Planning for Anticipated Failure — “Everything fails all the time” — Werner Vogels, AWS CTO The infamous quote from one of the biggest tech leaders who ushered in the era of cloud computing reminds us that what can go wrong, will go wrong. The main idea here is to anticipate failures and treat them as…

Explained with the Stripe API example — If someone told you to “check the API doc” and you did, but are not sure what you’re looking at, this is for you. APIs are everywhere. They connect different apps together and are the backbone of most integrations. …

Know what happens when the user presses a button — Sequence diagrams help visualize what happens when an action occurs — such as when a user presses a button on your app. They are commonly used by technical and business teams to architect solutions, understand requirements for new system integration and/or to document an existing process. While sequence diagrams can…

A hands-on introduction to GraphQL APIs — GraphQL is a query language for APIs. But what exactly does that mean, and how does it work? At its simplest, GraphQL is about asking for specific fields on objects. In this article, we will take a hands-on approach to quickly get started with GraphQL using AppSync, DynamoDB, and Postman…

“Aha!” moments have to start from somewhere — The Era of Personalization Delivering the right content, at the right time, to the right customer is becoming more critical in today’s digital marketing landscape. Consumers’ growing expectations are driving the need for brands to create faster, better, and more personalized experiences. “Eight in 10 survey respondents say personalization is important to their organization’s…

Useful Snippets for Common Use Cases — Pandas is a fast, powerful, flexible and easy to use open-source data analysis and manipulation tool, built on top of the Python programming language. (*) Here’s a list of commonly used Pandas snippets for working with CSV files — mostly as a reminder for myself, but hopefully it can be…

Break up that monolith spreadsheet — In this article, we’ll go over how to split a large Excel file into multiple smaller files. The method we’ll be using is shell scripting. Let’s Get Started! The first thing you need is an Excel file with a .csv extension. If you don’t have one ready, feel free to use the one…

Make your life easier, every day — If you use Google Chrome to browse the web — and most people do — these extensions or add-ons can help you work better. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated or sponsored by any of the extensions below. Most — if not all — are free, have no bloat, no ads…

Use this format to create a shared understanding of why we do what we do. — User stories are short, simple descriptions of a requirement told from the perspective of the person who would like a new feature. They typically follow a common template that is used to foster alignment with the work at hand and is not limited to tech or agile teams. In this…