In the last article we looked at the best books to improve your knowledge of the core concepts of programming. This time we are specifically going to look at the best Java books (in my humble opinion) that give not only juniors a great base in the language but also act as great references for senior developers. I’m not going to explain why you should be reading and studying outside of work, if you need to hear my reasons then go check out the first article! ...
When people ask how to improve their programming skills invariably they are told to write more code, to dive into open source projects or to build a replica of a well known piece of functionality. All of those tips are great but at the same time they can reinforce bad habits or lead you to the situation where you can make something work but you don’t know why! Why your programming doesn’t work out the way you plan The key to improving your skills is to both practice programming but also to read more on the subject, by reading I don’t mean spending 2 hours on Hacker news everyday (although that can be fun!). A solid concerted effort to work through particular programming books will pay dividends in your future abilities and critical thinking. By expanding your knowledge of core concepts you can spend more time on the domain problem and how to work efficiently rather than coding by coincidence or wondering how your program works… In this article I’m going to provide a selection of books that I have found to be excellent reads that have not bored myself to tears. Not all are obligatory to read and some will be less relevant for the functional programmers or NoSQL people out there. ...
There are many articles with some great information on how to size your Couchbase cluster but rarely do they mention specific server specifications or details/pricing of tech stacks (Check out this great blog post for sizing Couchbase deployments). In this article we are going to look at how you can build an awesome cloud based solution with a lot of headroom and power for Couchbase for under $1000! While AWS and other cloud vendors such as Heroku and Digital Ocean and others provide a great service and a plethora of features we often find they can be pricey when you want power and performance can be erratic (unless you pay more for dedicated instances). We do love the ability to quickly spin up instances and AWS is one of our main resources for quickly testing out features. (note: these services are great and it’s not bashing them, this is just a different approach). ...