionality; it's about reliability, scalability, and security. One of the biggest problems we at Active Logic see when inheriting code from “low cost” dev vendors, is that the code needs to be re-written, completely nullifying any investment you’ve made! Well-written software reduces maintenance and CLOUD costs, minimizes downtime, and enhances user satisfaction. Cutting corners might save money upfront, but it often leads to higher expenses in the long run due to frequent fixes and updates. Invest in quality from the start to ensure your software remains a valuable asset that drives growth and success.

Legacy systems often rely on outdated languages and technologies, making them hard to support. With original developers gone, current teams hesitate to modify or shut them down, unsure of their criticality. These systems are difficult to integrate with modern solutions, hindering the adoption of faster, more efficient technologies and causing competitive inefficiencies. https://bit.ly/3yyyZ0J #LegacySystems #TechDebt

Error Budgeting: Balancing Innovation and Reliability As software systems become more complicated, it gets difficult to maintain high levels of reliability while simultaneously innovating and introducing new features. One sane way out of this problem is to use an error budget, which is the maximum amount of time that a system can fail without negative consequences. For example, suppose a company has an SLA that guarantees 99.9% uptime for its service. This means that the company has an error budget of 8 hours, 45 minutes, and 36 seconds per year. If the service is running smoothly with few or no errors, the development team can “spend” this error budget in any way they like. For instance, they can launch new features, experiment with new technologies, or take other risks that might improve the service. However, if the number of errors exceeds the error budget, the dev team must reduce the number of errors to a level that allows the launch to proceed. This idea encourages teams to minimize real incidents and maximize innovation by taking risks within acceptable limits. It also reduces the gap between development teams, whose goals are innovation and agility, and operations, who are concerned with stability and security. If a team exceeds its error budget, it means that it is doing too much innovative or experimental work, and needs to cut back for some time, before things stabilize. This can be a difficult decision, but it’s necessary to ensure that the service remains reliable and consistent over time. I hope this helps! #sre #devops #softwareengineers #softwareengineering #sitereliabilityengineering #atlassian #cloud #cloudengineering #software #softwaredevelopement

🚀 Excited to share some insights on Scalability in Software Development! 💡 In today's digital landscape, scalability isn't just a buzzword; it's a crucial aspect of building robust and successful software systems. Whether you're working on a small project or a large-scale enterprise application, understanding scalability principles is paramount for ensuring that your software can handle increased loads, accommodate growth, and maintain performance under varying conditions. Here are some key points to consider: 1️⃣ Design for Growth: Start with a scalable architecture from the outset. Think about how your system will evolve over time and design components that can scale horizontally and vertically to meet future demands. 2️⃣ Horizontal vs. Vertical Scaling: Understand the difference between horizontal scaling (adding more instances or nodes) and vertical scaling (increasing the resources of existing instances). Choose the right scaling approach based on your application's requirements and constraints. 3️⃣ Load Balancing: Implement load balancing mechanisms to distribute incoming traffic evenly across multiple servers or resources. This helps prevent overloading individual components and ensures high availability and reliability. 4️⃣ Caching Strategies: Utilize caching to reduce the load on backend services and improve response times. Implement caching at various layers of your application (e.g., database caching, in-memory caching) to optimize performance. 5️⃣ Fault Tolerance and Resilience: Build fault-tolerant systems that can gracefully handle failures and recover from errors without impacting the overall user experience. Use techniques like redundancy, failover, and circuit breakers to enhance system resilience. 6️⃣ Performance Monitoring and Optimization: Continuously monitor the performance of your application and identify performance bottlenecks. Optimize critical components, database queries, and algorithms to improve overall system efficiency. 7️⃣ Scalability Testing: Conduct scalability testing to evaluate how well your system performs under increasing loads. Use tools like load testing and stress testing to simulate real-world scenarios and identify scalability limitations. Remember, scalability isn't just about handling more users or data—it's about building a flexible and adaptable system that can evolve and grow alongside your business needs. What scalability challenges have you encountered in your projects, and how did you address them? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments below! #Scalability #SoftwareDevelopment #TechTalk #Engineering #DigitalTransformation #DeveloperCommunity 🌐💻🔍

Software development has become increasingly reliant on 'infrastructure-as-code'. This facilitates an automated, programmatic approach to managing and provisioning resources for modern applications. The ability to bring software development and infrastructure together means more efficient, cost-effective operations 🚀💻☁️ Infrastructure-as-code is the code-driven approach for defining, launching, and managing server applications and resources. This shift away from manual management of cloud resources and server configurations allows for greater scalability, improved security and reliability, and increased speed to market for applications. 🔧🔥🤝 The advantages of 'infrastructure-as-code' are undeniable. If your organisation is yet to explore this software development solution, now is the time to do so and keep ahead of the curve. #InfrastructureAsCode #SoftwareDevelopment #CloudEngineering