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My notes as I read through Sam Newman’s excellent Building Microservices book. Microservices are small services working together (usually known as Microservice architecture) to enable functionality in software. They allow organizations to deliver software faster, embrace new technologies while giving more freedom to react and respond to changes (agile). The opposite of Microservices architecture is a Monolith, and it can be looked as a solution to the problems with Monolithic architecture....

The movie “Dead Poets society” revolves around the non-conformist high school teacher Professor Keating, teaching a class of boys. The central mood of the movie is “Carpe Diem” or “Seize the day”. Nietzche would’ve liked Professor Keating, afterall he’s the one who proclaimed “Live dangerously”. What makes it so good? It tells a very familiar story. Like all good art almost everyone can identify with it, and like all the really good art it makes us reflect on our own lives, asking us to be better....

Sam harris on his podcast episode about death "We are living in the age of smartphone and perpetual distraction. It's amazing to consider that the advice that people like socrates and buddha gave, not to be distracted, about the automacity of life and take some time to pay attention to the most important things. That advice was given at a time when the only distraction was going to the tea shop....

I completed “The Stranger” by Albert Camus a few days back. It was a refreshing read, but strange at the same time. Existentialism is such a deep and philosophical subject. It’s also a feeling that, I’m pretty sure, everybody experiences. Life can be quite stressful, so what would it be like to live life freely, as Monsieur Mersault did? I also saw this movie called “Paterson” about a young bus driver who’s also a poet....

I created something with Sonic Pi. Listen here

SonicPi is a music editor, which lets you write code that generates music. Exciting! I am someone who knows very little about music theory or playing an instrument. But I know how to code! I feel like the perfect audience for this. It’s also aimed at school kids to teach them programming making it fun, interactive and tangible(the opposite of abstract which is how it usually is). When I looked at the code, it reminded of Ruby....

From Ghibli Studios, “Whisper of the Heart” is about a middle school girl, revolving around her life as she encounters new people, and faces challenges growing up. She meets a interesting boy in her grade, who likes her. He has an ambition to become a violin maker, which inspires her, but she feels inadequate because of her laid back attitude and lack of purpose in life. The movie like all Ghibli movies is very atmospheric....

This week I read Cory Doctorow’s science fiction novel - Down and out in the magic kingdom. It is Cory’s first book, published in 2003; simulatenously released under Creative Commons license and can be downloaded in many formats for free. The title is inspired from George Orwell’s “Down and out in Paris and London” (just like “Little Brother”) which describes descent into poverty, a similar plot point in the book. The book is short (208 pages) and I finished it in 5-6 hours....

This weekend, I read Little Brother, a fast-paced Young-Adult novel about government surveillance by Cory Doctorow. You might have guessed the surveillance plot from the resemblance to “Big Brother” in the name. And yes, at the core Little Brother deals with the same questions as George Orwell’s 1984. It demonstrates what it actually takes for our current society to turn into an Orwellian dystopia: Fear, Propoganda, Misinformation. The book came out in 2008, in the pre-Snowden era; but you wouldn’t know that reading it in 2017, because that’s how relavant it is....

Recently I met a 9th grader, who told me they were learning Python in their computers class. I was happy because Python is the easiest programming language there is, and probably the best language for kids to get started. It reminds me of the time, when I was in 9th grade, we had C in our curriculum. And there was (still is) a huge, authoritative book called “Let us C”, which was used as our textbook....