Category Archives: Software development

Resources for Microservices and Business Domain Solutions for the Cloud Architect / Microservices Architect

First you have to understand that Python, Java and PHP are worlds completely different.

In Python you’ll probably use Flask, and listen to the port you want, inside Docker Container.

In PHP you’ll use a Frameworks like Laravel, or Symfony, or Catalonia Framework (my Framework) :) and a repo or many (as the idea is that the change in one microservice cannot break another it is recommended to have one git repo per Service) and split the requests with the API Gateway and Filters (so /billing/ goes to the right path in the right Server, is like rewriting URLs). You’ll rely in Software to split your microservices. Usually you’ll use Docker, but you have to add a Web Server and any other tools, as the source code is not packet with a Web Server and other Dependencies like it is in Java Spring Boot.

In Java you’ll use Spring Cloud and Spring Boot, and every Service will be auto-contained in its own JAR file, that includes Apache Tomcat and all other Dependencies and normally running inside a Docker. Tcp/Ip listening port will be set at start via command line, or through environment. You’ll have many git repositories, one per each Service.

Using many repos, one per Service, also allows to deploy only that repository and to have better security, with independent deployment tokens.

It is not unlikely that you’ll use one language for some of your Services and another for other, as well as a Database or another, as each Service is owner of their data.

In any case, you will be using CI/CD and your pipeline will be something like this:

  1. Pull the latest code for the Service from the git repository
  2. Compile the code (if needed)
  3. Run the Unit and Integration Tests
  4. Compile the service to an executable artifact (f.e. Java JAR with Tomcat server and other dependencies)
  5. Generate a Machine image with your JAR deployed (for Java. Look at Spotify Docker Plugin to Docker build from Maven), or with Apache, PHP, other dependencies, and the code. Normally will be a Docker image. This image will be immutable. You will probably use Dockerhub.
  6. Machine image will be started. Platform test are run.
  7. If platform tests pass, the service is promoted to the next environment (for example Dev -> Test -> PreProd -> Prod), the exact same machine is started in the next environment and platform tests are repeated.
  8. Before deploying to Production the new Service, I recommend running special Application Tests / Behavior-driven. By this I mean, to conduct tests that really test the functionality of everything, using a real browser and emulating the acts of a user (for example with BeHat, Cucumber or with JMeter).
    I recommend this specially because Microservices are end-points, independent of the implementation, but normally they are API that serve to a whole application. In an Application there are several components, often a change in the Front End can break the application. Imagine a change in Javascript Front End, that results in a call a bit different, for example, with an space before a name. Imagine that the Unit Tests for the Service do not test that, and that was not causing a problem in the old version of the Service and so it will crash when the new Service is deployed. Or another example, imagine that our Service for paying with Visa cards generates IDs for the Payment Gateway, and as a result of the new implementation the IDs generated are returned. With the mocked objects everything works, but when we deploy for real is when we are going to use the actual Bank Payment. This is also why is a good idea to have a PreProduction environment, with PreProduction versions of the actual Services we use (all banks or the GDS for flights/hotel reservation like Galileo or Amadeus have a Test, exactly like Production, Gateway)

If you work with Microsoft .NET, you’ll probably use Azure DevOps.

We IT Engineers, CTOs and Architects, serve the Business. We have to develop the most flexible approaches and enabling the business to release as fast as their need.

Take in count that Microservices is a tool, a pattern. We will use it to bring more flexibility and speed developing, resilience of the services, and speed and independence deploying. However this comes at a cost of complexity.

Microservices is more related to giving flexibility to the Business, and developing according to the Business Domains. Normally oriented to suite an API. If you have an API that is consumed by third party you will have things like independence of Services (if one is down the others will still function), gradual degradation, being able to scale the Services that have more load only, being able to deploy a new version of a Service which is independent of the rest of the Services, etc… the complexity in the technical solution comes from all this resilience, and flexibility.

If your Dev Team is up to 10 Developers or you are writing just a CRUD Web Application, a PoC, or you are an Startup with a critical Time to Market you probably you will not want to use Microservices approach. Is like killing flies with laser cannons. You can use typical Web services approach, do everything in one single Https request, have transactions, a single Database, etc…

But if your team is 100 Developer, like a big eCommerce, you’ll have multiple Teams between 5 and 10 Developers per Business Domain, and you need independence of each Service, having less interdependence. Each Service will own their own Data. That is normally around 5 to 7 tables. Each Service will serve a Business Domain. You’ll benefit from having different technologies for the different needs, however be careful to avoid having Teams with different knowledge that can have hardly rotation and difficult to continue projects when the only 2 or 3 Devs that know that technology leave. Typical benefit scenarios can be having MySql for the Billing Services, but having NoSQL Database for the image catalog, or to store logs of account activity. With Microservices, some services will be calling other Services, often asynchronously, using Queues or Streams, you’ll have Callbacks, Databases for reading, you’ll probably want to have gradual and gracefully failure of your applications, client load balancing, caches and read only databases/in-memory databases… This complexity is in order to protect one Service from the failure of others and to bring it the necessary speed under heavy load.

Here you can find a PDF Document of the typical resources I use for Microservice Projects.

Resources for Microservices and Business Domain Solutions – V.1.7 – By Carles MateoDownload

You can also download it from my github repository:

https://github.com/carlesmateo/awesome-microservices

Do you use other solutions that are not listed?. Leave a message. I’ll investigate them and update the Document, to share with the Community.

Update 2020-03-06: I found this very nice article explaining the same. Microservices are not for everybody and not the default option: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2020/03/04/microservices_last_resort/

Update 2020-03-11: Qcom with 1,600 microservices says that microservices architecture is the las resort: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2020/03/09/monzo_microservices/

Upgrading my new HP 14-bp060sa

As the company I was working for, Sanmina, has decided to move all the Software Development to Colorado, US, and closing the offices in Bishopstown, Cork, Ireland I found myself with the need to get a new laptop. At work I was using two Dell laptops, one very powerful and heavy equipped with an Intel Xeon processor and 32 GB of RAM. The other a lightweight one that I updated to 32 GB of RAM.

I had an accident around 8 months ago, that got my spine damaged, and so I cannot carry much weight.

My personal laptops at home, in Ireland are a 15″ with 16 GB of RAM, too heavy, and an Acer 11,6″ with 8GB of RAM and SSD (I upgraded it), but unfortunately the screen crashed. I still use it through the HDMI port. My main computer is a tower with a Core i7, 64GB of RAM and a Samsung NVMe SSD drive. And few Raspberrys Pi 4 and 3 :)

I was thinking about what ultra-lightweight laptop to buy, but I wanted to buy it in Barcelona, as I wanted a Catalan keyboard (the layout with the broken ç and accents). I tried by Amazon.es but I have problems to have shipped the Catalan keyboard layout laptops to my address in Ireland.

I was trying to find the best laptop for me.

While I was investigating I found out that none of the laptops in the market were convincing me.

The ones in around 1Kg, which was my initial target, were too big, and lack a proper full size HDMI port and Gigabit Ethernet. Honestly, some models get the HDMI or the Ethernet from an USB 3.1, through an adapter, or have mini-HDMI, many lack the Gigabit port, which is very annoying. Also most of the models come with 8GB of RAM only and were impossible to upgrade. I enrolled my best friend in my quest, in the research, and had the same conclusions.

I don’t want to have to carry adapters with me to just plug to a monitor or projector. I don’t even want to carry the power charger. I want a laptop that can work with me for a complete day, a full work session, without needing to recharge.

So while this investigation was going on, I decided to buy a cheap laptop with a good trade off of weight and cost, in order to be able to work on the coffee. I needed it for writing documents in Google Docs, creating microservices architectures, programming in Java and PHP, and writing articles in my blog. I also decided that this would be my only laptop with Windows, as honestly I missed playing Star Craft 2, and my attempts with Wine and Linux did not success.

Not also, for playing games :) , there are tools that are only available for Windows or for Mac Os X and Windows, like: POSTMAN, Kitematic for managing dockers visually, vSphere…

(Please note, as I reviewed the article I realized that POSTMAN is available for Linux too)

Please note: although I use mainly Linux everywhere (Ubuntu, CentOS, and RedHat mainly) and I contribute to Open Source projects, I do have Windows machines.

I created my Start up in 2004, and I still have Windows Servers, physical machines in a Data Center in Barcelona, and I still have VMs and Instances in Public Clouds with Windows Servers. Also I programmed some tools using Visual Studio and Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET and C#, but when I needed to do this I found more convenient spawn an instance in Amazon or Azure and pay for its use.

When I created my Start up I offered my infrastructure as a way to get funding too, and I offered VMs with VMWare. I found that having my Mail Servers in VMs was much more convenient for Backups, cloning, to scale up, to avoid disruption and for Disaster and Recovery.

I wanted a cheap laptop that will not make feel bad if transporting it in a daily basis gets a hit and breaks, or that if it rains (and this happens more than often in Ireland) and it breaks is not super-hurtful, or even if it gets stolen. Yes, I’m from a big city, like is Barcelona, Catalonia, and thieves are a real problem. I travel, so I want a laptop decent enough that I can take to travel, and for going for a coffee, coding anything, and I feel comfortable enough that if something happens to it is not the end of the world.

Cork is not a big city, so the options were reduced. I found a laptop that meets my needs.

I got a HP s14-bp060sa for 439€.

It is equipped with a Intel® Core™ i3-6006U (2 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores) , a 500GB SATA HDD, and 4 GB of DDR4 RAM.

The information on HP webpage is really scarce, but checking other pages I was able to see that the motherboard has 2 memory banks, accepting a max of 16GB of RAM.

I saw that there was an slot, unclear if supporting NVMe SSD drives, but supporting M.2 SSD for sure.

So I bought in Amazon 2x8GB and a M.2 500GB drive.

Since I was 5 years old I’ve been upgrading and assembling by myself all the computers. And this is something that I want to keep doing. It keeps me sharp, knowing the new ports, CPUs, and motherboard architectures, and keeps me in contact with the Hardware. All my life I’ve thought that specializing Software Engineers and Systems Engineers, like if computers were something separate, is a mistake, so I push myself to stay up to date of the news in all the fields.

I removed the spinning 500 GB SATA HDD, cause it’s slow and it consumes a lot of energy. With the M.2 SSD the battery last forever.

The interesting part is how I cloned the drive from the Spinning HDD to the new M.2.

I did:

  • Open the computer (see pics below) and Insert the new drive M.2
  • Boot with an USB Linux Rescue distribution (to do that I had to enable Legacy Boot on BIOS and boot with the USB)
  • Use lsblk command to identify the HDD drive, it was easy as it was the one with partitions
  • dd from if=/dev/sda to of=/dev/sdb with status=progress to see live status and speed (around 70MB/s) and estimated time to complete.
  • Please note that the new drive should be bigger or at least have the same number of bytes to avoid problems with the last partition.
  • I removed the HDD drive, this reduces the weight of my laptop by 100 grams
  • Disable Legacy Boot, and boot the computer. Windows started perfectly :)

I found so few information about this model, that I wanted to share the pictures with the Community. Here are the pictures of the upgrade process.

Here you can see the Crucial M.2 SSD installed and the Spinning HDD removed. Yes, I did in a coffee :)
Final step, installing the 2x8GB RAM memory modules

Creating a VM for compiling ZFS with RHEL6.10

As you know I created the DRAID project, based in ZFS.

One of our customers wanted a special custom version for their RHEL6.10 installation with a custom Kernel.

This post describes how to compile and install ZFS 7.x for RHEL6.

First create a VM with RHEL6.10. Myself I used Virtual Box on Ubuntu.

If you need to install a Custom Kernel matching the destination Servers, do it.

Download the source code from ZFS for Linux.

install the following packages which are required by zfs compiler:

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo yum install autoconf automake libtool wget libtirpc-devel rpm-build
sudo yum install zlib-devel libuuid-devel libattr-devel libblkid-devel libselinux-devel libudev-devel
sudo yum install parted lsscsi ksh openssl-devel elfutils-libelf-develsudo yum install kernel-devel-$(uname -r)

Steps to compile the code:

1- Make sure  the zfs file exists under zfs/contrib/initramfs/scripts/local-top/

if not exists, create a file called zfs  under zfs/contrib/initramfs/scripts/local-top/  and add the following to that file:

#!/bin/sh
PREREQ=”mdadm mdrun multipath”

prereqs()
{
       echo “$PREREQ”
}

case $1 in
# get pre-requisites
prereqs)
       prereqs
       exit 0
       ;;
esac


#
# Helper functions
#
message()
{
       if [ -x /bin/plymouth ] && plymouth –ping; then
               plymouth message –text=”$@”
       else
               echo “$@” >&2
       fi
       return 0
}

udev_settle()
{
       # Wait for udev to be ready, see https://launchpad.net/bugs/85640
       if [ -x /sbin/udevadm ]; then
               /sbin/udevadm settle –timeout=30
       elif [ -x /sbin/udevsettle ]; then
               /sbin/udevsettle –timeout=30
       fi
       return 0
}


activate_vg()
{
       # Sanity checks
       if [ ! -x /sbin/lvm ]; then
               [ “$quiet” != “y” ] && message “lvm is not available”
               return 1
       fi

       # Detect and activate available volume groups
       /sbin/lvm vgscan
       /sbin/lvm vgchange -a y –sysinit
       return $?
}

udev_settle
activate_vg

exit 0

make the created zfs file executable:

chmod +x  zfs/contrib/initramfs/scripts/local-top/zfs

2-  inside  draid-zfs-2019-05-09 folder, execute the following commands:execute Auto generate script:

./autogen.sh

execute configuration script:

./configure

Please note we use this specific configuration for bettter results:

./configure –disable-pyzfs –with-spec=redhat

create rpms:

make rpm

remove all test rpms:

rm zfs-test*.rpm

3- install all created rpms

yum install *x86_64* -y

4- verify that zfs is been installed

zfs

this command will display zfs help. 

Another interesting trick I instructed my Team to do is to add a version number to zfs, with a parameter -v or –version.

So if you want to do the same, you have to edit:

zfs/cmd/zfs/zfs_main.c

Under:

cmdname = argv[1];

In my code is line 7926, then add:

/* DRAIDTEAM - added new command to display zfs version*/
if ((strcmp(cmdname, "-v") == 0) || (strcmp(cmdname, "--version") == 0)) {
    (void) fprintf(stdout, "0.7.0_DRAID-1.2.9.08021755\n");
    return (0);
}

You can check the Kernel Module info by using modinfo zfs, but I found it handy to allow to just do:

zfs -v

A handy trick command line to get the usages of our Python Methods in the code

We all use powerful code analysis tool, but sometimes you’re presented with a problem and you have just… the terminal.

This Bash code is handy.

grep "def " /home/carles/code/gitlab/cloud/terraform/src/scale/lib/iscsi.py | tr "()" "  " | awk '{ print $2; }' |  grep -v "__init" | sort > ./function_names_iscsi.txt

So this basically will get all the methods (“def ” whatever), strip the parenthesis with tr, and get the second column with awk, so basically the method name, sort it and write it to the file.

Then I will cd to the src directory and execute the seconds part:

cd /home/carles/code/gitlab/cloud/terraform/src/
for fname in $(cat ~/function_names_iscsi.txt); do printf "%s: %s\n" "$fname" "$(grep -r $fname *|grep -v 'def ' -c)"; done > ~/functions_being_used.txt

That will produce a nice list with the number of times of the method being called, in the form of:

method_name: occurrences

That’s the equivalent to doing Find Usages is PyCharm.

It’s easy to identify dead code then, with method_name: 0.

You can also run this to your Jenkins to warn when there is Dead Code in your repository.

Google Compute Engine Talk for Group Google Developers Cork

My talk in Google Developers Cork Group.
It’s about deploying an Instance in GCE and grows in complexity until Deploying a Load Balancer with AutoScaling for a group of LAMP Webservers.

Join the group at: https://www.meetup.com/GDG-Cork/

The videos:

Keshan Sodimana: Tensors

Curiosity Python string.strip() removes just more than white spaces

Another Python curiosity.

If you see the Official Python3 documentation for strip(), it says that strip without parameters will return the string without the leading and trailing white spaces.
Optionally you can pass a string with the characters you want to eliminate.

The official documentation for Python 2 says:

string.strip(s[, chars])

Return a copy of the string with leading and trailing characters removed. If chars is omitted or None, whitespace characters are removed. If given and not None, chars must be a string; the characters in the string will be stripped from the both ends of the string this method is called on.

Changed in version 2.2.3: The chars parameter was added. The chars parameter cannot be passed in earlier 2.2 versions.

https://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html

A white space is a white space. Is not an Enter.
But strip() without parameters will remove white spaces (space), and Enter \n and Tabs \t.

Probably you will not realize that unless you read from a file that has empty lines at the end for a reason, and you use strip().

You can see a demonstration following this small program, that runs the same for Python2 and Python3.

And the corresponding output for python2 and python3:

The [ ] characters where added to show that there are no hidden tabs or similar after.

Here I paste the code so you can try yourself:

import sys


def print_bar():
    print("-----------------------------------------------------")


def print_between_brackets(s_test):
    print("[" + s_test + "]")


s_string_with_enters = "  Testing strip not only removing white spaces, but Enter and Tabs s well\n\t\n\n"

print("Testing .strip()")
print("You are running Python " + sys.version)
print("This is the original string")
print_bar()
print_between_brackets(s_string_with_enters)
print_bar()
print("Now after strip()...")
print_bar()
print_between_brackets(s_string_with_enters.strip())
print_bar()
print("As you can see the Enters and the Tabs have been removed, not just the spaced")

I think this should be disambiguate so I decided to take action. Is very easy to blame and never contribute. Not me. I went to Python to fix that and I located a bug reporting this issue:

https://bugs.python.org/issue25433

The issue was registed and made specially interesting contributions by Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos.

The thread is really interesting to read. I recommend it.

At a glance:

“Python heavily relies on isspace() to detect “whitespace” characters.”

* Lib/string.py near line 23:
  whitespace = ' \t\n\r\v\f'

So all those characters will be stripped in Python2.7 if you use just string.strip()

The ticket was opened the 2015-10-18 12:15. So it’s a shame the documentation has not been updated yet, more than 3 years later. Those are the kind of things, lack of care, that I can’t understand. Not looking for the excellence.

Please, do note that Python3 supports Unicode natively and things are always a bit different than with Python2 and AscII.

Curiosity Python 2.7 and print() from Python 3.6

I lead a project where I decided to go with Python 2.7, for the wide compatibility across all the Servers around.

With RHEL now supporting Python 3 as well, it doesn’t make much sense any more, as all the major brands do support Python 3 directly.

I saw it coming so in my Coding Style Guide for my Team I explained that we will use print(“”) which is the required way to proceed with Python 3, as opposite to print “whatever” from Python 2. Noye Python 2 supports both methods.

But today something unexpected appeared in the Tests. One line of code was making a print of ().

The line of code was:

print()

And not

print("")

And the curiosity is that if you do print() in Python 2.7 it outputs ().

 

My talk at OpenZFS 2018 about DRAID

This September I was invited to talk in OpenZFS 2018 about DRAID and Cold Storage (Spinning drives) in San Francisco, US.

Thanks to @delphix for all their kindness.

Here you can watch mine and all the presentations.

The slides:


You can download the video of the sample Rebuild with DRAID in here:

draid-rebuild-read-write-1sec-vokoscreen-2018-09-06_11-37-48

Also in the Hackaton I presented my mini utility run_with_timeout.sh to execute a command (zdb, zpool, zfs, or any shell command like ls, “sleep 5; ping google.com”…) with a timeout, and returning a Header with the Error Level and the Error Level itself.

Myself I appear at minute 53:50.

Special greetings to my Amazing Team in Cork, Ireland. :)

Troubleshooting upgrading and loading a ZFS module in RHEL7.4

I illustrate this troubleshooting as it will be useful for some of you.

I requested to one of the members of my Team to compile and to install ZFS 7.9 to some of the Servers loaded with drives, that were running ZFS 7.4 older version.

Those systems were running RHEL7.4.

The compilation and install was fine, however the module was not able to load.

My Team member reported that: when trying to run “modprobe zfs“. It was giving the error:

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'zfs': Invalid argument

Also when trying to use a zpool command it gives the error:

Failed to initialize the libzfs library

That was only failing in one of the Servers, but not in the others.

My Engineer ran dmesg and found:

zfs: `' invalid for parameter `metaslab_debug_unload

He though it was a compilation error, but I knew that metaslab_debug_unload is an option parameter that you can set in /etc/zfs.conf

So I ran:

 modprobe -v zfs

And that confirmed my suspicious, so I edited /etc/zfs.conf and commented the parameter and tried again. And it failed.

As I run modprobe -v zfs (verbose) it was returning me the verbose info, and so I saw that it was still trying to load those parameters so I knew it was reading those parameters from some file.
I could have grep all the files in the filesystem looking for the parameter failing in the verbose or find all the files in the system named zfs.conf. To me it looked inefficient as it would be slow and may not bring any result (as I didn’t know how exactly my team member had compiled the code), however I expected to get the result. But what if I found 5 or 7 zfs.conf files?. Slow.
I used strace. It was not installed but the RHEL license was active so I simple did:

yum install strace

strace stands for System Trace and so it records all the System Calls that the programs do.
That’s a pro trick that will accompany you all your career.

So I did:

strace modprobe zfs

I did not use -v in here cause all the verbose would had been logged as a System Call and made more difficult my search.
I got the output of all the System Calls and I just had to look for which files were being read.

Then I found that zfs.conf under /etc/modprobe.d/zfs.conf
That was the one being read. So I commented the line and tried modprobe zfs and it worked perfectly. :)

An Epic fail that are committing all the universities

Article created on: 1528997557 | 2018-06-14 18:32:15 IST

Recently a mentor of the UCC university came to visit me to my office, in order to do the following of one of the members of my Team, an intern.
Conversation was well, and then at some point he asked what courses could do the university teach to their students in order to be more prepared for working with us.
The Head of Business Development, that was in the meeting with me, mentioned something interesting:
– Make the publish their best code in github, bitbucket or similar git repository, and maintain it. It is like a CV.
He pointed that some of the students sent me their repository page, and they have not committed a thing for more than a year. And usually the code that I find there is less than a tic-tac-toe exercise.
– Obviously, to have git experience.
– Having contributed to an Open Source project

I exposed some things that would be helpful to have in the interns and grads that I hire:
– git experience
– Python programming
– C programming
– Unit Testing experience
– Networking experience, in particular iSCSI exports, tcpdump
– Programming Best practices, PEP-8 at least for Python
– Usage of Professional Tools like PyCharm, JetBrains IntelliJ, PHPStorm, Code Lion, Netbeans, Eclipse
– Linux experience. Many of them use Windows at home cause they also play video games. Really few programmers in real life use windows. So at least guys install Virtual Box or VMWare and run Linux in an Virtual Machine.
– Cloud experience. Using instances, CDNs, APIs, tools…

And as the talking advanced I gave him a hint of the Epic fail that all the universities are committing.
They teach git for a semester. They teach Python for one or two semester, the first year usually one, the second year another. And that’s it. Is gone.
When they exit the university they have not programmed in Python for 2 or 3 years, they have not used git, they have not used SQL for the same amount of time, etc…

My boss pointed that the best candidates do side projects in their spare time, and have that bright in their eyes. That sparkling in the eyes is what I call the eye of the tiger, the desire to improve, to learn. That spark.

I told the mentor of my intern that the big mistake is doing things in small parcels, isolated, one block and is gone. That the best way to proceed would be to:
Make the student start a project from the very beginning, from the first semester. Then keep making it bigger and better over time.
Let them improve it over time. Screw it in all the ways possible. Make them reach the limits of their initial architecture. Allow them to face having to redo the thing from the scratch. Allow them to do screw it, to break things, and to learn from their mistakes. Over and over.

Nobody becomes a great programmer coding average things for two semesters.
But let them realize where the problems are. Let them come back to their code of two or three months ago, before holidays, and realize how important is to make comments, to give proper names to the files and to the variables. Let them run that project over so many time, that at some point they have to change computer and they realize that what worked with windows Uppercases and Lowercase mixed files, does not work with Unix (case sensitive).
Let them grow.
Let them see their mistakes over the time.

Let them run the project for so long so they switch several times from Cloud provider, and discover the pros and the cons and the not-to-do, and things like run for your life before using sharing hostings that limit your CPU quota even that kills your MySql instances when they look at the email (true history, connecting to POP3 was raising the CPU and the provider was killing the MySQL instances, and so the queries) or that limits your queries per second, and then ask them to install a drupal and they will learn the hard way why Quality is always better than price and will make the right decisions when they work for somebody else or for their own Startup.

Even many of the supposedly Senior guys never learned from their mistakes, for example the Outsourcing guys, cause they work 6 months to a year in a project and then jump to another. Nobody explains the hell in maintenance and incidental they have left there. Nobody teach them.

Programming an small project for 6 months doesn’t make a master. Doing it for 5 years, growing it, learning from your mistakes and learning the YES and DO-NOT the hard way, the real way that works, cause makes you understand why something is better than other things, is the path.

That also remembers me why I love the MT Notation and many of the guys in Barcelona that saw it criticized the method, while my colleagues at Facebook and Dropbox actually told me that they use it, specially for Python and C/C++.

Allow them to thing about how to solve sorting a list of 1000 items by themselves. Let them think. The lazy will copy, but they will not grow.

Then let them implement a Bubble sort. Let them improve it, if they can. Allow them a week to try to improve that. Then make them sort 1,000,000 items so they see that is bloody slow. How can I improve that?. May I read the data from the drive at once, reading line by line was slow… let them think. Like if they were learning Martial Arts, and so discovering their strengths, that they have fast reflexes, allow them to grow.

Universities have to create good professional, not just machines of passing the exams. Real world demands talent, problem solving abilities, passion, ability to learn, and will to do the things well and to improve, and discipline.

After 5-6 years of programming on a daily basis, with an IDE, git, deploying to the Cloud as the basic, and growing a program and seeing the downsides of the solutions chosen, observing that the caveats where for a reason, learning that the Hardware is important, that is not the same to write to memory that to disk or to network, detecting the problems, redoing things, ending in a cul-de-sac, fixing, improving, learning, growing the project, growing himself/herself as a mind, as a programmer, as a thinker, as an expert, daily, even if it’s 30 minutes per day, then that person is prepared for some serious business.

Like piano, guitar, painting, writing… and any other activity, one require continue training in order to improve.

Students have to follow a journey in order to improve.

Let them start with Command Line, i.e. in C and files. Let’s do add later database support.

Deal with buffer overflow, file descriptor, locks and conversion types. Let them migrate to another language the entire project, using Git from the beginning.

Let them migrate again when they need to add Web support. Allow them to discover that instead of reloading all the page they can use Ajax/JSON. Let them deal with click-click that many common users do on the page buttons (so they submit twice the information). To discover SQL Injections. To use a Web Framework. To add Unit Testing. Add some improvement via Javascript Frameworks like responsive for mobiles.

Allow them to use a new Database, new Webserver or technology that is fashion and everybody on Twitter talks about, so it crashes in their face. And so they discover that they will not play or discover new technologies in actual project time in the Company of their future employers, cause shit happens, and impacts the Schedule, and the Company loses money. Universities: Teach them, let the students learn this for themselves, rather than screwing it up in several companies after university.