Everything in software engineering has changed within a decade — I was a hands-on technologist 20 years ago, turned to management ten years ago, and am now hands-on again as a consultant. I’m amazed by some changes and surprised by others. Here is a basic rundown of what almost caused my early demise. Unix Is Back for the Developer (Silver Lining) In the ‘80s and early ‘90s, a…

Step thru the process of building & training a custom NLP sentiment analyzer. — Do Vulcans express sentiment without emotion? With the power of Machine Learning, we can find out. We shall evaluate famous Spock Quotes using this (yet another) basic guide to Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Sentiment Analysis (SA) methods. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be…

Elastic Python-compute for Machine Learning is coming to Snowflake — it may be a deadly snowstorm for Spark… — I often help design Data Platforms for large IT shops (my other secret job that pays me better). What I encounter a lot is Redshift and Snowflake in the warehouse (more of the latter these days) supplemented by Databricks for Machine Learning (ML) and Spark support. Databricks has done 2 seemingly simple things well

We all know it is slower than C, Java, Rust, but just how slow? — Just as I started thinking about this article, my Medium feed produces a joker post “Python isn’t actually slow” — I read it even though I knew it was not true and was just clickbait. When it comes to Python you are dealing with a snail, and while you can…

My search failed, just like my search for the ultimate pancake — “The modern data stack encompasses a data pipeline, a destination, a transformation layer and a business intelligence/data visualization platform” — Fivetran I read about every article on the Modern Data Stack (MDS) and listened to a few podcasts, youtube videos, and came to the conclusion Everyone has their own definition…

As 2022 starts, let me reflect on the positives after two terrible pandemic years — Taking a break from my usual tech articles, I thought about what good came out of COVID-life. The 3 lighthearted things I realized were: I like working remotely I like spreading fewer germs I like being at home 1. Work Remote Evolution

Intel/CISC is finally dying out — is ARM taking over? — ARM (once called Advanced RISC Machines, now it is just arm) has an interesting approach to the processor market — unlike Intel, they do not sell chips, instead, they license a suite of designs so that partners/customers can build semi-custom solutions called SoCs (Systems on a Chip). Think of it…

Coding tests, design tests, etc — a methodology for interviewing and evaluating software engineer hires — “I don’t know why but I like this candidate, my gut tells me he/she is going to be great” — the wrong way to hire people In his recent book Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell notes the science behind “gut feel” and how it is usually wrong. Judges in the…