From the first programming languages, to advanced programming paradigms, to the development of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, the history of computer science is the history of the evolution of abstractions that hide complexity and empower the creation of ever more sophisticated applications.

The development of reliable, scalable applications for the cloud seems to be far harder than it ought to be.

In recent years, containers and container orchestrators like Kubernetes have proved to be an important abstraction that dramatically simplifies the development of reliable, scalable distributed systems. Though containers and container orchestration are just now entering the mainstream, they are…

It is likely that by your standards, I’m an old man. After 5 years as an Army officer, I began my career developing commercial software in 1972, the same year Ritchie and Thompson began creating the C programming language at Bell Labs. At Brown I had studied to be a biologist, but the Vietnam War upset my plans. By a fortuitous accident, when I got out of the Army I was offered a job at a fledgling software company and soon discovered the joys of building things that run on computers. For me, that was as close to instant gratification…

Microservice actors are the software LEGOs® we need in order to build reliable, scalable, cloud-capable applications — because they are simple, make sense, and can be snapped together to build bigger things. We’ll take an individual microservice actor apart so we can see how it works.

What Is a Microservice and Why Should We Care?

The microservice architectural pattern provides an effective way to break down an application’s functions into manageable, deployable components that can be connected together to form an integrated application. Microservices address some of today’s more pressing software development, deployment, and operational needs.

A microservice is created to be a stateless, reentrant, and independently deployable software…

The Marissa 18 from B&B Yacht Designs was designed to be an economical center console boat just big enough to be really practical. By keeping the top end speed down to 25 knots, construction could be made lighter, which in turn meant a smaller motor and lower fuel consumption. She’s 18 feet long with a beam of 6' 10". Her motor uses a 20-inch shaft. She looks like a good family project.

She won the WoodenBoat magazine Pursuit of Pleasure at Two Gallons per Hour contest. At a cruising speed of 15 knots (17.27 mph) she is capable of 15…

Containerized microservices are a concern to many experienced software engineers. Let’s address one of the most common microservice misconceptions feared by engineers — poor performance.

Many of the benefits of the microservice architectural pattern derive from the fine granularity with which its components can be implemented and deployed. To be practical, deploying and managing true microservices (as opposed to Spring Boot SOA services) requires the power of containerization and container orchestration (Kubernetes).

Kubernetes can be deployed both in the cloud and on-premises data centers, as well as on Linux, Windows, and Mac PCs.

In simple terms, a container is a…

I’m sorry, but I originally trained to be a biologist and have difficulty relying on hearsay from fact-deniers when dealing with a lethal worldwide pandemic. Yes, there are treatments for the original variants of COVID-19 (the SARS-CoV-2 virus) derived from antibodies in the blood of survivors. There are also treatments for some of the symptoms of the infection. Fortunately. they do reduce mortality from the original virus strains. Those treatments must be relied upon when the our primary responses to the pandemic have failed.

Sadly, there are also a myriad of phony and even dangerous COVID treatments being spread by…

Digital transformation gets a lot of attention, appearing on almost every CEO’s and CIO’s annual ToDo List. But digital transformation has not been all that easy for most companies. Maybe that’s because we’ve been focusing on the wrong things.

Digital transformation or disruption results from the successful exploitation of digital technologies to transform business models. Innovative use of new and existing technologies can impact the value of the existing products and services offered by an industry. The term disruption is used because these new products/services/businesses can disrupt and realign markets.

Our pressing business challenge is mastering the rising tide of…

Process mining is a management capability that your organization cannot afford to be without — and a software-based approach to obtaining a precise and comprehensive picture of the processes within an organization’s value chain. It captures and organizes the the data resulting from the interaction of employees, customers, suppliers, business partners, and regulators — with the software applications used to run the organization.

Done right, it can create a continuous and accurate picture of the actual events and actions by which an organization operates — which in turn provides a basis for enhancing operational excellence and for managing compliance and…