Ben Smith

Lots of interest in setting up Observability with open source tools today at my Unconference session today @opentelemetry is a big part of how people are thinking of re imagining their Observability stacks in 2024 and cost is major consideration #OSSummit

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Our community installers of Apache NetBeans 23 with JDK 23 runtime are now available https://lnkd.in/e3f7pNzw The easiest way to use your favourite IDE! Works out of the box. No system installed Java required .. although you can always register other JDKs for projects. #netbeans #ide #java

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This is a great little video about the dangers of serverless cloud computing and ensuring your side project is monetised before it goes viral. https://lnkd.in/e8KxSb5U

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Me: "I'll give that public speaking thing a try in 2024." Also me: Getting stuck right into the big games apparently... I'll be talking at BigDataLdn this year. It's a solid mix of hype and anxiety, Hanxiety if you will! But mostly hype. #BigDataLDN #data #dataengineering #dataleadership

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What have we learned from more than a decade of deploying microservices? And are we any better at breaking large systems down into the optimum slices? Ian Cooper and James Lewis join me to thrash it out, in this live episode recorded at GOTO Copenhagen…

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My latest on Paragraph: Quickstarts Are Recipes - Developers Are Bakers My plea is that developers stop overcomplicating their quickstart guide when building software. Treat your quickstart like a recipe: - Start with a desired outcome, much like a baked good, and get that developer from 0 -> 1 - Set a 'prep time' and 'baking time' that are clear and won't take someone an entire afternoon - Make limited assumptions and make sure you list every single "ingredient" down to what version of a particular library might be a prerequisite or environment constraints - Finally, don't let your quickstart go stale - you want them to buy your cookbook after they follow your recipe. https://lnkd.in/eFDjGR7U

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We're live with our Deep Dive on Timescale with AI Product Lead 🔥 Avthar Sewrathan! Timescale is making PostgreSQL better for AI ⚡️ In this conversation, Avthar shares insights into Timescale’s bet on PostgreSQL, their new open-source extensions for AI developers, and how their solutions are empowering developers to easily build sophisticated AI applications. Link below 👇 https://lnkd.in/efxJyGzA

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🌟Big news from Flexiana🌟 We’re kicking off some awesome new Clojure projects this year,, and we still have experienced Clojure teams ready to take on more. Here’s the deal: 🛠 Our teams are packed with senior devs who’ve been working with Clojure for 5–10 years. We’re not just about writing code—we deliver clean, maintainable solutions tailored to your needs. 🌐 We’ve got expertise in web apps, functional programming, and even integrating Clojure with Python for AI projects. 🔧 We’re all about using the best tools for the job, drawing from a tech stack that spans 25+ programming languages (yes, we’re nerds like that). Why work with us? ✅ You’ll be working with senior-only teams—no juniors learning on the job here! ✅ We use agile methods, so we can pivot and adapt with you as needed. ✅ We’ve nailed projects in fintech, ERPs, web apps, mobile—you name it. If you’ve got a Clojure project in mind or just want to chat about ideas, let’s talk! We’d love to help you bring your vision to life. For a glimpse into our team's experience, check out this video:

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The biggest gripe I had with myself earlier in my career, was being just another engineer. Good perhaps, excellent even but still siloed. Pair that with my love for working at startups, I could feel that there’s more to the problem than moving from Fargate to EKS. And this is something that I have seen across the board. Even if the environment is welcoming and fosters collaboration, we as engineers feel most comfortable with code. Almost bound by a sacred oath to never visit the dark lands of product 😅 The key to change this is to understand you are not there to serve at the whims of jira tickets. You didn’t learn algorithms to be the fastest in the world at sorting. Your ability to breakdown problems and spot patterns extends beyond code. Your empathy for users and the larger problem makes you a better engineer! Certainly more employable, especially in an environment where coding prowess is no longer an edge. PS: I have found PostHog’s notes especially helpful. Terse, and to the point. I hope they help you as well.

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Google’s 2024 DORA State of DevOps was on my reading list this weekend but instead I decided to read Rachel Stephens’ writeup over on the RedMonk blog. The most interesting takeaway this year is that CoPilots have become established in the SDLC but we’re not seeing gains in productivity. The hypothesis is that coding is not a bottleneck to software delivery, so optimizing that has no gains and there may even be a drop in productivity due to more rework required. On a personal note - I’m only an occasional hacker but spent much of yesterday fixing and refactoring some Python for a data analysis project - I would be literally useless if it wasn’t for coding assistance. But I’m really not representative of the DORA report cohorts. As they stand, I think coding assistants are great for reducing the learning curve (new language, framework, etc.) but they are less useful with design and structure of code.   

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You too can follow along with my new article and load 1 TiB of data / 2 billion rows into a SingleStore Trial cluster in under 20 minutes. In the case of data loads, impatience is a virtue. https://lnkd.in/grFBJvrD

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Want to watch me build an app in 30 minutes at SXSW London? 👀 Only joking… sort of. The way we code and build apps is changing FAST, and I think its super important that engineers are keeping up with the most up to date workflows and tools. Tools like Copilot and Cursor are making development faster, smarter, and more accessible than ever. At SXSW London, I want to show you how to harness these tools for your own projects. My hands-on talk will explore the AI transforming app development and what it means for the future of our industry. But I need your vote to make it happen. ➡️ Sign up for a SXSW voting account and hit the heart on my session page here: https://lnkd.in/eRmSSUnu

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Included in this article is the mention of vector databases. Unsurprisingly, Michael Stonebraker and Andy Pavlo feel there is not a need for vector-specific databases. They believe relational databases will adopt their features, which is already happening. Check out the details here: https://lnkd.in/gyq_4WjP

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Follow up to our "Tiered Storage Won't Fix Kafka" blog post. This one explains all the benefits of WarpStream's Zero Disk Architecture beyond just reducing costs! https://lnkd.in/epjCSVMv

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Every month our N-able Head Nerds provide a huge amount of practical and insightful content in the shape of Bootcamps and Office Hours. This content is specifically created to help you build your business and make the most of the products you use. And they are designed for ANY #MSP....you don't need to be an N-able partner to register and participant in ANY #HeadNerd event. As we close out May and welcome June, it brings us a new round of Boot Camps and Office Hours! Highlights: ☑ This month there is a renewed focus on lead gen and equipping your team with the skills with my “Cracking the Code to Lead Generation” series taking place June 6th and June 12th ☑ I am also co-presenting a BRAND NEW boot camp with Head Security Nerd Lewis Pope focused on N-able MDR called: “Winning Strategies for Pricing and Selling N‑able MDR” on June 26th ☑ Lewis Pope returns with “Cyber Liability Insurance: Planning for Success” on June 20th ☑ Joe Ferla shares more about Cloud Commander with both an intro session and deep dive into the platform! But these are just the highlights. Check out our latest blog that outlines the complete training schedule for June. Links in Comments.

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Does Screenshotbot save on build times? This was a question that surprisingly came up a couple of times at #dcbln24. It probably had something to do with the large number of platform and DevEx folk at the conference. In any case, the answer turns out to be "Yes". More specifically: You'll save 19% in build times on average, and 49% in build times in the P95 case. The savings come from avoiding re-runs when screenshots change. Read my blog post with the analysis, and I'd love to hear your thoughts: https://lnkd.in/eEh4zqkN

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Sharing a great blog from the Chronosphere engineering team! We regularly use an alert that tells us if different service versions are running in production (also known as version drift); it was a really tough nut to crack but May’s PromQL-foo nailed it. May. Lippert explains how we leverage PromQL to create actionable alerts that inform us whenever different service versions are running in production. Her approach not only enhances our operational efficiency but also ensures consistency across our services. Whether you're a developer of any kind, systems engineer, or managing significant IT sprawl, understanding the intricacies of PromQL (or similar) and realizing the meta-level things you it can empower you to do truly the next level of excellence now that you can see and monitor it closely. Here it is:

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The SCVO guides are always super clear. Some great practical advice in the latest one on low-cost digital

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