Backendhance

What if...? CrowdStrike

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

What if…? I must have read this sentence hundreds of times in the last few days regarding the CrowdStrike outage. Everywhere, people are looking for someone to blame. And that is wrong!

We are witnessing the classic blame game. It is more important to find someone to blame than to solve the problem. This only fosters fear.

An employee of Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, once made a mistake that cost the company ten million dollars. When the man was called into Watson’s office, he was sure he would be fired. To his surprise, his boss said: “Fire you? Not after I just invested ten million dollars in your education.” ~ The Winners Laws by Bodo Schäfer (translated from German edition)

Customer Support

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

When “the customer” calls, very different things happen in various companies

You probably know this from your everyday life. You have a question about your mobile contract. So, you call the hotline. A computer answers. You press 1… then 3… then refuse to have the call recorded for training purposes, and finally, you end up with some employee in a call center. You explain your problem. The employee has a script in front of them and goes through it with you from top to bottom. If they’re good, you don’t even notice it.

4 Weeks Incident

Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

What happens when software rots over decades?

More than I can list. The software has accumulated so many problems that they can’t be described compactly.

The monitoring is incomplete
The deployment is cumbersome
The infrastructure is heterogeneous
Libraries are outdated
Knowledge has been lost
Background and context for decisions are missing
The code is tangled
… and has high coupling

So far, this is not surprising. Maybe you have worked on such a project yourself.

Challenges in SMEs Are Similar

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Currently, I am writing a new article for Golem.de.

In this context, I have been reflecting on the similarities in software development in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The German Federal Statistical Office defines SMEs as companies with 10 to 250 employees and a turnover of less than 50 million euros.

At first glance, this range seems very wide. Intuitively, one would expect the challenges and solutions to be very different as a result. And to some extent, this is true. However, this does not align with my experience over the last 15 years, during which I have worked exclusively in SMEs. On closer inspection, it turns out that the number of developers is not that different after all.

The #1 Problem in SMEs

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

As written on Monday : Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have no problem with performance.

However, that’s not entirely true. Over the past few years, I’ve worked on many products that were slow. Improving performance would have been positive for the business. In certain areas, like the gaming industry, it was inevitable to be performant. Retention is one of the most important metrics in the industry. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

I Never Sold The Performance Workshop

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

I haven’t sold my Spring Performance Workshop even once.

Instead, I sold my Architecture Discovery Workshop four times . In 6 months.

And I don’t even promote it 🤷

What does this mean for me?

My positioning as a performance expert has failed.

But not because I can’t deliver.
There’s simply no demand from my customers.

In hindsight, it makes sense. But let me explain:

Ever since I’ve been developing software, I’ve been working in small and medium-sized enterprises, known as SMEs. These companies have between 5 and 50 developers, occasionally a few more.

The VPN Paradox

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Especially in software development, many people work who are particularly good at abstraction and objective consideration of problems and questions.

It’s in the nature of the thing. It’s our job to thoroughly understand a problem in detail. And the solutions always require weighing the pros and cons.

But there are always problems and habits that have become entrenched in our industry that, objectively viewed, make no sense.

Our use of VPNs is ambivalent

The Monitoring Tool Jungle

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Here’s the translation of the text into English:

For years, my holy trinity in monitoring has been:

Grafana for metrics
Elastic for logs and tracing
And Sentry for error tracking

With this stack, I have been moving from project to project for years. For some reason, I always ended up in projects that used this stack.

Maybe Loki was used instead of Elastic sometimes (ugh - I don’t like Loki 😉) .

The Paradox of Freedom

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

The Paradox of Freedom: The more options we have, the more anxious we become that we chose the wrong thing.

~ Mark Manson

Mark Manson is not a software developer. He is an author. His bestseller: “THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK”

He provides self-help for people who hate self-help books. In this paradox, he refers to life decisions. For example, many people find it hard to enter into a love relationship via Tinder. The options are so vast that with each date, you think you might have something better.

Quickdraw Hero

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

In the team of one of my clients, I earned the nickname “Quickdraw Hero”

(My surname “Held” translates to hero in english 😉)

Because I shoot so fast.

I gained this reputation from the team rather quickly. At that time, it was meant somewhat derogatorily.

The team was not accustomed to my pace.

They had gotten comfortable. The software has been in development for more than 10 years. And over time, substantial technical debt had accumulated. It was a creeping process.

Legacy Is Sexy

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Unpopular Opinion Warning: Legacy is Sexy!

To be honest - I didn’t always see it that way.

You probably felt similar.

My first (big) professional project was a legacy application

It wasn’t actually that old. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t even a decade old.

But it felt much older.

This was mainly due to the many inexperienced developers who worked on the application.

I was green behind the ears as well.
The central architectural pattern: The God Class

How a Release Failed

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

After 9 hours, the decision was clear: We had to roll back.

The first release in almost 1.5 years had failed.

And it was going so well. The meticulous preparation of the past weeks had paid off. Everything was going according to plan. The necessary changes to the VMs went as expected. The major migration was successfully completed after one hour of runtime. The new content files were successfully deployed with the new system. The new CD pipeline ran for the first time on production – and it was successful.

I ❤️ Releases

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

After almost two years without a release, this Saturday marks the big day.
One of my clients hasn’t released for two years - incredible 🤯

Why? There are many reasons.

The team got entangled in complexity. Significant (and necessary) changes were made.

But these led to numerous side effects. And the goal was to do everything “right.” So, development continued. With one topic completed, five new ones emerged.

Breaking out of this cycle was challenging.

When I joined the team in July, we decided: We need to break this vicious cycle.

Panic

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Nervousness sliced through the room. I saw it in the eyes of all attendees.

It was supposed to be just a routine meeting.

Once a week, the development team meets with the admins to discuss current topics.

This meeting has been held for years.

Same time, same people, (almost) the same topics.

But something was different this time.

A new colleague participated for the first time. An external.

We brought him in to work on “DevOps”. Mainly automation. CI/CD, provisioning, tooling, compile-time optimizations. Everything that improves the developer experience.

Broken Windows

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

A week ago, during my talk on “Pragmatic Programming with Kotlin” , I discussed the Broken Window Theory.

Originally, it’s from criminology.

In criminology, the broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder […] encourage further crime and disorder […].

~ Wikipedia

Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt have applied this concept to software development.

Whenever there’s poor design, an unclear class, inadequately tested code, or unused assets in the repository, it becomes more likely that more “broken windows” will follow.

Scream-Driven-Development

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

You probably know this feeling. You want to make a Breaking-Change in your system. Maybe you want to change an API. Or you’d like to switch up your environments. Or you want to shut down a service because it’s no longer needed.

Whenever I face such a decision, I wonder about its consequences. Will it affect other stakeholders? The answer is often, yes.

This is the case now. I want to conduct deployments more frequently in an environment. It’s used to test the upcoming release. And, to keep the feedback loop short, I always want the current development status on the platform.

7.500 Euro Loss

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Our intuition often plays tricks on us. Especially in statistics.

Humans are not made to intuitively understand statistical relationships.

For example, the Birthday Paradox .

What do you think? What’s the probability that in a room with 23 people, two have the same birthday? 5%? 10%? 20%?

…

Wrong.

The probability is 50%. If you look at two classrooms, statistically, one class will have a shared birthday.

In a room with 50 people, the probability is even over 97%.

Are You in a New Project?

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

You are new to a project. Maybe you have just changed jobs. Or an opportunity has arisen internally - whether you wanted it or not.

Your first day. You really don’t know anything about the project. So almost nothing.

You know what it’s about. You may have even tried the product yourself.

But you don’t know what the architecture looks like. You don’t know how many services the product operates. What they run on. How they’re interconnected. Where the data is persisted. Is it relational at all?

Can You Start Your Application?

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Many companies utilize modern technologies. Kubernetes, RabbitMQ, AWS, Docker, ArgoCD… and so on. The selection is vast. The CNCF Landscape has arrived in most businesses.

But what surprises me: The software is complicated.

So complicated that it can’t just be launched locally on a whim.

I did not expect that.

Docker is deliberately included in the list. Because most of the companies I spoke to use Docker. Many of them in production.

El Niño

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi,

El Niño is back. The surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean periodically fluctuates. This seemingly inconspicuous change triggers a cascade of weather changes that extend their influence to the most remote corners of the globe. Floods in South America, droughts in Australia, and even snowstorms in North America - all caused by a few degrees of temperature difference in the Pacific. This phenomenon occurs every 2 to 7 years. This year, it’s that time again.