November 2017 Summaries

As a programmer, recognizing the subjectivity of software development and embracing its inherent trade-offs is crucial to becoming an excellent programmer. Humility, caring about customers and their needs, obsessively revisiting fundamentals, valuing soft skills, and measuring code value are key indicators of programming excellence. While traditional metrics like SLOC or defects per SLOC have been flawed, newer approaches such as static code analysis can provide insights into coding quality. Ultimately, evaluating a programmer's skill is subjective and requires a nuanced understanding of the craft, with no single reliable way to measure programming ability.

The pursuit of measuring programming excellence is fraught with challenges, as the field is inherently subjective and requires a balance of technical skills, humility, and soft skills. Attempts to quantify a programmer's productivity through metrics like source lines of code (SLOC) or code complexity have proven inadequate, often incentivizing quantity over quality. Instead, the focus should be on understanding programming's subjectivity, valuing customer satisfaction, revisiting fundamentals, and measuring the value created by code. Education and certifications, while valuable, are not definitive indicators of skill, as some of the best programmers come from diverse educational backgrounds, including being self-taught. Successful software development hinges on recognizing the importance of ongoing evaluation and adaptability in a constantly changing environment.

Docker has announced support for Kubernetes, a critical part of its enterprise platform, further validating Kubernetes' leadership position in container orchestration. Kubernetes is an open-source platform that provides abstraction layer to schedule and deploy container applications, giving organizations flexibility to run workloads on-premise or in the cloud without changes to the application layer. Container adoption is growing rapidly, with the market expected to grow 40% per year from $762 million in 2016 to $2.7 billion by 2020, driven by portability and reduced costs through better infrastructure capacity utilization. Kubernetes has become a central container orchestration engine for major cloud providers and industry leaders are standardizing on it. New Relic is working to provide deeper visibility into Kubernetes at various levels, including application, container, pod, and host levels, essential for companies moving fast with confidence in the container orchestration space.

Docker's announcement at Dockercon17 in Austin, Texas, to support Kubernetes marks a significant development in the realm of container orchestration, emphasizing Kubernetes' growing dominance in the industry. Originally developed by Google and now an open-source project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Kubernetes provides a robust platform for deploying container applications across various environments, facilitating essential operations like service discovery and load balancing. The adoption of container technology is experiencing rapid growth, with enterprises leveraging containers for their portability and cost efficiency, as highlighted by market projections predicting substantial growth. Kubernetes has quickly become the central orchestration engine for major cloud providers, and New Relic is enhancing its capabilities to provide deeper insights into Kubernetes environments, ensuring comprehensive monitoring across application and infrastructure levels. This collaboration underscores Kubernetes' status as the de facto standard for container orchestration, pivotal in advancing cloud adoption and supporting modern DevOps practices.

The New Relic Node.js agent has been updated to support Node 8 with async/await keywords, which were previously only supported behind a feature flag. The release includes improved performance and developer-facing APIs, as well as the introduction of N-API for a stable ABI across future versions of Node.js. Additionally, Promises are now even cleaner and easier to read with the new async functions, simplifying asynchronous code examples. Async Hooks API enables monitoring across Node's asynchronous operations, laying the groundwork for better diagnostic tools in the future.

New Relic announced the release of Version 2.3.0 of their Node.js agent, emphasizing their commitment to supporting the latest Node.js versions and technologies such as async/await, which now comes enabled by default. The update aligns with the features of Node.js 8, including the introduction of the N-API module, which provides a stable application binary interface for future versions, and support for async/await, which simplifies asynchronous operations by making them more readable and maintainable. The release also highlights the Async Hooks API, which enhances monitoring capabilities across Node's asynchronous operations, promising better diagnostic tools. With these advancements, New Relic aims to provide Node.js developers with a seamless workflow and significant performance improvements, while continuing to support the evolving ecosystem with timely updates and integrations.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo that involves working in focused 25-minute increments, followed by a 5-minute break, and then repeating the cycle for a total of four rounds with increasing break lengths. The technique aims to improve productivity, reduce distractions, and increase focus. By implementing the Pomodoro Technique in a mob programming environment, teams can improve their collaboration, communication, and overall productivity, as well as reduce interruptions and increase accountability among team members. Some key takeaways from this approach include customizing the technique to fit individual needs, using timers with regular breaks, and incorporating social interactions during breaks to foster trust and communication among team members. Regular retrospectives and review of working documents are also essential to maintaining the effectiveness of the Pomodoro Technique in a mob programming environment.

The Pomodoro Technique, devised by Francesco Cirillo, is effectively utilized in mob programming to enhance productivity by segmenting work sessions into focused intervals punctuated by short breaks. This approach not only helps maintain concentration but also promotes physical and mental well-being through regular pauses. The Account Experiences team at New Relic has adapted the traditional Pomodoro structure, incorporating tailored session and break lengths, to suit their unique workflow and team dynamics, resulting in improved focus and reduced disruptions. By integrating the technique, the team fosters better communication, accountability, and trust, while retrospectives allow for continuous improvement and customization of their processes. The technique's flexibility enables it to be adapted for different tasks, and its effectiveness is augmented by clear communication with colleagues to minimize interruptions.