Ivan on Containers, Kubernetes, and Backend Development

Hi friends!

Ivan's here, with a monthly roundup from iximiuz.com.

I just finished an article on Kubernetes, and as always, it took me million hours to get from the first draft to a decent quality write-up. For better or for worse, there is no such thing for me as quick writing. But now it's getting late over here, so I'll have to keep the newsletter rather short.

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What I Was Working On

Continuing the June theme, I managed to find some time in July to work on my (not so) secret Kubernetes UI. The visualizations are much smoother now (check out that rolling Deployment recording below), but the rest of the changes were mostly plumbing and hardening, so no new functional to demo yet.

What I Was Writing

There is one but rather big article I'd like to share this month: How Kubernetes Reinvented Virtual Machines. This article might feel less technical than my usual writing, but the intent was to tell a relatable story. It's based on my 10+ years of experience and observation of how people develop, deploy, and operate web services. And it's an illustrated one! Just to give you some taste:

I've also been pretty active on Twitter and published a few threads you may find interesting (or controversial):

Why AWS Lambda is great for pure FaaS and poor for generic HTTP workloads
Kubernetes basics explained by analogy (kinda-sorta spin-off of the blog article)
How knowing Container Fundamentals helps you use Kubernetes more efficiently
Kubernetes Service Misconceptions

Last but not least, DockerSlim officially announced its Docker Compose support. Now you can optimize images that are a part of the compose service definition with a single command. And while I didn't participate in the technical implementation of this feature, I'm happy to share the news 🎉

What I Was Reading

K8s Gateway API is here - what's in it for you? - Hard to tell for me at the moment how handy they actually will be, but I definitely like the new, more fine-grained separation of concerns the mechanism of Gateways provides.
The Kubernetes Networking Guide - A hot find from Anaïs Urlichs' last newsletter issue. "A resource providing an overview of various Kubernetes networking components with a specific focus on EXACTLY HOW they implement the required functionality."
Dockerfiles now Support Multiple Build Contexts - Well, this feature enables quite some new interesting use cases (and workarounds). I'll probably explore it more deeply and share my findings.
What happens when you press a key in your terminal? and A toy remote login server - A pair from Julia Evans on how terminals actually work. This ancient tech is behind such commonly used tools as SSH or docker and kubectl exec commands, so definitely worth a read.
Understanding AWS Lambda scaling and throughput - A link to an AWS blog is not something I'd typically share. But this one has some exceptional drawings.
An Ubuntu kernel bug causes container crashes - Versioning is hard. Kernel versioning is even harder. "Maintaining an out-of-tree kernel patch for any length of time is an arduous task." Enjoyed the read.
Node.js Rocks in Docker by Bret Fisher - That leap from being able to run Node.js in a container to getting a production-ready image...
A Look Into My Development Stack - A pragmatic look on development environments by Matt Rickard. "Even though I helped build minikube, I don't have the time to debug issues anymore, so I use Docker Desktop." You got my point 😉
Remote Development at Slack - I've been saying it for ages, one project - one virtual machine.
Stacked Pull Requests - If you never felt the need, you're a lucky one. Every other my feature results in a series of pull requests with one based on another, and cascading rebase is no fun.

Stay Tuned

And this is it for July. Stay safe and healthy!

Cheers,