What's your cycle time? If you can't answer it, don't worry, you're not alone. Many engineering leaders couldn't tell you without some significant number-crunching. Gaining visibility into performance is only half the battle though. Knowing how to interpret metrics and how to apply them to improving performance is where the magic happens. Many CEOs do not know how to align engineering metrics to business KPIs (revenue, customer retention, etc.). Bringing metrics to your board or non-technical CEO for the first time may be challenging if you are unable to help them bridge the gap.
Learn which metrics matter for engineering leaders.
WordPress Documentation Team Bans Links to Commercial Websites
This week WordPress’ Documentation team announced a ban on links to commercial websites in a revision to its external linking policy:
During discussion about external linking policy, we came to conclusion that we won’t allow, at least in the beginning and for the time being, any commercial blogs. So before you start arguing that some popular plugin’s blogs have valuable information, let me stop you right there.
Allowing “popular plugin’s/theme’s/services’ etc blogs” and all other commercial blogs will put us in a position to protect documentation from being abused as marketing media, to protect ourselves from accusations of being biased and to defend every decision we make along the way. And still, there will be dissatisfied sides claiming we weren’t fair and did them wrong. The idea of allowing external linking will become its own purpose.
Despite the announcement’s abrasive phrasing discouraging further discussion on the matter, the controversial decision stirred up a heated conversation in the comments. Yoast founder Joost de Valk contends that companies contributing to WordPress might as well receive some promotion as a benefit:
I understand that you want to prevent discussions about bias.
But I think your premise here is wrong: you’re saying you’re not “biased” if you’re not linking to commercial companies. I would say we’re all inherently biased, because some of those companies do a lot for the WordPress community, while others do not.
The companies that contribute to WordPress a lot used to get some links, and thus some promotion as benefit from the fact that they’re contributing. By removing that from them, you’re basically treating those that don’t give back the same as companies that do give back, something which I think is simply wrong. So I very heavily disagree with this decision.
Milana Cap, the Documentation Team member who penned the announcement, clarified that the policy change does not remove external links to commercial sites from WordPress.org. It only applies to documentation sites, including HelpHub, Code Reference, Plugin and Theme Developer Handbook, Block Editor Handbook, Common APIs Handbook.
“There is no way to make this fair,” Cap said. “And we can discuss about many unfair parallels happening in open source communities; such as how many hours per week can be contributed by a freelancer vs paid company contributor, meeting times (where decisions are made) in the middle of the night in your timezone etc.”
Timi Wahalahti suggested one solution would be to better utilize the Five for the Future pledges page to identify significant contributors to documentation if links to commercial sites are no longer an option.
Several commenters noted the value of linking to additional examples and resources but also recommended WordPress put a version or timestamp in place to give the reader more context.
WordPress agency owner Jon Brown characterized the ban as “undesirable gatekeeping,” saying that the policy suggests all things commercial are “inherently corrupt and not trustworthy nor valuable.”
“A links value is inherently subjective and ought to be delt with subjectively,” Brown said. “Trying to create high level objective rules doesn’t seem beneficial or realistic. I certainly disagree that all ‘commercial’ sites should be blanket banned.
“I do think there are some low level disqualifiers that could guide authors and moderators in what links are appropriate. Those should be criteria that directly impact the users of docs, and being commercial doesn’t. Those are things like, the source being accessible, the source not being pay walled, etc.”
Cap responded, saying that the root of the issue is that allowing commercial links puts the documentation team in the unwanted position of having to find a fair way to decide on which links are allowed to be included. She also indicated that the policy may evolve over time but that for now the decision on the ban is final.
“Perhaps over time we’ll figure that out,” Cap said. “We’ll certainly know more once we start doing it. For now, this is the decision.”
External sources can be valuable supplements to documentation, but this conversation underscores the need for better incentives for people to spend time documenting WordPress. As the team is already running on limited resources, they are trying to avoid having to heavily police links to commercial websites.
“The bottom line is: we haven’t figured out the best way to deal with commercial blogs or sites in a fair manner and thus our focus is going to be on links that don’t drop into that grey zone,” Cap said. “We do expect to eventually get towards discussing how we can safely include commercial blog links (if this even is possible).”
A Simulation Using Sequential and Parallel Collections in Scala 2.13
Introduction
Software to be build is to compare data from independent satellite systems. As fighter jets traverse airspace, each system determines its identity, recording the name of the jet type or an equivalent letter or number abbreviation. For data collected over time, the simulation software must ascertain whether systems agree on identification and if so, whether contrasting the data by single or multiple processors would be more efficient.
This article begins with a proof of concept in Scala 2.12. A small program with function taking generic collection type parameters verifies the basic strategy. The actual software is written in 2.13, in which generic collection types – those inheriting the GenTraversable hierarchy – have been deprecated [1]. The parallel package is also gone but can be brought back [2].
7 Key Node.js Advantages to Develop Scalable Web Apps
Over the years, Node.js has become the go-to technology for building scalable web applications. It has gained enormous popularity amongst developers due to the many significant benefits it offers. With the support of an enthusiastic community, node.js is standing firm with a 51.9% stake as the most popular web framework, according to Stack Overflow’s 2020 Developer Survey.
Looking at the rising trend, we are debunking some of the top advantages which make Node.js a popular development choice in 2020.
How to Approach Data Migration in 3 Stages
Moving data from one system to another can be a complex process. In this post, we have broken down how to approach data migration in 3 stages:
- Before you migrate
- Ready to migrate
- Once you’ve migrated
Your requirements will take into consideration:
Shaking Down the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera
I picked up the new Raspberry Pi High Quality camera last week. It’s pretty impressive. In this article, I’ll show you some ways to interact with this camera and do some cool stuff with it.
This is my current setup for this article. I built little stage with Mario, and I have the camera with a lens, into my Pi, and a temp/humidity sensor hooked to it. It’s the same I used in my previous live stream with this camera.
Ariele Lite Is a Fun and Refreshing Theme for WordPress Bloggers
Ariele Lite, the latest theme from Rough Pixels, went live in the WordPress theme directory today. In an ecosystem where designers are dubbing most themes as multipurpose, it is refreshing to see a well-designed theme that is unafraid to cater specifically to bloggers.
It is not often that I get the opportunity to test a brand new theme from the official WordPress theme directory that supports block editor styles. Or, at least it’s not often that I test one that lives up to the claim. Despite a couple of trivial issues, Ariele Lite is a theme that will appeal to a wide audience.
Whenever I see the word “lite” appended to the end of a theme name, it is immediately off-putting. Far too often, I have been burned when activating such themes. My already low expectations are generally met with unfulfilled promises, missing styles for basic features, and a metric ton of advertising for the real product (i.e., the non-lite version that I can buy). However, I was pleasantly surprised by the work that went into Ariele Lite. It was a complete and fully-functioning theme and did not feel like crippleware. Plus, most of the upsell features in the commercial version were not that appealing to me. I can find most of them in plugin form. However, they could be nice additions for the user who wants integrated features that will look and feel like they are a part of the theme without the hassle of hunting down the perfect plugin.
What makes Ariele Lite a great theme is that it has an opinionated style, even if it is merely some subtle flavoring, for nearly every element or block. It never goes overboard into lavishness, which means it doesn’t break readability. It is a theme that has fun with its design while being well-groomed enough for professional bloggers.
Even if Ariele Lite is not to your taste, Rough Pixels has a history of releasing clean, well-designed themes. There is a little something for almost anyone. The company is also one of the few theme-makers with multiple themes that support the block editor in the free directory.
Theme Design and Features
Ariele Lite is not stock full of custom features, but it has enough flexibility to satisfy most people who want to do some customization. More than anything, my favorite thing about the theme is that it does not take much cajoling to achieve the look of the demo the theme author has put together. There should be a WordPress theme directory filter tag titled “what you see in the demo is what you get.”
The theme comes with a reasonable number of theme design options. Users can change nearly every aspect of their front end. The theme has options for all its colors, several labels, and other theme-specific elements. It stops short of adding font settings, which is likely a good thing given the theme’s attention to detail with typography.
The one particular design element that caught my eye was the theme’s blockquote style. Some bloggers may want something a bit less pronounced in design, depending on how they want to present quotes. However, I am a sucker for beautiful quote designs, and Ariele Lite did not disappoint.
The quote design is representative of the attention that Rough Pixels has given to other elements in the theme. From the bold headings to the caption design that overlays the featured image, the team has left few stones unturned.
For bloggers, the most important element is the typography. It is one of those elements that too many theme authors overlook, but it is paramount when catering a theme to bloggers. This is one area the theme excels at. However, if selecting the sidebar-less layout option, there are too many characters per line for comfortable reading. Stick with either the left or right sidebar option to stay on point.
The theme comes with Jetpack infinite scrolling support, a custom posts widget with thumbnails, and enough sidebars to put widgets anywhere you might want. I like the default setup well enough, so these features are less important to me. However, they are likely welcome additions for many users.
Not Without Issues
I have been building this theme up thus far in the review. Now, it is time to take it down a notch or two. Ariele Lite is by no means perfect. No software is. I hit a few snags.
The biggest issue I ran into was the theme did not handle full-aligned blocks well. Instead of capping them to the width of the content container, they would break out into the sidebar. Even when selecting a layout with no sidebar, the same issue persists.
This would be an absolute deal-breaker for me as a user. As a developer, I know that it is simply an oversight and can be corrected. The theme author can correct it with a single line of CSS. Users should simply be aware of the problem, at least until the theme author has a chance to address it.
Outside of that, nested lists in sidebars need a little TLC. The spacing is off. It is also missing support for pagination via the <!--nextpage--> quick tag on single post views.
These few items are relatively trivial issues to address. They are worth noting for the 1.0.4 version of the theme and will likely be fixed in future iterations.
Final Thoughts
Ariele Lite does not break much new ground. It is simply a solid blogging theme that supports the block editor. Nearly two years in, such themes are still few and far between. It is ideally suited for people who love to write, and it has enough options to keep those who want to do a bit of tweaking happy.
If the theme’s development team is proactive about addressing the few minor issues, I would recommend it to anyone who wants a good theme that fully supports the latest version of WordPress.
Compiling Trouble Shooting: Segmentation Fault and GCC Illegal Instruction
Recently I have been re-organizing and re-compiling all third-party dependencies of Nebula Graph, an open-source distributed graph database. And I have come across two interesting issues and would like to share with you.
Flex Segmentation Fault — Segmentation Fault (Core Dumped)
Segmentation fault happened upon compiling Flex：
Micronaut in the Cloud: Intro to MongoDB in Microservices
Micronaut is an open-source, JVM-based framework for building full-stack, modular, easily testable microservice and serverless applications.
Unlike reflection-based IoC frameworks that load and cache reflection data for every single field, method, and constructor in your code, with Micronaut, your application startup time and memory consumption are not bound to the size of your codebase. Micronaut's cloud support is built right in, including support for common discovery services, distributed tracing tools, and cloud runtimes.
Deno JS: Introduction
Joke
The story ages to the time of dinosaurs. The gigantic reptiles that flourish on Earth millions of years ago. After completing their time, they extinct. As Justin Timberlake said, "what goes around, Comes back around". The same happens to dinosaurs, in this digital age they return with a slang name DENO. Again a bad analogy to start with, please pardon me with this.
Definition
So according to, deno.land, Deno is a simple, modern, and secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript that uses V8 and is built in Rust, and Tokio. Sounding like Node it is made by the developer, Ryan Dahl, of its anagram. As a first time user for deno, it felt like a node in a new package there is a substantial difference between the two on which we will be coming in the latter part.
Deno JS: CRUD and MySQL Connection
Deno.js is a new backend language based on the javascript framework. Deno is a simple, modern, and secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript that uses V8 and is built in Rust. In this tutorial, we'll learn how to develop a complete CRUD web application using Deno js (Oak as a framework) and using Mysql as database.
Overview
This project takes an example of an Employee object having four attributes id, name, department, and isActive. We will proceed with adding an employee object in our DB and then performing further operations.
Riot Games Provides Game Data Via New Valorant API
Riot Games just announced an API for its Valorant game. Through the Valorant API, developers will be able to call access to match history and content data. At launch, Riot Games is restricting access to the API to approved use cases. The company wants to strictly control access at this time.
#276: Embed Updates
Show Description
Marie and Stephen talk about recent improvements made to CodePen embeds – including Prefill embeds and lazy loading embeds.
Time Jumps
- 01:01 Assets updates
- 05:20 What are embeds?
- 07:46 Changes to embeds
- 14:43 Sponsor: WooCommerce
- 16:45 What about Prefill embeds?
- 23:35 Lazy loading embeds
Sponsor: WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that brings eCommerce to your WordPress sites. It’s unique in its customizability and flexibility. You can use it to sell physical products, digital downloads, memberships, services, and tickets, plus offer customers lots of different ways to pay, including things like Apple Pay and Bitcoin powered by Stripe.
Show Links
- Blog post on prefill embed updates
- CSS Tricks
- Stephen on CodePen / Stephen on Twitter
- Marie on CodePen / Marie on Twitter
CodePen Links
The post #276: Embed Updates appeared first on CodePen Blog.
How To Achieve Mongo Replication on Docker
In the previous post, I showed how we used MongoDB replication to solve several problems we were facing.
Replication got to be a part of a bigger migration which brought stability, fault-tolerance, and performance to our systems. In this post, we will dive into the practical preparation of that migration.
Leveraging DevOps Services: Development, Testing, and Delivery
Enterprise IT organizations need to continuously roll out innovative new features into their platform-as-a-service offering with just the right features to achieve faster time to market with no defects and low cost.
DevOps is an approach that helps you achieve speed and quality by enabling collaboration between lines of business, development team, testers, and IT operations team with shared and integrated toolsets throughout development, integration, and staging phases of application delivery. To add on, DevOps today are complementing the agile methodologies, lean practices in the context of a system-oriented approach.
Develop Camel-Quarkus Applications Using Red Hat
Red Hat Open Shift
Red Hat Open Shift offers a consistent hybrid-cloud foundation for building and scaling containerized applications. Open Shift provides an enterprise-grade, container-based platform with no vendor lock-in. Red Hat was one of the first companies to work with Google on Kubernetes, even before launch, and has become the second leading contributor to the Kubernetes upstream project. Open Shift also provides a common development platform no matter what infrastructure we use to host the application.
Quarkus
Quarkus provides a container-first approach to building Java applications. This approach makes it much easier to build microservices-based applications written in Java as well as enabling those applications to invoke functions running on serverless computing frameworks. For this reason, Quarkus applications have small memory footprints and fast start-up times.
An Ultimate Guide to the Scrum Project Management
If you've spent even a small amount of time in the field of digital project management then you must have heard about the Scrum methodology. Scrum, which was initially designed for software development teams now, finds its application across many other fields like marketing, project management, and many more.
According to a report by a Project Management Institute, more than half of the project managers who use the Agile framework uses the Scrum methodology. Not only this, but a PMI survey also shows that around a combined total of 55% of organizations "Sometimes", often", or "always" uses Scrum.
Build an API Using AWS API Gateway and Dell Boomi — Step 1
Introduction
Hi All, I hope you all had a long amazing 4th of July in the United States and a nice weekend everywhere else. Today, I thought, let me write a blog on a new technology, something that I have not written before in this platform or anywhere else. So, today, we will look into a step by step guide to creating an API using AWS API Gateway along with Dell Boomi for the HTTP service provider. Once again, I may take baby steps, if you are already aware of certain steps, and want to skip some steps, feel free to do so.
I will build an API on a couple of tables in Maria DB. You can use any other backend of your wish with your changes. For simplicity, I will split this blog into 2 parts, first part describing steps to create API in Dell Boomi and second part describing to connect the Boomi API with AWS API Gateway.