Category Archives: technology

Web design patterns

You’ve probably seen these acronyms around : SSG, SSR, MPA, SPA, PWA. Web design is getting complex and this tries to explain (with the help of other good content) what these acronyms mean :

PWA : Progressive Web App, web apps developed using a number of specific technologies and standard patterns to allow them to take advantage of both web and native app features. Not sure if this is a web design pattern
MPA : Multi Page Application, every operation requests data from server, receives a new page (html+css+js) and renders the data in the browser.
SPA : Single Page Application, performs inside a browser and does not require page reloading during its use. Initial html+cs+js is obtained from the server and then all login is done in js browser side.More info here and here
CSR : Client Side Rendering, all rendering happens in the browser. Use when UI is complex, lots of dynamic data, you need auth and SEO contents are not that many.
SSR : Server Side Rendering, as the acronyms imply, renders content in the server and sends ready .html+js files to the browser. Browser still executes js to reload pages. Use when UI has little interactivity, when you need best SEO and faster loading.
SSG : Static Site Generating, all pages are already generated and rendered server side.

There are several popular frameworks that can be used for static site generation (SSG) and server-side rendering (SSR).

For SSG, some popular options include Gatsby, Next.js, and Jekyll. These frameworks use a variety of technologies, such as React, Vue, and Ruby, to generate static HTML pages from dynamic content.

For SSR, some popular options include Express, Flask, and Hapi. These frameworks use Node.js and other technologies to generate the HTML for a page on the server and send it to the client.

Overall, there are many different frameworks available for both SSG and SSR, and the best choice will depend on the specific needs and goals of the project. It is important to carefully evaluate the features and capabilities of each framework to determine which one is the best fit for the project.

2021 Reading list

Ted Nelson, Project Xanadu https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/ Parallel Documents

http://oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper/

Federico and Elvia Faggin foundation : http://www.fagginfoundation.org/biography/ , intel4004 paternity debate.
(In italian) Federico Faggin, “Dal microchip alla coscienza la parabola di Federico Faggin”

https://www.spreaker.com/user/15330184/dal-microchip-alla-coscienza-la-parabola references mentioned in the speech :
– many worlds interpretation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation , Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Fast cache in go : https://blog.allegro.tech/2016/03/writing-fast-cache-service-in-go.html#the-cache

Pragmatic Systems design

Where is C Language going : https://research.nccgroup.com/2020/02/19/improving-software-security-through-c-language-standards/ from ( https://cstdspace.quora.com/What-are-the-great-things-about-C-programming-language-which-most-people-are-unaware )

Rust performance pitfalls : https://llogiq.github.io/2017/06/01/perf-pitfalls.html

I personally think that readability is most important feature a programming language must provide. Readability in turn brings the right level of simplicity and orthogonality. Some interesting points here https://medium.com/@thisisfordeveloper/programming-language-evaluation-criteria-part-1-readability-d0872ef5d266

AHA! someone has formalized what I’v been doing for years .. https://code.quora.com/Object-Oriented-Programming-in-C-A-Deep-Dive

Estimating … https://mdalmijn.com/11-laws-of-software-estimation-for-complex-work/

The “bus factor” is the minimum number of team members that have to suddenly disappear from a project before the project stalls due to lack of knowledgeable or competent personnel. The bigger the better ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor )

Zig language https://ziglang.org/

Wuffs (Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safely) language https://github.com/google/wuffs/blob/main/doc/getting-started.md

Fuchsia OS is out : https://fuchsia.dev/ microkernel based, C++ code (most looks like C)

UA Freeze https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/19/google-unpauses-privacy-focused-changes-to-chrome-ua-strings/

BFF pattern (backend for frontend) : https://samnewman.io/patterns/architectural/bff/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0VsfTAqqEA&list=PLGN1AjiJJv0mHK60uQxVXjYg-G8d4YyqQ&index=19

“Global warming: Data centres to consume three times as much energy in next decade, experts warn” https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/global-warming-data-centres-to-consume-three-times-as-much-energy-in-next-decade-experts-warn-a6830086.html

Median desktop page transfer size has increased by 677KB between 2015 and 2019. An increase of over 50%. https://httparchive.org/reports/state-of-the-web?start=2015_10_01&end=latest&view=list

‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025

Software transactional memory https://medium.com/@talhof8/software-transactional-memory-a-stairway-to-lock-free-programming-heaven-9ca1f4dce23f

Personal Feedback i.e. asking others what they think about you : https://intenseminimalism.com/2021/personal-feedback-where-to-start/

Reduce video call fatigue https://intenseminimalism.com/2021/how-to-reduce-video-call-fatigue/

Envoy proxy https://medium.com/swlh/scaling-microservices-with-grpc-and-envoy-proxy-part-2-148f589b2a83

Super fast caches in go https://dgraph.io/blog/post/introducing-ristretto-high-perf-go-cache/

Found this interesting magazine Increment (thanks Swan !) and I really like it :
https://increment.com/software-architecture/case-studies-in-rearchitecting/

PartitionAlloc : https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/base/allocator/partition_allocator/PartitionAlloc.md

My oldest Email address : paul@cusun.sublink.org (I guess), 1990
Oldest reference to something written by me on the net : https://groups.google.com/g/comp.unix.questions/c/UwGUVEAFKz4/m/mzybPpn3mkwJ
there should be something even older by I guess google does not have newsgroups from 1989/90 …

Difference between Reward and Recognition : https://intenseminimalism.com/2020/motivating-motivation-from-reward-to-recognition/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Complete

https://khaninews.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-computers-are-reinventing-chess.html

“Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible” Alan Kay https://slideplayer.com/slide/7456299/

AssemblyScript https://www.assemblyscript.org/

Leadership : https://intenseminimalism.com/2015/the-six-styles-of-leadership/

Again on leadership : https://intenseminimalism.com/2015/disassembling-leadership-team-and-vision-are-two-different-skills/

What is Software Development ?

According to Steve McConnell “Code Complete” there are plenty of metaphors out there:

David Gries : programming is a science https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387964805
Donald Knuth : programming is an Art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programming
Watts Humphreys : programming is a process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Humphrey
Kent Beck and P.J. Plauger : programming is like driving a car https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/research/em/teaching/cs405/em_dev_reflections/kentbeckdriving/
Alistair Cockburn : programming is like playing a collaborative game https://blog.codinghorror.com/software-development-as-a-collaborative-game/
Eric Raymond, cathedral and bazaar https://firstmonday.org/article/view/578/499
Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas : programming is like gardening https://www.artima.com/intv/garden.html

This last view seems to be shared by many ( https://signalvnoise.com/posts/591-brainstorm-the-software-garden , Jeff Atwood likes it too https://blog.codinghorror.com/tending-your-software-garden/ and I feel close to him on really many things) and I tend to see it more close to what software development is today : a continuously changing (growing) artifact, not totally manageable, that requires constant maintenance (here the building metaphor fails a bit), designed and redesigned over time like a garden, subject to seasons (“lots of new requirements” season, “robustness and reliability” season).

September reading list

Nice article on gRPC in a js client, Envoy and go gRPC server https://medium.com/swlh/building-a-realtime-dashboard-with-reactjs-go-grpc-and-envoy-7be155dfabfb

https://blog.codinghorror.com/tending-your-software-garden/

Software development metaphors

https://blog.codinghorror.com/bridges-software-engineering-and-god/

https://signalvnoise.com/posts/591-brainstorm-the-software-garden

https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-big-ball-of-mud-and-other-architectural-disasters/

The reverse technology relapse

We all know how much the apollo computer technology impacted on consumer technology : https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466699/How-Apollo-11-influenced-modern-computer-software-and-hardware

Before Apollo computers were huge and filled whole rooms like this :

Apollo guidance system was this :

Space industry led the way to a complete new era of digital personal computers.

We are now in 2020 and we all saw the first launch of a manned private mission to Space Station : the SpaceX dragon capsule attacched to ISS and astronauts @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug used a docking interface on a touchscreen device (try it out here https://iss-sim.spacex.com ) to dock dragon.

So consumer/private technology is currently used in the space industry : the complete opposite of Apollo/GoToTheMoon era.

Think of this from a political point of view : there were times when the biggest achievements in technology were driven by US federal agencies, pouring public money into research, universities, private companies to reach unbelievable goals (go to the moon). Those investment has been around $280 billion of today money. This drove the country into years of technological leadership, leadership US is loosing against another country (china) which is doing exactly what US did during the 60s i.e. pouring money into the economy with state participated companies.

Its time for another “go to the moon” type of effort and the new moon is giving this planet sustainable energy for sustainable growth.

Paul Stephen Borile

software products/teams management, mobile applications design and development, embedded devices, golang/c coding, electric bass player, biking addicted