Andy Dote

2025-01-26 • mysql database prefixes column names micro orm

The text discusses the convention of using unique 3-letter prefixes for all tables and columns in a database to prevent column name conflicts when joining tables. The author explains the challenges and inefficiencies of this conve...

2025-01-19 • typescript javascript go language error system

The text discusses an error in a system that occurs occasionally. It explains the error and the process of fixing it. The author also compares the tradeoff between typescript/javascript and Go.

2025-01-11 • software development debugging memory profiling gdi

The text describes the author's experience in debugging a dotnet Windows Forms application that had many issues, including memory leaks, random crashes, and data loss. The author was given the job of fixing the problem and discove...

2024-12-26 • telemetry context opentelemetry bug operating system signals shutdown span

The author discusses using opentelemetry to trace applications and the issue of handling OS signals and still sending telemetry on shutdown. The bug is identified and the author provides solutions to make sure the last spans are s...

2024-12-12 • configuration software development api devops deployment

The text discusses the concept of 'outside in design' in software development, focusing on reducing configuration and API surface area. It provides examples of how this approach was implemented in an HTTP rate limiter and in build...

2024-11-24 • debugging opentelemetry contact tracing

The author discusses the use of print debugging as a tool and its limitations, and compares it to other debugging tools such as OpenTelemetry tracing and debuggers. The author also shares their preference for tracing over structur...

2024-10-31 • configuration software development software testing

The text discusses the negative aspects of having too much configuration in software development, both from the perspective of the developer and the user. It highlights the cognitive load, complexity, and testing issues that arise...

2024-07-20 • error handling opentelemetry contact tracing

The text discusses the issue of handling multiple errors in a single span. It explains that while it is possible to store multiple errors in a span, it is not recommended due to limitations in filtering and grouping. The author su...

2023-11-15 • web development hot reloading server-side rendering websocket deployment templates

The author discusses the process of implementing hot reload for server-side rendering using htmx and go templates. They prefer htmx over react due to its simplicity and want to recreate the hot reload feature from the React ecosys...

2023-09-19 • software development logging opentelemetry contact tracing

The text discusses the drawbacks of using logs and advocates for the use of tracing instead. It highlights the differences between logs and traces, and explains how tracing is better in terms of log levels, messages, mixed outputs...

2023-07-23 • software testing calling conventions microservices architecture rules

The text discusses the use of microservices and test runners to enforce boundaries between services/modules in a repository. It outlines rules and conventions to enforce, and provides examples of tests written in Go, C#, and TypeS...

2023-07-06 • continuous integration and delivery build tools and infrastructure opentelemetry contact tracing feature flags

The text discusses the importance of tracking time in CI pipelines and how OpenTelemetry can be used to gather useful information. It also explains the terminology and the process of tracing builds and build steps.

2023-05-18 • mysql api migration service database schema

The text discusses the Expand-Contract method for performing database schema migrations and service-to-service communication without application downtime. It provides an example of how to change the address schema in a database an...

2023-01-16 • software development github actions feature flags pipelines

The text discusses the use of feature flags in a CI pipeline to reduce the risk of breaking the pipeline for all developers. It explains the benefits of using feature flags in the CI pipeline and provides a detailed example of mig...

2022-11-22 • github actions changelog versioning build tools and infrastructure

The text discusses the challenges of versioning in software development and the author's implementation of changelog-driven versioning for their CLI tools. The author outlines the requirements, format, and usage of the changelog, ...

2022-11-10 • quality assurance devops continuous integration and delivery feature flags

The text discusses the impact of continuous delivery on the role of QA teams, emphasizing the importance of involving QA early in the development process and utilizing feature flags to enable testing. It also presents a fictional ...

2022-11-02 • environment version building release deployment asset

The text discusses the difference between deployment and release processes, emphasizing the importance of understanding the definitions of these terms. It provides detailed descriptions of deployment, release, build, artifact, ver...

2022-09-19 • make hashing techniques s3 bazel caching

The text discusses the use of Make for file content-based caching and remote storage, as an alternative to Bazel. It explains the process of hashing source files, using Make to detect changes, and implementing remote caching with ...

2022-09-14 • programming git hugo themes code vector embeddings

The author discusses the challenges of embedding code from another repository into blog posts and introduces a shortcode called git-embed to make the process easier. The shortcode fetches the specified file and embeds it in a high...

2022-09-11 • software development uml mermaid diagram

The author refutes the claims of UML's death, stating that some parts are still useful. They use Activity Diagram, State Machine Diagram, and Sequence Diagram regularly, and render them with Mermaid. The author emphasizes the impo...