Software should be simpler. Developers shouldn’t have to deal with bloated dependency-laden frameworks containing thousands upon thousands of modules and libraries. We shouldn’t spend more time getting the code that runs the code working. We shouldn’t get bogged down in mind-numbing configuration wrangling. We need to go back to basics. …

Classics that work just as well today as they did decades ago — Package managers and third-party plugins can be amazing wonders of productivity. They save time and provide easy ways to extend the functionality of applications and operating systems. But what happens when those tools aren’t available? When you must rely solely on whatever ships with your OS? …

Smoke out annoying container problems with minimal insanity — Sometimes Docker containers can be a black box. Whether you built the underlying image or you’re using a public one, a flapping container is frustrating. Figuring out what is going on can be difficult due to the way containers are executed and how they handle logging. In this article, we’ll…

Tap into a world of data for your next app idea — Whether you’re tinkering with a toy app or creating the next big SaaS product, using public APIs is a common building block. You might need financial information, sports stats or even just the weather. Leveraging the vast array of information at your disposal saves you the hassle of reinventing the…

Tail syslog for errors, get the UUID of a device, and more — In today’s landscape of point-and-click cloud servers there’s simply no substitute for good old-fashioned command-line wizardry. You can access parts of a machine the GUI could only dream of, accomplish programmatic tasks faster, and most importantly of all: solve problems. Knowing a few frequently used navigational and debugging commands can…

Colonize your cloud provider faster than Mars — When I was first introduced to Terraform a whole new world of possibilities opened up. Cloud resources could now be managed just like code. I had been bitten by the IaC bug and was drinking the Kool-Aid. …

Don’t just install blindly, learn how to harness the full power of apt — One of the first things most people do on a new Debian-based Linux install is run sudo apt-get update. This popular command refreshes the cache and checks for available updates to the system’s installed packages. It is good housekeeping to keep both the cache and installed packages up-to-date. More often…

A local PG session on a not-so-local container — Spinning up a Docker container is a pretty simple task. You grab an image, run a few commands, and in minutes you have a whole environment right at your fingertips. What happens when things need to get a little more complex than that? What about persistence? Opening ports? Sharing resources? …

Less repetitive tasks, less wasted time debugging, happier devs — There are a ton of different services out there geared towards improving a developer’s workflow. Each one aims to solve a myriad of problems that plague us every day. Sometimes they’re focused on improving existing open-source products, other times they offer a new paradigm for writing or testing code. …