Obsess is reinventing the traditional e-commerce grid through 3D virtual stores for brands

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Fifteen years ago, crypto wasn’t on the mainstream media’s radar; but today, it frequently captures the spotlight on drive-time, lunch-time, and evening news channels, drawing both seasoned investors and curious newcomers into its orbit. While it’s exciting to witness this once-niche market gaining traction as the flood of crypto headlines inundate our newsfeeds, we have to ask: can we have too much of a good thing? Taking note of every headline as the ticker goes up; and down (sometimes multiple times a day) would be akin to suffering from investor whiplash… Sensationalism vs. substance Crypto headlines often oscillate between extremes. A prime example of this is a headline that read “Ethereum price lags”; while another read “Ethereum trader strikes gold as prices soar…” From exuberant predictions around astronomical gains to dire warnings of impending collapse - and everything in between - it can be hard to make head or tail of what’s actually going on. A broader view of crypto investment takes into account the long-term fundamentals that drive crypto adoption and value, including technological innovation, adoption by institutions and mainstream users, regulatory developments, macroeconomic trends, and societal acceptance. When investors read too much into market sentiment fueled only by headlines, they risk making short-sighted investment decisions fuelled by market manipulation and short-term noise. Understanding the broader context: the crypto market cycle “Do your own research" (DYOR) is a cardinal rule in investment circles, underlining the importance of doing your own independent analysis and due diligence before making financial decisions. In the dynamic world of crypto, this mantra holds particular significance where relying solely on hearsay (including mainstream media narratives) or social media hype can lead investors astray, exposing them to unnecessary risks and potential losses. To navigate the crypto landscape effectively, astute investors are those who have taken the time to understand the nuances of Bitcoin’s market cycle (and its effect on altcoins such as Ethereum). This four-year cycle is often referred to as the ‘halving cycle’ and has been historically closely linked to price, with the cycle progressing through ‘Bull’ (rising prices); ‘Bear’ (falling prices); ‘Accumulation’ (a leveling out of prices) and ‘Expansion’ (steady growth). Importantly, within each of these phases, there might be rallies, reactions, and a lot of volatility on (hopefully) the way up. Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile, carries risk and the value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! Back to basics: time-tested investment strategies Amidst a frenzy of post-halving headlines, investor disappointment around the absence of immediate spikes in price is real, but now is not the time to abandon proven investment principles. Instead, investors should anchor their strategies in time-tested approaches designed to weather market volatility: Dollar-cost averaging (DCA): Embrace the discipline of regularly investing fixed amounts, irrespective of market conditions. DCA mitigates the impact of short-term price fluctuations by averaging out costs over time and promoting a steady accumulation of assets.


The Hold-On-for-Dear-Life (HODL) strategy: In a market rife with volatility, the HODL mantra focuses on the importance of long-term conviction over short-term speculation. By focusing on the intrinsic value and fundamentals of assets, rather than succumbing to market hysteria, investors can cultivate their resilience.


Diversification: Diversification remains a cornerstone of sound investment practice, and sees investors spread investments across different assets (such as types of coins) to minimize risk from volatile market swings. A diversified portfolio fosters resilience and safeguards against unforeseen market turbulence. Don’t let hype eclipse substance! While an influx of crypto headlines signifies exciting maturation of the digital asset ecosystem, excessive fixation on sensational news can prove highly detrimental to investors' long-term success. By exercising discernment amidst the noise, understanding the broader market context, and adhering to time-tested investment strategies, investors can navigate the crypto landscape with confidence. Fifteen years ago, crypto wasn’t on the mainstream media’s radar; but today, it frequently captures the spotlight on drive-time, lunch-time, and evening news channels, drawing both seasoned investors and curious newcomers into its orbit. crypto While it’s exciting to witness this once-niche market gaining traction as the flood of crypto headlines inundate our newsfeeds, we have to ask: can we have too much of a good thing? Taking note of every headline as the ticker goes up; and down (sometimes multiple times a day) would be akin to suffering from investor whiplash… Sensationalism vs. substance Sensationalism vs. substance Crypto headlines often oscillate between extremes. A prime example of this is a headline that read “Ethereum price lags”; while another read “Ethereum trader strikes gold as prices soar…” From exuberant predictions around astronomical gains to dire warnings of impending collapse - and everything in between - it can be hard to make head or tail of what’s actually going on. actually A broader view of crypto investment takes into account the long-term fundamentals that drive crypto adoption and value, including technological innovation, adoption by institutions and mainstream users, regulatory developments, macroeconomic trends, and societal acceptance. When investors read too much into market sentiment fueled only by headlines, they risk making short-sighted investment decisions fuelled by market manipulation and short-term noise. Understanding the broader context: the crypto market cycle Understanding the broader context: the crypto market cycle “Do your own research" (DYOR) is a cardinal rule in investment circles, underlining the importance of doing your own independent analysis and due diligence before making financial decisions. In the dynamic world of crypto, this mantra holds particular significance where relying solely on hearsay (including mainstream media narratives) or social media hype can lead investors astray, exposing them to unnecessary risks and potential losses. To navigate the crypto landscape effectively, astute investors are those who have taken the time to understand the nuances of Bitcoin’s market cycle (and its effect on altcoins such as Ethereum). This four-year cycle is often referred to as the ‘halving cycle’ and has been historically closely linked to price, with the cycle progressing through ‘Bull’ (rising prices); ‘Bear’ (falling prices); ‘Accumulation’ (a leveling out of prices) and ‘Expansion’ (steady growth). Importantly, within each of these phases, there might be rallies, reactions, and a lot of volatility on (hopefully) the way up. Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile, carries risk and the value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! Disclaimer: Crypto is volatile, carries risk and the value can go up and down. Past performance is not an indicator of future returns. Please DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! Back to basics: time-tested investment strategies Back to basics: time-tested investment strategies Amidst a frenzy of post-halving headlines, investor disappointment around the absence of immediate spikes in price is real, but now is not the time to abandon proven investment principles. Instead, investors should anchor their strategies in time-tested approaches designed to weather market volatility: absence of immediate spikes in price Dollar-cost averaging (DCA): Embrace the discipline of regularly investing fixed amounts, irrespective of market conditions. DCA mitigates the impact of short-term price fluctuations by averaging out costs over time and promoting a steady accumulation of assets. The Hold-On-for-Dear-Life (HODL) strategy: In a market rife with volatility, the HODL mantra focuses on the importance of long-term conviction over short-term speculation. By focusing on the intrinsic value and fundamentals of assets, rather than succumbing to market hysteria, investors can cultivate their resilience. Diversification: Diversification remains a cornerstone of sound investment practice, and sees investors spread investments across different assets (such as types of coins) to minimize risk from volatile market swings. A diversified portfolio fosters resilience and safeguards against unforeseen market turbulence. Dollar-cost averaging (DCA): Embrace the discipline of regularly investing fixed amounts, irrespective of market conditions. DCA mitigates the impact of short-term price fluctuations by averaging out costs over time and promoting a steady accumulation of assets. Dollar-cost averaging (DCA): Embrace the discipline of regularly investing fixed amounts, irrespective of market conditions. DCA mitigates the impact of short-term price fluctuations by averaging out costs over time and promoting a steady accumulation of assets. Dollar-cost averaging (DCA): The Hold-On-for-Dear-Life (HODL) strategy: In a market rife with volatility, the HODL mantra focuses on the importance of long-term conviction over short-term speculation. By focusing on the intrinsic value and fundamentals of assets, rather than succumbing to market hysteria, investors can cultivate their resilience. The Hold-On-for-Dear-Life (HODL) strategy: In a market rife with volatility, the HODL mantra focuses on the importance of long-term conviction over short-term speculation. By focusing on the intrinsic value and fundamentals of assets, rather than succumbing to market hysteria, investors can cultivate their resilience. The Hold-On-for-Dear-Life (HODL) strategy: Diversification: Diversification remains a cornerstone of sound investment practice, and sees investors spread investments across different assets (such as types of coins) to minimize risk from volatile market swings. A diversified portfolio fosters resilience and safeguards against unforeseen market turbulence. Diversification: Diversification remains a cornerstone of sound investment practice, and sees investors spread investments across different assets (such as types of coins) to minimize risk from volatile market swings. A diversified portfolio fosters resilience and safeguards against unforeseen market turbulence. Diversification: Don’t let hype eclipse substance! While an influx of crypto headlines signifies exciting maturation of the digital asset ecosystem, excessive fixation on sensational news can prove highly detrimental to investors' long-term success. By exercising discernment amidst the noise, understanding the broader market context, and adhering to time-tested investment strategies, investors can navigate the crypto landscape with confidence.

Why Obsessing Over Crypto Headlines Is a Dangerous Investment Habit

India's obsession with and digital marketing scams is indeed exacerbated by the high number of people pretending to be SEO professionals and experts, while in reality, they are nothing more than individuals engaged in SEO reseller programs. SEO These self-proclaimed "experts" are often far from it, and they contribute to the erosion of trust and professionalism in the industry. These so-called SEO professionals often lack the in-depth knowledge and skills required to deliver effective SEO services. They claim expertise in search engine optimization, but, in truth, they are merely middlemen, outsourcing the actual work to others while pocketing a significant margin. They rely on deceptive marketing tactics to portray themselves as experts, taking advantage of the widespread fascination with SEO in India. Who’s to blame? The blame for this situation extends to the agencies that offer these reseller programs. By relying on individuals who are willing to deceive clients about their true capabilities, these agencies become the core of the problem. They often prioritize their own profits over the quality of service they provide, creating a breeding ground for scams and unethical practices. This business model not only perpetuates the deception but also devalues the true expertise that legitimate SEO professionals possess. It's crucial to start to expose and condemn this unethical behavior on both sides—those masquerading as experts and the agencies enabling them. The lack of transparency and accountability in these reseller programs is a major issue, and it is high time the industry and regulatory bodies take action to address this problem. It’s of my own personal opinion the presence of individuals pretending to be SEO experts in India, often engaged in reseller programs, exacerbates the country's obsession with SEO and digital marketing scams. To combat this issue, we must not only scrutinize these pretenders but also hold the agencies offering reseller programs accountable for their part in perpetuating this deceptive culture. The Rise Of Digital Marketing Scams In India You won't believe the audacity of the situation in 2022 - there has been an astronomical 80% rise in the number of fake digital marketing "experts" in India! It's like a plague that has infected the digital landscape, and it's high time we called them out on their dubious practices. Everywhere you turn these days, you're bombarded with self-proclaimed digital marketing gurus who promise to revolutionize your online presence. They dangle the carrot of increased website traffic, more leads, and a sales bonanza right in front of you. But let's not kid ourselves; most of them are nothing but charlatans preying on the unsuspecting. These so-called "experts" are like the snake oil salesmen of the digital age. They talk a big game, but when it comes down to delivering real results, they're about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. It's infuriating how they manipulate their way into the industry, peddling their pseudo-knowledge and empty promises. The rise of digital marketing in India has given birth to a monstrosity that's plaguing businesses everywhere - the surge of fake digital marketing "experts." These self-proclaimed gurus have invaded the market, and it is high time we addressed this menace. Picture this: you're in desperate need of digital marketing expertise. You want to boost your online presence, drive traffic, and generate leads. So, you start hunting for a digital marketing pro. And what do you find? A sea of charlatans who talk the talk but can't walk the walk. They claim to possess digital marketing wizardry but lack the skills and knowledge to back up their lofty assertions. What's fueling this digital deception, you ask? It's the harsh reality of supply and demand. The scarcity of skilled digital resources in India has led to a grotesque imbalance! With genuine experts being as rare as a unicorn, fake digital marketers have seized the opportunity to charge exorbitant prices for their dubious services or provide little to no value. But wait, there's more to this digital marketing nightmare! The problem is compounded by the complete absence of a regulatory body overseeing digital marketing in India. In this Wild West of the online world, virtually anyone can hang their shingle and declare themselves a digital marketing expert. Yes, you read that right – there are no rules, no regulations, and no one to hold these self-proclaimed gurus accountable for their actions. It's the digital marketing equivalent of the lawless frontier. This glaring gap in oversight has allowed these charlatans to run amok, preying on unsuspecting businesses without consequence. It's a free-for-all, where anyone with a computer and a persuasive pitch can don the mantle of a digital marketing "expert." There are no qualifications, no standards, and no quality control. As a result, businesses are left vulnerable, and they're often at the mercy of these self-appointed swindlers. The absence of a regulatory body for digital marketing in India is a glaring loophole that needs to be addressed urgently. We can't continue to let these fake digital marketing people thrive in this lawless environment. I personally demand accountability, standards, and genuine expertise in the world of digital marketing. The Flock To Freelance Platforms - Scam Home Base I absolutely cannot believe the audacity of some of these people flocking to freelancer services like Fiverr and Upwork to conduct digital marketing scams! It's an absolute disgrace, and it tarnishes the reputation of these platforms, as well as the entire digital marketing industry. In fact, I noticed the scams were getting so bad I actually took it upon myself to learn as much of the science of SEO as possible and do everything myself. It’s funny. I actually learned SEO from the scammers themselves (What not do to anyway). Let's talk about the scammers themselves. These charlatans are preying on unsuspecting individuals and businesses who are genuinely looking for help with their digital marketing needs. They promise the moon and the stars, , social media, content marketing, and more. They lure their victims in with cheap prices and promises of quick results. But in reality, they have no clue what they're doing, and their tactics often violate the rules and guidelines of reputable platforms. claiming to be experts in SEO And what's even worse is that many of these scammers get away with it! They use fake credentials, fabricated reviews, and stolen portfolio samples to create an illusion of expertise. People fall for their deceit, only to find out later that their hard-earned money has been wasted on empty promises and ineffective marketing strategies. This not only harms the individuals who've been scammed but also undermines the trust that should exist in these freelancer platforms. But it's not just the scammers who are at fault. It's also the responsibility of these platforms to step up their game and protect their users. They need to implement better vetting processes, stricter review policies, and more comprehensive background checks to filter out the bad actors. The fact that these scammers can continue to operate on these platforms is unacceptable. In the end, this wave of on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork is a stain on the industry and a disservice to honest freelancers and clients alike. digital marketing scams It's time for everyone involved to take responsibility, from the scammers and the platforms to the clients who enable this behavior. The digital marketing world deserves better than this. Genuine professionals and ethical practices in the SEO and digital marketing industry should be championed and celebrated to restore trust and credibility in the field.

India's Obsession With SEO And Digital Marketing Scams 

Hello! I want to talk about why large tech corporations are obsessed with creating proprietary solutions for their infrastructure. The answer appears to be obvious: it is nothing more than the NIH syndrome. But this answer is far from complete, not to mention objective. I am the CTO of the Yandex Platform Engineering team and our goal is to assist engineers in building the entire development cycle, from code writing to operating services, in order to make it more efficient. This includes process streamlining: we not only develop as-a-service offerings, but also assist in implementing them within the company. This works on the scale of Yandex: our services are used by thousands of developers across the company. Examples of tools for organizing the development cycle To solve a problem, we often develop proprietary tools rather than implementing ready-made ones. For example, while still a programmer on the team, I worked on a quantitative monitoring system in C++ and Python and helped scale it to tens of billions of processed metrics. So, based on my own experience, I know what motivations and development paths lead to the emergence of in-house tools: below, I will attempt to identify the fundamental reasons for their creation using our solutions as examples. Story #1: Yandex internal cloud The goal of our internal Runtime Cloud, or RTC, is to provide internal users with simple deployment and traffic management tools. RTC users are the same engineers who develop Yandex services. And they need to launch tens of thousands of applications they have created somewhere, send user requests there, balance the load, and deal with incidents, among other things. Setting the task. The need for an internal cloud emerged in the early 2010s, when the number of services was already in the hundreds and the total number of allocated cores grew by tens of percent per year. Having dedicated servers for each service became prohibitively expensive, and we required tools that would allow us to run applications from multiple services on a single server. We had several requirements for these tools at the start: It is necessary to automate routine actions in order to save operating resources and reduce the number of incidents during releases. A separate important task was to increase cloud utilisation, especially since most services had a daily pattern in their load and the cloud was idle at night. The situation was further complicated by the fact that not all Yandex services were hosted in the cloud during those years, and the constant increase in the number of servers exacerbated the problem. It was critical to roll out features or bug fixes to users quickly, as this directly affected the speed of Yandex development. IPv6-only support is required: to provide end-to-end connectivity between pods, our data centers were built IPv6-only, since at our scale the range of IPv4 addresses would not be enough for us. Essentially, we needed Kubernetes (and, over time, RTC came very close). But here's the catch: k8s was only announced in 2014. Apache Mesos existed at the time, but it was in its infancy. We started solving the problem with a kind of MVP - a simple set of tools, which was more like a set of building blocks that automate routine actions, for example: Implementation of basic functions. allocation of cluster resources; delivery of the required version of the application and various artifacts to the cluster; launch of the required version of the application on the cluster. Over time, it became possible to put together a full-fledged service layout graph using these building blocks (similar to continuous delivery). After a certain number of iterations, Nanny, a system for managing services running at RTC, appeared in 2013. was the implementation of application isolation based on resource consumption. We initially launched applications from various services without resource isolation, which resulted in a large number of operational issues and incidents. Another fundamental aspect of Nanny At the time, the only ready-made solutions were LXC, which had stopped developing by then, and Docker, which could not use IPv6-only and restarted all containers when updating dockerd, making it impossible to update dockerd without affecting the user. As a result, we began developing our containerization system on top of the Linux kernel cgroup around mid-2014. Most applications and some system agents on servers were already moved to Porto containers in 2015. Porto At the time, resource management in the internal cloud was accomplished through commits to the repository. However, this slowed Yandex's development and conflicted with the task of increasing utilisation: to solve it, we needed to place our map reduce system in the clouds, namely - our proprietary internal system for storing big data and distributed computing, which we had been developing for about 7 years at the time. It had to be brought into the internal cloud, but it also had to run alongside user applications. Solving utilization problems. YTsaurus To bring YTsaurus to RTC, the ability to manage pods dynamically rather than through repository commits was required. Therefore, in 2018, we created , a system for managing cluster computing resources. Yandex Planner was integrated with the existing Nanny deployment system, unblocking the YTsaurus migration and transforming RTC into a full-fledged cloud. RTC had several tens of thousands of servers at the time, and with the introduction of map reduce, this number grew significantly. Yandex Planner During the same time period, k8s evolved into a much more mature solution, becoming one of the AWS services in 2017. But it still did not meet all of our requirements: New growing pains. Scale of tens of thousands of servers - one k8s installation still cannot handle our scale. Support for dual stack IPv6 and IPv4 appeared in k8s only in 2020, and IPv6 was critical for us from the start. Support for nested containers, which we required because we decided to create separate batch and compute schedulers. We compared the effectiveness of this option to that of a general scheduler at one point, and it was more convenient and profitable not to try to make a general scheduler for everything. YTsaurus actively used the ability to create nested Porto containers rather than creating a single scheduler. Of course, we could add support for the same dual stack in k8s ourselves. However, the Linux kernel development experience has shown that not everything can be sent to open source, and we strive to keep the delta from the upstream kernel to a minimum in order to simplify updating to new versions. The architecture of the RTC is very similar to that of Kubernetes. The user declaratively describes their service in the form of some specification that describes how to launch the specified application and in which data centres. Each data centre has its own installation of Yandex Planner, which serves as a database for all cluster objects on the one hand and as a pod scheduler on the other. Each server in the data centre runs an agent that receives pod specifications from Yandex Planner and launches them using our proprietary Porto containerization system. Our solution today. Currently, RTC has launched tens of thousands of services, allocating over 5 million cores to over 100,000 servers. Every day, over 100,000 changes are made to service specifications. Especially since the k8s ecosystem started to outperform us in terms of functionality at some point. Wouldn't it be better to switch to k8s and hope that ready-made tools will eventually provide the volume we require? In practise, we continue to be a niche consumer for k8s because only a small percentage of companies operates at such a large scale, each of which has its own in-house cloud solutions. Plans. What if k8s can handle our scale? Another critical point to remember is the migration issue. According to the July 2018 report, 90% of modern applications will still be in use by 2025, and technical debt for the development of these systems will account for more than 40% of IT budgets. This is close to reality, based on our experience migrating user services to Yandex Planner: in 2023, approximately 100k cores were still waiting their turn to move to Yandex Planner. Gartner Building a Multiplatform Application Modernization Business Case In 2021, we estimated how much it would cost to move from one deployment system to another when choosing our development strategy. Yandex's migration to vanilla k8s would be an extremely costly task, costing hundreds of man-years. In this simple manner, we ended up with our inner cloud, which we are unlikely to be able to abandon in the next 5 years, even if we set such a goal. What should be done about the lack of internal cloud functionality compared to k8s? In practise, our customers can use Managed Kubernetes in Yandex Cloud. This option is primarily used for projects where strict compliance requirements must be met - this is a small proportion of teams, less than 1%. For the reasons stated above, the rest of the population does not see much benefit in moving. At the same time, we are actively looking at k8s and considering how to get closer to generally accepted standards. We are already actively experimenting with k8s in some tasks, such as cloud bootstrapping or organising IaaC at the scale of the entire Yandex. Ideally, we would like to reuse the k8s interface while maintaining our own implementation that is as tailored to our needs as possible. All that is left is to figure out how to do it in practise. Since we're discussing big tech in general in this article, it's worth noting that our case is not unique. Check out the or cases for examples. What about others? Borg Twine Story #2: monorepository Our monorepository, Arcadia, shares the same primary goal as our internal cloud: to provide convenient development tools. This includes an entire development ecosystem in the case of the repository: Problems and solution requirements . version control system (Arc), Interface (Arcanum), build system (ya make), CI/CD (NewCI). Arcadia emerged around the same time as Yandex's internal cloud. One of the reasons for the creation of the monorepository was the need to reuse code within Yandex. This was hampered at the time by the presence of several build systems. A unified system with support for efficient distributed builds was required to work on the scale of the entire Yandex. It should also be stable and usable. Our proprietary ya make build system debuted in 2013, when it was only for C++ code. Before ya make, we used CMake, but its speed prevented it from scaling to the scale of a monorepository. The proprietary ya make worked much faster with Arcadia.There were no other open source options that could solve our problem: for example, Bazel was released much later, in 2015. Implementation of a unified build system. Yandex previously used SVN as its version control system. Although SVN had a large capacity, it was still limited and difficult to maintain. Furthermore, we were aware that we would eventually run into the limitations of SVN's capabilities and convenience. For example, heuristics were used to implement the ability to download only the required portion of the repository or selective checkout. As a result, in 2016, we began experimenting with other version control systems besides SVN. Version control system scaling. Mercurial was the first choice. But the main issue we had was speed. We tried for a year and a half to get Mercurial into production, but the results were disappointing. For example, we eventually had to rewrite parts of Mercurial to support FUSE, or we would have had to bring the entire repository to each developer's laptop. Eventually, it turned out that it was cheaper to write an in-house solution from scratch, and in 2019, Arc appeared - a new version control system for Arcadia users with a git-like UX. Arc's foundation is FUSE (filesystem in user space) rather than selective checkout. In addition, YDB acts as a scalable database, which greatly simplifies Arc's operation when compared to Mercurial. We are often asked why we did not use git. Because it also has scale and functionality limitations: if we only import the Arcadia trunk into git, git status will take minutes at this scale. At the same time, there was no stable FUSE implementation built on top of git: VFS for Git is no longer being developed, and EdenFS was eventually turned into Sapling, but this happened much later. To begin development, an internal user simply needs to create a folder in our monorepository, write code, and tell ya make how to build his application by adding the build manifest. As a result, the user receives pull requests, CI configuration, and the ability to reuse any code in the company. Solution's current state and plans for the future. In terms of scale, trunk currently contains 10 million files, the repository as a whole exceeds 2 TiB, and more than 30 thousand commits are made each week. As a result, in the ecosystem we created, we must create many components from scratch. However, it is now moving towards compliance with global standards. Arc, for example, supports working with Git for a predefined set of projects. Again, if you look at big tech in general, then as an example you should pay attention to and . What about others? Sapling Piper What do these stories have in common So why do big tech companies have to invent their own solutions, and why can't they be replaced with ones that adhere to a generally accepted standard? Large corporations are frequently required to develop solutions to problems that will only become commonplace in the future. This is how innovative solutions with the potential to become market standards may emerge. Innovation. It is not always the case that a problem solved by a company faces anyone other than the company itself. Sometimes big tech's experience with a specific problem helps the entire industry avoid that problem by taking a completely different development path. It is not always possible to predict market development, and as a result, different examples of proprietary solutions have had very different outcomes. ClickHouse is an example of a truly successful innovative project that has greatly enriched the field of online analytical processing (OLAP). However, this is not the case for all projects. The Porto, which began as an open source project, failed to gain traction for a variety of reasons. Although some of its features, such as the ability to create nested containers, remain unique. This point is similar to the previous one in some ways, because not every company faces the scalability issue. There was a time when 640 kbytes was more than enough for everyone, wasn't there? Scale. In fact, the exponential increase in system load was one of the most important reasons for the development of Arcadia and the internal cloud. This is why Arc and Yandex Planner were developed. Arc was created in response to the need for a user-friendly VCS that can allow users to work with a monorepository containing tens of millions of files in a trunk without difficulty. Yandex Planner was created in response to the need to work effectively with clusters of tens of thousands of nodes and millions of pods. Public tools continue to have scaling issues (after all, this is a relatively rare scenario, and investing in it is frequently simply unprofitable). Consider an in-house tool that solves a problem within a company. A company that actively uses this tool would devote resources to better tailoring it to its needs, eventually transforming it into a highly specialised tool. This process can last for years. Inertia. Now consider the possibility that, at some point, a universally accepted standard for resolving that particular problem emerges. In this case, specialisation may still be an important factor in deciding on an in-house solution. Consider build systems. We use ya make at Arcadia, though there is Bazel from Google. They are conceptually similar, but when you get into the details, many important scenarios are implemented differently, because the load patterns for each workload can be drastically different. As a result, the resources already expended will almost certainly have to be reinvested in order to customise a new generally accepted standard. If the previous section addressed the issue of adapting the project to users, let us now address the issue of migrating the users themselves. In my opinion, migration should be called the next most important problem in tech after naming. If we assume we already have an in-house company tool and want to replace it with a standardised one, we will inevitably need migrations. Migrations. We know many examples of migrations from our experience developing an internal cloud. Large-scale migrations take time, so both tools must be supported concurrently for extended periods of time. If this process involves a large number of users, management issues are unavoidable. It is certainly worthwhile to try to migrate without user participation, but this is not always possible. To be frank, this point has recently gained sufficient importance. Previously, a much smaller number of companies took it seriously due to concerns about vendor lock-in. Trusting critical processes to a vendor who can terminate collaboration at any time is risky. JetBrains is a prime example of this, having restricted the use of its IDEs to certain companies. Another case in point is Github Enterprise, which has begun to suspend Russian-based user accounts. Business Continuity. In-house solutions are typically immune to this issue. On the one hand, there are still open source solutions. On the other hand, there are no guarantees that the open source model will be with you all the way: for example, Corona, Facebook's in-house developed improvement to Hadoop MapReduce scheduling software, appeared in the first place due to the inability to commit the patches required to scale Hadoop upstream. At the same time, the legal aspect of the issue affects open source: for example, commits in golang or k8s necessitate the signing of a CLA. Will this continue to be an issue? Yes, in addition to objective reasons, it is possible that the decisions made are not pragmatic. That is NIH syndrome at its finest. NIH. For example, in an attempt to eliminate the influence of batch on compute, we attempted to create our own scheduler in the Linux kernel. In practise, nothing good came of it; one could have made do with the Linux kernel's existing capabilities. However, the higher the labour costs, the more effort is put into elaborating and solving the problem, and the lower the likelihood of suffering from NIH syndrome. as you can see, in-house solutions for large companies are frequently required. The majority of them will merge with yet-to-mature unified global standard solutions in the future, while the rest will become history. In any case, deciding between a proprietary solution and a ready-made one remains a difficult question that cannot be answered without first understanding the context and estimating the cost of such a project. To summarise ,

Why Large Tech Corporations are Obsessed With Creating Proprietary Solutions 

কেন বড় কারিগরি কর্পোরেশন মালিকানা সমাধান তৈরিতে আচ্ছন্ন

Warum große Technologiekonzerne davon besessen sind, proprietäre Lösungen zu entwickeln

Por qué las grandes corporaciones tecnológicas están obsesionadas con la creación de soluciones patentadas

Pourquoi les grandes entreprises technologiques sont obsédées par la création de solutions propriétaires

क्यों बड़े तकनीकी निगम मालिकाना समाधान बनाने के प्रति जुनूनी हैं?

なぜ大手テクノロジー企業は独自のソリューションの開発にこだわるのか

대규모 기술 기업이 독점 솔루션 개발에 집착하는 이유

Por que as grandes corporações de tecnologia estão obcecadas em criar soluções proprietárias

Почему крупные технологические корпорации одержимы созданием собственных решений

Büyük Teknoloji Şirketleri Neden Tescilli Çözümler Yaratmaya Takıntılı?

Tại sao các tập đoàn công nghệ lớn bị ám ảnh bởi việc tạo ra các giải pháp độc quyền

为什么大型科技公司热衷于创建专有解决方案

Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. Read this book online for free on HackerNoon! : Underground: Hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier Title : Suelette Dreyfus Author : Julian Assange Researcher : November 1, 2003 [eBook #4686] Most recently updated: August 23, 2012 Release date : English Language TABLE OF LINKS Preface to the electronic edition Researcher's Introduction Acknowledgements Introduction CHAPTER 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 1 The Corner Pub The American Connection The Fugitive The Holy Grail Page One, the New York Times Judgment Day The International Subversives Operation Weather Anthrax—the Outsider The Prisoner's Dilemma About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Suelette Dreyfus (2003). Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4686/pg4686.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier - Table of Links

Before 2021, Zuck was running a large social media company that had long lost its secret sauce. In 2021, the company was re-purposed to be “a metaverse company,” whatever that means. Reflecting this bold change in strategy, the company was renamed to Meta. Fast-forward to 2023, the company is now selling Virtual Reality hardware starting at $399.99 a piece with the entry-level (128GB). It comes with free social apps like , which is “a virtual universe” in which you can always find something new to do with your friend. Meta Quest 2 Horizon Worlds Looking back, we can say that this new branding has been cooking for a long time. And for Zuck, it all started with virtual reality. Zuck Wants us to Live and Breathe in Virtual Reality , he sheds light on the main aspirations that built up to his obsession with Virtual Reality. He starts the email with words on his vision for VR as the next major computing platform: In one of the historical emails Zuck sent to his fellow, now-Meta, then-Facebook co-workers in June 2015 Our vision is that VR / AR will be the next major computing platform after mobile in about 10 years. It can be even more ubiquitous than mobile – especially once we reach AR – since you can always have it on. It’s more natural than mobile since it uses our normal human visual and gestural systems. It can even be more economical, because once you have a good VR / AR system, you no longer need to buy phones or TV’s or many other physical objects – they can just become apps in a digital store. https://twitter.com/markdeeksnba/status/1619819402513502208?s=46&t=qG86e8pEbDKcRK5bS36bSg&embedable=true First off, “our human visual and gestural systems”? 100% something a robot in disguise would say. Zuck is not happy with most tech consumers still living a considerably big part of their lives beyond computer screens. Fewer eyeballs on the screen means fewer brands spending ad budget on Facebook. Their business relies on people buying things online or leaving profitable personal data here and there. Zuck isn’t happy that his company can’t capture the whole world, as people experience it on a daily basis. But here comes the twist: What if consumers could always have a technology product on, all the time? If Zuck and team built systems great enough that could persuade the public to never leave bits for atoms, building virtualized renditions of all the things people experience beyond their computer screens? Zuck is crazy about how much money he could make if he had developed the technology for this. The ultimate metaverse, a centralized service provider with everything you need and more. Marketed as sheer value for humanity. Mail TL:DR: Zuck is All In, and He Doesn’t Even Want to Think of Failing Mark wants Facebook to build both the platform and the key apps for ubiquitous Virtual and Augmented Reality. He imagines the key apps to be on social communication and media consumption. He’s not insisting on developing the key games as it’s a “hits-driven” genre; it’s alright as long as the key games in VR / AR are available on their platforms. In a large portion  of the mail, he goes on to explain the intricacies of their ideal strategy, touching upon his view of the existing market and which parts to architect primarily. It’s weird, though, that there is absolutely not a word on Google Glass, which had come out as early as  2013. It seems like common sense to assure readers of what Facebook will do differently to make sure their product is not mocked like Google Glass. Zuck fails to give an in-depth analysis of whether we really need VR / AR for social communication and media consumption. He fails to make a case for how VR / AR tech goes beyond being “the rich white kid of technology.” He is not convincing because it doesn’t seem like he understands why year after year, VR / AR tech seems on the verge of success but never truly makes it. For some unknown reason, he seems determined that VR is the next wave of computing. Zuck’s all in. He’s also open to spending a few billion bucks more on acquiring Unity, the leading 2D and 3D game development platform. With that, he wants to make sure Facebook is off to a great start and de-risks the space so that money-sniffing VCs can find another bucket to continue pouring their money into. https://twitter.com/benjifisher15/status/1620024466175627264?s=46&t=eAWr5n8TWJHDvKe5REPf-w&embedable=true With , five years after , the Facebook team was probably not off to a good start. And Meta’s team has been . Still, the management remains hopeful that the Metaverse train they hopped in as early as the 2010s will be fruitful. Probably because they need to hold on to VR as a last glimmer of hope. Unity going public in 2020 Zuck’s email Reality Labs reporting losses consecutively for four quarters Mark Zuckerberg was Probably Bored of Facebook, Too In the mail, Zuck provides elaborations of how VR technology aligns with the company’s strategic, brand-related, and financial goals. He goes on and on, until the mail reaches unhealthy lengths, until it resembles the mumblings of a madman who claims to just have received some holy message from above. Because just like everyone else, Zuck’s really bored of Facebook and what it has become. He needs to find a way to keep the brilliant engineers on his  team with incentives other than money. Perhaps even himself? Facebook has become a misinformation-spreading, society intoxicating drudgery. Zuck has spent too long of a time surrounded by whistleblowers, reports, hearings and the . What was once a fun website the quirky college kid coded out of his dorm room became a huge, political, twisted mess that was just too big to get rid of at once. It’s not hard to imagine how unbelievably tough this might have been for the human leading all this. Facebook Papers Zuck’s Probably a Robot (But Don’t Take My Word for It) Is Mark Zuckerberg a Robot? Nobody can say for sure. He is still leading this mega enterprise that eats billions for breakfast on a daily basis. Attends hearings every now and then. He wants people to wear virtual reality headsets to talk with friends and shop all the time. We know that he’s a family man. Could robots have children? I’m not sure, but I think so. He runs a tech giant. Can robots do that? If we count ChatGPT as a robot, I think it could probably  run a country (probably as a dictator, but let’s not go into that). While it may not be healthy to complete our analysis of whether Mark Zuckerberg is a robot from a single, albeit lengthy, letter he sent to colleagues, something tells me he’s probably better off as a robot in the boring mess of a technology platform he helped create. If he’s better off that way, then he probably made it happen. After all, he’s Zuck, one of the richest, brightest humans to ever exist. So yeah, Zuck’s probably a robot looking to find better ways to come together with fellow robots with AR / VR technologies, the Metaverse, and the like. The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's via the prompt "Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse fantasies". AI Image Generator

Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse: Zuck’s Decade-old Obsession with Virtual Reality 

মার্ক জুকারবার্গের মেটাভার্স: ভার্চুয়াল রিয়েলিটির সাথে জুকের দশক-পুরোনো আবেশ

Mark Zuckerbergs Metaverse: Zucks jahrzehntelange Obsession mit virtueller Realität

El metaverso de Mark Zuckerberg: la obsesión de Zuck con la realidad virtual desde hace una década

Le métaverse de Mark Zuckerberg : l'obsession de Zuck depuis une décennie pour la réalité virtuelle

मार्क जुकरबर्ग का मेटावर्स: ज़क का दशक पुराना जुनून आभासी वास्तविकता के साथ

Mark Zuckerberg の Metaverse: Zuck の 10 年にわたる仮想現実への執着

Mark Zuckerberg의 메타버스: 가상 현실에 대한 Zuck의 10년 간의 집착

Metaverso de Mark Zuckerberg: a obsessão de uma década de Zuck com a realidade virtual

Mark Zuckerberg'in Metaverse'si: Zuck'ın On Yıllık Sanal Gerçeklik Takıntısı

Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse: Nỗi ám ảnh hàng thập kỷ của Zuck với thực tế ảo

马克·扎克伯格的 Metaverse：扎克伯格十年来对虚拟现实的痴迷

In recent years, we have seen an increase in data, and as a result, it increases computational time and memory. Therefore, tools like Pandas which works sequentially, fail to achieve the result in the required time in large datasets. Some packages, like Dask, Swift, Ray, etc., can parallelize the panda's operation. Parallelizing the panda’s processes causes a lot of speed up. Still, there are specific memory limitations caused by your system as Pandas load your data frame into the memory, even if it is not required at that particular instance. This can be a massive problem in the case of desktop systems, as we need to keep the UI live. We need a framework to solve the above problems and achieve parallelization under the given memory limitations. solves some of these problems under some given thresholds. In addition, it can perform faster processing speeds. It uses a concept called lazy evaluation (as the name suggests, it evaluates Data when required), which solves some of the limitations caused by memory. Spark Advantages of PySpark over Pandas Pandas perform operations on a single machine, whereas PySpark performs functions on multiple devices, making it than Pandas for large datasets. 100x times faster Pandas adhere to Eager Execution, meaning tasks are completed as soon as possible. In contrast, Pyspark follows which means that a job is not executed until an action is performed. Lazy Execution, Pandas DataFrames cannot construct a scalable application, but PySpark DataFrames are ideal for developing scalable applications. The Pandas DataFrame does not guarantee fault tolerance, but PySpark DataFrame assures fault tolerance. When to use PySpark or Pandas? As I mentioned earlier, PySpark is 100x faster than Pandas; it is just a half-truth. Pandas and Pyspark have the same runtime for the initial GB of data, as shown in the benchmark below. For the initial phase, up to 20 GB, they have the same slope, but as file size increased, Pandas goes out of memory, and PySpark was able to complete the job successfully. Benchmark Pandas and PySpark - [Source](https://hirazone.medium.com/benchmarking-pandas-vs-spark-7f7166984de2) Therefore, for small datasets of 10–12 GB, you can prefer Pandas over PySpark due to the same runtime and less complexity, and above that, you have to work using PySpark. Limitations of PySpark Everything good at something lacks behind in the other areas. This is also the case with PySpark. Some of the limitations of Pyspark are: PySpark has a higher latency, which results in lower throughput. The consumption of memory is very high. Fewer algorithms and libraries are developed to work with PySpark. From the above discussion, we can conclude that as Data is increasing, the need for more frameworks like PySpark is rising, which can easily handle such processes. Therefore, if you are an Aspiring Data Scientist, you should start learning about PySpark. Originally published . here

PySpark Over Pandas: The Obsession of Every Data Scientist

Howdy Hackers! I’m Bader - known as bader y in most parts of the interwebs.  I’m a web3 developer, and content creator, and generally love creating ideas from nothing - even if they don’t make too much sense. I’ve been nominated for the categories below and if you've enjoyed anything I've written this year, please take some time to vote for me. : Tech Tutorial Teacher of the Year https://www.noonies.tech/2022/programming/2022-tech-tutorial-teacher-of-the-year As a writer in tech, I believe that Web3 is the most exciting technology of the present because it demonstrates true power over the data and technology we create. Learn more about my views on web3 and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below. What's your current role and what do you like about it? Currently, I am an independent free-floating full-stack developer who writes a LOT.  I’m working on a web3 messaging protocol, among some other things ;). I really enjoy the flexibility of being able to create what I want, when I want to. How did you get into Programming? I can safely blame my father for that one.  He got me started on Visual Basic on a Macbook when I was 7 years old.  From there, I started making apps in Java for Android, which culminated in me getting into more technological stacks over the years. How did you get into writing about Programming? I actually started making videos around programming when I was young. I barely knew how to write Java, yet really enjoyed making videos on the basics of it.  I started really getting into writing about programming when I had my first startup, where I tried my hand at open source and discovered my enjoyment for writing guides and the like for my projects. What's your earliest memory of you learning to code? Seven years old! I remember I had a binder that was 4 inches thick of Visual Studio documentation. It was there I wrote my first program - a magical button entitled “fart“ that emitted the oh-so-familiar Windows XP button sound. When Elon Musk achieves his dream of getting us to Mars, what technology do you think would be important on Mars and why? Energy will be huge.  If we make it to Mars, there will be most definitely a period of time where we’d have to be in some controlled environment.  Those will, naturally, need a substantial amount of energy. The battery is one of the biggest bottlenecks of tech right now, so if we fix that, we could do a lot. What's a programming language that you would build EVERYTHING and ANYTHING in and why? RUST!!! It’s currently the most versatile language out here.  It has the control of C, but the unmatched safety of Swift, and the included WASM /web support are absolutely huge when combined with Javascript frontends. What's something you think Software developers do not do enough of? I think most software developers obsess more over the code rather than the end goal.  Clean code is essential, however, in the end - you want to generate value.  Programming is solving a problem, so let’s make sure we’re solving a problem! What is your least favorite thing about programming? I really can’t think of anything! Just kidding… unit tests…. What’s a technology you’re currently learning or excited to learn? I’m currently learning Substrate, a blockchain framework.  I’m finding it very satisfying to take a deep dive into how to create my own ledger-powered systems and applications. What’s your favorite Programming story of all-time on HackerNoon? I don’t pick favorites! Time travel 10 years into the past or 10 years into the future? What does technology look like? Give reasons for your answer. 10 years? Sounds like digital dystopia to me. Jokes aside, we’ll probably see some massive intersections of the digital and physical world.  Whether that’s the metaverse or not, the digital world will end up being the twin of the physical world.  IoT edge devices will become much more prominent too, and much smarter.  They’ll be the only connector into the digital world from the physical one. About HackerNoon’s 2022 Noonie Awards The annual Noonie Awards celebrate the best and brightest of the tech industry, bringing together all who are making the Internet and the world of tech what it is today. Please be sure to , nominate, and vote for the people and companies who you think are making the biggest impact on the tech industry today. check out our award categories The 2022 Noonies are sponsored by: , and . Thank you so much to these sponsors who are helping us celebrate the accomplishments of all our nominees. BingX .tech domains

Noonies Nominee Bader is Obsessed with Web3 and Blockchain

A Day In The Life of an Obsessive Note Taker

Un día en la vida de un tomador de notas obsesivo

Une journée dans la vie d'un preneur de notes obsessionnel

एक जुनूनी नोट लेने वाले के जीवन में एक दिन

執拗なメモを取る人の一日

Um dia na vida de um anotador obsessivo

Một ngày trong cuộc đời của một người ghi chú ám ảnh

痴迷记笔记者的一天

So… What exactly is dogfooding? If you’ve worked in a tech company, you’ve probably eaten some dog food. Or to be more precise - you’ve probably eaten your own dog food. Because the phenomenon known as “dogfooding” (or “eating your own dog food”) has become an accepted part of the product development process. So what is dogfooding exactly? It’s the practice of using your own product or service. A simple Google search will tell you that the term “dogfooding” probably comes from a 1970’s ad campaign from Alpo dog food. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHUMaKWgfS0 In a series of commercials, actor Lorne Greene feeds Alpo to his own dog. This became the accepted paradigm for using the products that you produce yourself. Another theory I’ve seen traces back to Clement L. Hirsch, President of Kal Kan dog food. Apparently, Clement would suddenly get up in the middle of a shareholders meeting, pick up a can of Kal Kan dog food, remove the lid and eat it to the astonishment of everyone present. Both Alpo and Kal Kan Dog Food used dogfooding as a . Their goal was to exude a clear sense of confidence in the product to shareholders and prospective customers. And using the product themselves was an easy way to do so. promotional marketing tool Using dogfooding as a marketing tactic has since been adopted by others outside the dogfood industry. One (crazy) such example is , a saw blade safety mechanism that detects contact with a human finger and instantly stops the blade before any damage is caused. To exhibit the reliability of his product, Inventor Steve Gass volunteered to put his own hand on a moving saw blade (don’t worry - everything worked out). SawStop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiYoBbEZwlk Dogfooding in Tech - More Than Just a Marketing Play It’s interesting then, that as tech companies began to adopt the practice (and terminology) of dogfooding for their own products, they used it for a lot more than just marketing. A few famous examples: In 1980, Apple president Mike Scott (no, not Michael Scott) sent an internal memo to all employees with the subject “Typewriters”. The memo read as follows: “Effective immediately!! No more typewriters are to be purchased, leased etc. etc. Apple is an innovative company. We must believe and lead in all areas. If word processing is so neat, then let’s all use it! Goal: by 1-1-81, NO typewriters at Apple… We believe the typewriter is obsolete. Let’s prove it inside before we try and convince our customers.” that In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent an email to Brian Valentine (a test manager for Microsoft LAN), with the subject line: “Eating our own Dogfood,” challenging him to increase internal usage of their products In 2002, Jeff Bezos to all Amazon employees (with the threat of immediate dismissal from the company) that all Amazon services be built in a way that they could with each other over Web protocol. Meaning, if you were human resources and you needed some numbers from marketing, you had to get them using an API that would then be accessible to others.  He was asking every team to decouple, define what resources they had, and make them available through an API. This dogfooding-oriented step is largely viewed as a critical one in the evolution of Amazon’s web services platform that we know today as “AWS”. issued a mandate easily communicate The common denominator between these examples is that none of them used dogfooding as an outbound marketing tactic. In fact, until these stories were publicized years later, no one outside the company was aware that these internal policies were ever implemented. What else is dogfooding good for? So aside from marketing, what else is dogfooding good for? It’s something that we think about a lot at . Dogfooding is one of our core company values and we’re deliberately pushing the limits of how it can be applied and how it can beneficial to the growth of our company and our product. We’ve found that the benefits of dogfooding do indeed reach beyond marketing, as the stories from those other tech companies would suggest. Livecycle These are some of our key learnings that might be useful to other teams and companies who are looking to build an effective dogfooding strategy of their own. Product-centric benefits to dogfooding First and foremost, effective dogfooding should have a direct, positive impact on the product itself. For us at Livecycle, this has occurred in a few ways: As an early stage startup, we’re constantly prioritizing our tasks and budgeting our resources. Without a dedicated QA team, a more deliberate dogfooding policy gives us the opportunity to quickly uncover bugs through wider usage of our platform. And while testing and bug-fixing is not the only objective of dogfooding, it is a benefit. High-level QA - For our team, dogfooding has been beneficial not only for unit testing and feature-specific stability, but also to ensure that the product is remaining empathetic to actual users. Often, developers will test he specific code change and perhaps some related functionality surrounding it, but dogfooding gives the team the opportunity to zoom out and test real user journeys that take the actual user experience into account. User empathy insurance - By insisting that our entire team use the product in real life, we’ve been able to generate lots of new product ideas. While some ideas can be offered theoretically, actual usage of the product as a real user gives our team the ability to “live” the product and come up with some really clever suggestions of how we might improve it going forward. Product ideas - Other Benefits to Dogfooding Even outside the context of the product itself, we’ve found that dogfooding had benefitted our company. A few examples: An intangible benefit to dogfooding is it’s ability to push the team to take pride in what they are working so hard to build. As Mike Scott said in his memo to Apple employees 40 years ago: “If word processing is so neat, then let’s all use it!”. This was similarly the driver for the calling it an “embarrassment” in 2010 when 10,000 Microsoft employees bought iPhones, even though they had no development reason to do so. Usage and pride go hand in hand. Company pride (or shame) - media Better context leads to better results. Always. And dogfooding allows EVERYONE in the company to get a more nuanced understanding of the solution that is being offered to customers, even if their day-to-day roles are one step removed from the product itself. This kind of context initiates a process that ultimately leads to critical thinking, thoughtful questions, and a clearer understanding of what the company is trying to achieve. It lets everyone on the team do their jobs with better focus and more informed creativity, and for us, it’s produced some incredible and unexpected ideas from the team. Better context for everyone - How We’re Taking Dogfooding to Another Level The underlying assumption of any dogfooding policy is that the product can actually be used by the team in their day-to-day lives. Here at Livecycle, we’re uniquely positioned to do this because we are building a product that helps teams build products. Using our own product to actually build our own product has given us an opportunity to dogfood in a unique way by deriving real benefit from the product as we build the product itself. And this internal effort is not limited to the confines of our team internally. We’ve been working with a remote development company on refreshing parts of our marketing site, and we’ve deliberately used Livecycle to manage that workflow. This experiment has helped us to test and validate part of our GTM strategy - positioning Livecycle with devshops specifically, and for remote team collaboration more generally. These real-life dogfooding sessions with our outsource partner have shown us just how beneficial Livecycle can be in these use cases. As we look ahead, we’re trying to push the envelope even further with our dogfooding strategies. One idea that we’re tossing around is a “Livecycle binge” in which we run an entire development sprint exclusively through Livecycle. No email. No Slack. Only using our platform to communicate with one another and review PRs. And even though Livecycle is intended to seamlessly integrate with the other communication and project management tools, our theory is that test our product in more extreme dogfooding conditions will teach us a lot about what our product can do. Assumptions and Free Advice In addition to sharing our experiences, it’s also worth listing a few of the underlying assumptions and opinions we’ve developed around dogfooding do’s and don’ts. So here are a few things we suggest you keep in mind when developing your company’s internal dogfooding policy: Our assumption is that dogfooding is only possible when you can it so end-to-end as an end- user would do in an authentic way. Testing specific features one at a time is called R&D. Not dogfooding. Dogfooding should be company-wide. Not just for developers and product managers. Aside from the benefits of a more inclusive approach that we’ve already enumerated, this also helps avoid bias and emotional dishonesty. It’s hard to be objective about something that you spent so much time building yourself. So make sure to dogfood with people throughout the company, not just the small group of people who actually worked on coding and designing this version of the product itself. Lots of people claim that effective dogfooding can only happen before a product goes to market. This is a big misconception. Continuing to use the product after it’s publicly available has many benefits for your product and your team, as we’ve outlined above. Remember that dogfood tastes bad. Sometimes it tastes really bad. Dogfooding is not an excuse for you to show off how amazing your product is. It’s an opportunity to create friction with users and embrace deliberate discomfort. The goal is to help you see what’s NOT working, not to pat yourself on the back for what is. If you’re eating dogfood, you’re pretending to be a real dog. So if you’re dogfooding your product, pretend to be a real user. That means focusing on the entire user experience journey and not only on the shiny new features that were newly implemented. For an unassuming new user, the most important part of the process is the onboarding and initial setup. So to dogfood properly, make sure that you and your team are giving these “boring” parts of the product experience at least as much attention as the fun stuff. How you use dogfooding in your own company will depend on a lot of factors. But what’s abundantly clear is that it’s worth investing the time to think it through. Because a solid dogfooding strategy will have positive effects on your users, your product, and your team. Also published . here

Why You Should Be Obsessed With Dogfooding

Por qué deberías estar obsesionado con el dogfooding

Pourquoi devriez-vous être obsédé par le dogfooding

आपको डॉगफूडिंग के प्रति जुनूनी क्यों होना चाहिए?

ドッグフーディングに夢中になるべき理由

Por que você deve ficar obcecado com dogfooding

Tại sao bạn nên bị ám ảnh với Dogfooding

为什么你应该沉迷于 Dogfooding

If you’re an engineer at Google or Facebook, you’re likely focused on one career question: when am I going to make it to the next level? Getting to the next level unlocks a lot – more money, more responsibility, more respect, a feeling of progress – and even if you care deeply about other things (your product, your users, etc), you can’t really avoid caring about promotion as well. ‍ This post talks a bit about the (well-known) issues with this type of culture, and suggests some alternatives for startups not looking to replicate it. ‍The problems with promo-culture The main problem with promotion-oriented culture is that it’s very hard to align promotion-criteria with business objectives, and so engineers end up doing a lot of work that doesn’t necessarily most benefit the product, users, or business – or even potentially their own growth. ‍ For instance, when I was leading Google Sheets, we had a lot of small bugs and usability issues, often in areas where we weren’t at parity with Excel.  Users wanted us to implement disjoint selections, fix our charting UI, add the ability to insert and delete ranges of cells – pretty standard spreadsheet fare, and very reasonable requests. ‍ However it was a constant struggle to prioritize these types of issues vs. “bigger impact” projects. Our engineers cared about the product and wanted to polish it. But they also wanted to be promoted. And so we would deprioritize product polish for projects that looked better to a promotion committee. ‍In addition to it being hard to prioritize polish, promo-cultures tend to create other inefficiencies: A surplus of “leads” on a project (being a “lead” allows engineers to check the leadership box for getting to the next level) Post-hoc design documents written specifically to explain work to a promo-committee after the feature has been built Promo-time “tech-talks” and brown-bags of dubious value from engineers trying to demonstrate community contributions ‍ Finally, there is the dreaded “perf-season” where engineers and managers waste a tremendous amount of time prepping promo-packets to make their cases for moving up the ladder. To sum up the problems… From a business perspective, promotion-driven cultures decrease productivity and increase cost per engineer. From a product perspective, managers create new, confusing, internally competing products while existing products languish or are sunset, because one of the best ways to get promoted is to launch something new. From a cultural perspective, for engineers who really care about the products they are building, promo-culture creates a demoralizing situation, sometimes forcing engineers to choose between doing what’s best for users or what’s best for their career. Alternatives to promo-cultures ‍In theory startups should be the foil to promotion driven cultures – most startup employees understand that getting promoted is a second-order concern relative to the risks of the startup not succeeding. Conversely, folks understand that if they are early at a successful startup, they will be successful too – they will all do really well from a comp perspective, have seniority by default as the company grows, and  get to take pride in building something from nothing.  Incentives are naturally aligned. However, anyone who has spent their careers in startups knows that this isn't always true, and that startups that are successful tend to drift towards a promo-culture.  As startups grow, early-stage risks and benefits decline, and so incentives become less aligned. Some things I've been thinking about that might help avoid promotion culture: For as long as possible, make the success of the company the primary motivator, rather than promo Try to hire engineers who are fatigued by the promo process at bigger companies and don’t want to replicate it For any formal promo process, put real limits on the amount of time that goes into it while keeping it fair Build into core values wanting to create a culture where the end-user is the priority, not individual advancement up the ladder Make the ladder heavily focused on user-impact as the main criteria for advancement Be constantly on the lookout for promo red-flags like post-hoc design docs, internally competing projects, and “promo-seasons” ‍ If you have other ideas on how to avoid the slip into promo-culture, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Also Published here

The Problem With Promotion-Obsessed Cultures

35,000 people around the world work for the Gupta Family Group of companies. Sanjeev Gupta, the Chair, has invested millions into the and other countries, most often in the manufacturing sector. UK His companies have been the subject of a series of negative press reports in the Sunday Times and the FT. These reports have been comprehensively refuted here and here. The person behind these attacks is obviously taking huge risks with the livelihoods of 1000s of people. There has been speculation that the person behind the stories is a business rival of the Guptas motivated by financial gain. That would make sense. However, according to these accounts, the person behind the stories is called Daniel Sheard. Sheard was the whistle blower who tried to destroy GAM in 2019 because of an internal feud. . The best way to get a best press release distribution service that will maximize your audience outreach will be through adequate research and reading reviews What drives a person to do such damage to the lives of others? Looking at it from the outside it seems there are two possibilities. Both of which make Sheard a deeply unreliable witness and both of which should make the journalists like Tom Bergin and Katherina Bart, who he leaks and lies to, pause before they take any more of his gifts. Read More at SUMP PUMP COVER The first possibility is that the whistle blower is driven by narcissism. The other possibility is that they are driven by jealousy. Underpinning both, and expressed through his compulsive and obsessive behaviour, is an underlying autism. These questions of mental health are important to consider because on the word of this individual the fate of 1000s of families will be decided. can help to gain a detailed knowloege about markeing and advertising. Social media agency NYC The essence of the narcissist is that they can do no wrong. Reality for them has to change to their vision of the truth. They never apologise, and they never explain. When coupled with the force of jealously, the combination can be lethal. Read more at SUMP PUMP COVER For Sheard, watching his co-manager at the Swiss investment firm GAM, Tim Hayward, become a superstar while he remained in the shadows, could not be true. There had to be something corrupt in what was happening. It could not be the case that Hayward was simply better at what he did than Sheard. So Sheard complained and reported Hayward, set out to destroy him, and in the process nearly destroyed his company. According to reports of the crisis at GAM, Sheard stopped coming into work to spend his entire time finding ways to attack Hayward. The obsession grew and focussed on the relationship between GAM and the Gupta Family Group of companies. Tellingly his chosen handle for writing comments on FT articles is “No good deed goes unpunished”. He was made redundant by GAM after the collapse of the firm’s share price after he went to the regulator with his attacks on Hayward. Read More at wedding program templates It was not a good deed but in his mental condition that is how it appeared to him. The rest of the world had to be in the wrong because he had to be right. This narcissism was compounded by a compulsive, obsessive nature. This nature could be expressed in positive things like cycling. Back in May 2016 Sheard rode the 80 mile Marie Curie Etape Caledonia sportive in Pitlochry, Scotland and followed this up with a ride up Mont Ventoux - 23km with a 7.5% gradient. Then on to L'Ardechoise to ride 630km in the 4 days and climbing over 10,000m. All in a good cause. But apply that drive, single mindedness and obsession to the destruction of others and the consequences could be the closure of factories, the loss of jobs and the undermining of reputations. https://homeclaver.com/life-hacks/home-hacks/sump-pump-cover/

An Obsession that Could Cost Thousands of Jobs

Push and Pull models are used in manufacturing for production planning. These concepts can be used to measure how self-sufficient your developer team can be and how deep your software specification should be done. What is Push or Pull in manufacturing? Let’s say your build cars. At the beginning of the month, you get an estimation of how many cars need to be built. You use these top-down figures to order the raw materials that you will be needing: how many tires, screws, speakers, and so on. You are material in the production line. pushing Using a pull model you would have daily orders with a list of cars to be delivered by the end of the day. Something like 5 cars of model A in black, 3 cars of model A in blue, 1 car of model B cabriolet in red. With this, you need to steer your production plan so that all parts needed for the requested cars are picked from your inventory system and assembled. This is material from the production line. pulling In manufacturing, Pulling is the way to go and is how the complex Just In Time processes are set up. In optimal cases, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software are connected from the manufacturer to its suppliers, and the daily batches of material are ordered electronically The reality in production is way more complex. I am oversimplifying to make a point. Push and pull is actually also applied to software development as follows: When a feature is just a use case and you let the development team workout the implementation you are implementation details from the team. pulling When you document a feature until the last details including Mockups, API definitions, and other details you are implementation details to the team. pushing Here is where having a team that “ ” can think like a user can make the difference. Why Should Developers think like Users? I have lead projects at both extremes. One memory springs to mind. We had to implement a daylight savings time feature in an embedded consumer device. This was to be done by a team in a place where daylight saving time is not used. The team had successfully programmed a leap year algorithm taken the complexities of every 4 years, but not every 100, yet every 400. They were good and motivated developers. The PO and testers were going crazy because the team was doing the " kind of progress. The situation escalated so that I had to go onsite to our development center. I remember the team leader taking me to the side after lunch and asking me: The PO had assumed that by just writing that in the requirements everything would be clear. one step forward two back" "Can you please explain daylight savings to me?" Offshore, Nearshore, and in my Backyard. A Product Owner can throw a not fully defined feature to a local team that can think as customers and expects a sensible implementation quickly. Especially if you are using an iterative software development with regular reviews of the work in progress. The hidden cost of this additional need for detailed specifications to a remote team is often ignored. In bad cases it can lead to an expensive "bring it back" action. So the question is what can you do: If you are in charge of evaluating moving development offshore, make sure you calculate the additional specification work that will be needed to Push the requirements to the remote team. Maybe your calculation would show that keeping development in-house is more efficient. If you are a Product Owner that has to work with a remote team, make sure that the requirements you are assigning the team are understood. Having well-managed scrum refinement and good communication with the team could help. If you are a developer working on a remote team, be sure to ask questions early. If you need an introduction to how a piece of equipment, a process, or a workflow works ask for it. Be proactive, your PO will appreciate that. First published here

Why Developers Should be Customer-obsessed

“What the heck is this guy talking about??? *“Hey! Don’t be rude, remember what he[*Nostradamus] said…” “Yes, yes. When in doubt, get yourself a Tarot reading…” Above is the statement that my friend - a self-proclaimed atheist and a non-believer in the mystic arts - told me jokingly in the middle of a history class when we were listening to a presentation about Nostradamus… First of all, Nostradamus has nothing to do with Tarot cards. (Although one researcher is trying to make that claim.) Second of all, the conversation happened 2 years before my friend became a Tarot reader herself. She said she just wanted to make some money, but I remain doubtful. To be fair, she got quite good with her Tarot deck, scaringly good, witch-craft-shifting-a-non-believer-in-the-mystic-arts-level good even. I mean we are talking about an agnostic, Harry Potter hater who predicted, no, “sensed” several crucial moments in my high-school life for the sake of “experimentation.” “What’s the deal with you and Tarot anyway? Why the sudden 180-degree turn?” “I don’t know…” “So now you just happen to be a Tarot expert? Do those tiny people in the cards just come to life and whisper the future into your ears?” “Are you dumb? Do you even know what Tarot is?” At that point, I was just messing with her.  Unlike my friend, I was raised in a semi-religious household and my mother --though not following any religion--used spiritual stories to teach me lessons growing up. It ultimately resulted in my curiosity about superstitious things. To be perfectly honest here, Tarot does pique my interest and till now I still can’t phantom how ‘practitioners’ can interpret pieces of information from pulling out random colorful cards. There is More to Tarot Than a Deck of Cards A wide misconception of Tarot is that it is a tool of fortune-telling. In my perspective, the definition you might have read from is not entirely correct. the Cambridge dictionary From my observation, while people often seek Tarot readers for predictions of the future, it does not give someone the ability to actually tell the future. Tarot spreads are more about uncovering insights into the truths and desires of one’s mind. You can view it as a way to guide manifestation. I view the act of seeking Tarot readings as or consulting looking for advice. As my friend emphasized: “Tarot cards are bridges for readers to understand their customers and from that, enable them to give advice and sometimes, even predictions of what about to come as well as how should they act accordingly.” “But why did Tarot get so popular all of a sudden?” “Anxiety… and TikTok” Tarot has been a well-known medium for a long time, dating back to the early 1900s. It is not until the beginning of the pandemic, and with the emergence of TikTok, that I saw the rise in popularity of Tarot reading. My friend became what she called “an avid Tarot reader” around that time too. “Ooooh, I see good things coming up… yes, yes this is good…” “You are not giving yourself enough credit, you are doing great and you’ve already known what you want to do next…” Or even… “The person you’re thinking of is also crazy about you…” “They don’t deserve you…” Sounds familiar? As a TikTok user, you have probably scrolled through a forest of these 60-second reading videos on TikTok that have millions of views. But… Why? Validation. COVID-19 has taken away many things, one of which is our ability to reach out for actual human connections and understanding. This ultimately leads to feelings of loss and uncertainty. By seeking Tarot reading, or even watching those random reading videos on TikTok we are able to experience that sense of authenticity. That feeling of being understood; The soothing sensation of reassurance from someone. We are all humans who seek comfort in utterly uncomfortable times. This pandemic has proven to be a perfect time for the thrive of Tarot readings. When phrases like “Self reflection,” “Inner peace” or “Self-care” appear repeatedly online, it is rather unsurprising that people have started to turn to spiritual mediums to cope with this unrest time. After all, it does not hurt to be a little bit superstitious sometimes, right? Editor’s note: Please treat Tarot readings and other such activities as entertainment only. In the event that you must make a serious life decision please consult a properly licensed mental health professional as well as base your decisions on peer-reviewed academic research . only

Why is TikTok Obsessed With Tarot Card Readings? 

Kubernetes is nothing we can’t achieve with many well-written scripts compiled together on top of VMWare — you must have heard people saying this. Then why are we so obsessed with Kubernetes, and so are the DevOps teams? When we look at Kubernetes adoption, we see that it has grown exponentially and is evident from Airbnb’s Kubernetes adoption. Its transition from a monolithic to a multi-services architecture Airbnb that was eyeing support to 1000 engineers happened successfully with Kubernetes deployment. To understand it let us first glance at some of the facts; the Kubernetes GitHub repo has more than 2400 contributors who have made more than 88400 commits with the initial release 5 years ago. This throws light on whether any company anticipates their DevOps team to build the same quality product as Kubernetes. At the same time, they have to fight the fire from 10 directions, then that company better be monetizing it. It doesn’t make business sense to invest substantial money and time into building a product that does not give your company a competitive edge, much like Niantic Inc. . This game saw massive user traffic, which became stress for its engineers, who found it difficult for servers to handle. But by making use of Kubernetes, the engineers diverted attention from the scaling part to developing new features and app logic. Pokemon Go The amount of endeavor which has gone into building the right abstraction and well-thought-through APIs has put power back right into the hand of DevOps. They can now work more towards a tuning, upgrading, and securing infrastructure and microservices apart from creating DIY tools for developers. So it should not be a matter of amazement that Devops think Kubernetes gives them the silver bullets they always wanted in their gun. A conducted by Platform9 at kubecon Barcelona 2019 showed that 76.6% of respondents are looking at improving their speed to deployment by using Kubernetes. The next expectation was tied, with 50% believing they will modernize their legacy apps and another 50% believing it will help them automate app operations. survey Takeaways from KubeCon 2019 Survey Kubernetes in Production Kubernetes Challenges Multi-cloud Kubernetes Kubernetes Add-ons Kubernetes Use Cases Let’s look at some of the things which make Kubernetes the next big thing after cloud? Drive innovation through open-source software: With the available for almost every open source project doing a quick POC is very easy for the development team. Just have the right segregation of environment, policies, and access control for them, and they can really make you time travel to the future. helm charts — they pull you towards the future you desire to live. Just remember Shoot productivity through the sky: Accelerate state of the DevOps 2019; highest performing engineers are 1.5 times more likely to use easy-to-use tools. Well, that’s comprehensible, as fast-changing technology will make them remember lesser things and work their way through to be more productive. report Kubernetes provides a uniform interface and declarative configuration, which opens up the feasibility of creating easy-to-user tools now more than ever. I recently talked to the DevOps head in one of the big companies that run its systems on Kubernetes; he told me they are taking control back from the developers; they don’t want developers to modify YAML themselves as it resulted in a major outage. — Kubernetes needs another abstraction layer on top of it to make developers 1.5X developers. Just remember Do cheap experiments: Okay, I am cheating here a bit. You can do it primarily because of containerization, which allows you to have much finer-grained resource allotment. Still, then you can't use containers at scale unless you are using a container management system, Kubernetes. Also, you can leverage the power of multiple cloud providers; your cloud provider is not strong in a particular region plug into another one, you have gotten credits from one of the cloud providers test load on their infra, you can even use your local servers (hybrid cloud) similarly. — Visibility of infrastructure and applications is important. Otherwise, the cost may go up, and stability may go down. Just remember So what do you think? If you have another reason to be obsessed or gotcha to help people leverage Kubernetes, do let us know in the comments section. This article was by- Prashant Ghildiyal , Co-Founder — Devtron Labs Also published on: https://devtron.ai/blog/kubernetes-obsession/

Why DevOps Engineers are so Obsessed with Kubernetes 

What is Primitive Obsession? To start with, primitives are the basic data types available in most languages. These include data types such as strings, numbers (int, floats), and booleans. Primitive obsession is a code smell in which primitive data types are used excessively to represent your data models. The problem with primitives is they are very general. For example, a string could represent a name, an address, or even an ID. Why is this a problem? They can't contain any model-specific logic or behaviour, meaning that any logic must be stored in the containing class. This means you end up with classes containing lots of unrelated logic, which violates the Single Responsibility Principle ( ). read more here They lose their type safety. A string is a string. The compiler doesn't know if your passing it a string representing a name or an address. This means it is easy to accidentally assign a value to the wrong field, the code will run and compile fine, and you may not notice until the data is completely messed up. Curing Primitive Obsession Below is an example of a Person class that suffers from Primitive Obsession: { { } Id { ; ; } FirstName { ; ; } LastName { ; ; } Address { ; ; } PostCode { ; ; } City { ; ; } Country { ; ; } { }
} public class Person ( ) public Person id, firstName, lastName, address, postcode, city, country string string string string string string string // initialisation logic public string get set public string get set public string get set public string get set public string get set public string get set public string get set ( ) public void ChangeAddress address, postcode, city, country string string string string // change address logic What is wrong here? Well we have a class that consists entirely of string properties. The constructor consists of a long list of string parameters - I can guarantee that at some point the wrong value will be assigned to the wrong parameter slot! We also have a method to change the address, but really this logic shouldn't be the responsibility of the Person class. Finally, the ID is also a string, so it could accidentally be used as the ID for other types. What can we do? Well the first thing we can look at is, are there any properties that make sense to be grouped together? A good test for this is to ask, which of these properties are likely to be updated together? In out example, it is clear that the Address, PostCode, City and Country fields should be grouped (if you move house, it is likely that all or most of these properties will be updated together). Let's refactor these properties into their own class then. { { } Address { ; ; } PostCode { ; ; } City { ; ; } Country { ; ; }
} { { } Id { ; ; } FirstName { ; ; } LastName { ; ; } Address Address { ; ; }
} public class Address ( ) public Address address, postCode, city, country string string string string // initialisation logic public string get set public string get set public string get set public string get set public class Person ( ) public Person id, firstName, lastName, Address address string string string // initialisation logic public string get set public string get set public string get set public get set Already our Person class is looking much better. All of the logic to do with the address is now encapsulated in the address class, and we've managed to eliminate a lot of string parameters from the constructor. You may have noticed that, overall, we still have the same number of string properties. This is fine as ultimately it is likely that you will need to store you data in a primitive. The important part of avoiding Primitive Obsession is encapsulating those primitives into well defined objects that actually represent their meaning. The next thing that we need to deal with is the ID. To bring type safety back to the ID, we can create what is known as a strongly-typed ID. In short, this is just the primitive value wrapped in a container object specific to that entity. For example, an implementation of a PersonId object might look like (adapted from ): here PersonId : IComparable<PersonId>, IEquatable<PersonId>
{ Value { ; } {
        Value = ;
    } => PersonId(Guid.NewGuid().ToString()); => .Value.Equals(other.Value); => Value.CompareTo(other.Value); { (ReferenceEquals( , obj)) ; obj PersonId other && Equals(other);
    } => Value.GetHashCode(); => Value.ToString(); ==(PersonId a, PersonId b) => a.CompareTo(b) == ; !=(PersonId a, PersonId b) => !(a == b);
} { { } PersonId Id { ; ; } FirstName { ; ; } LastName { ; ; } Address Address { ; ; }
} public readonly struct public string get ( ) public PersonId string value value PersonId ( ) public static New new ( ) public bool Equals PersonId other this ( ) public int CompareTo PersonId other ( ) public override bool Equals obj object if null return false return is ( ) public override int GetHashCode ( ) public override string ToString public static bool operator 0 public static bool operator public class Person ( ) public Person PersonId id, firstName, lastName, Address address string string // initialisation logic public get set public string get set public string get set public get set This is good as now the Person class uses it's own PersonId for the ID. There is no way it could be used accidentally as the ID for another type, as that will have it's own strongly typed ID. However, you may have noticed that this PersonId definition is somewhat large, and it would be cumbersome to have to declare this for every strongly typed ID that you wish to create. To be honest, this hurdle is likely the reason that strongly typed IDs still aren't that common in C# development. Fortunately, in C# 9, we have the new record type that makes defining strongly typed IDs much easier, so hopefully it's usage will become far more common (you can read more about records ). here ; personId = PersonId( ); // PersonId as a record record ( ) public PersonId Value string // how to initialise var new "my-id" Yes, that's literally it. This declares a PersonId record with a string property called Value, which can be passed via the constructor. Records automatically base equality on the values of their properties, so there is no need to add anything else in the declaration. Primitive Obsession in F# Although, this article has focussed mainly on C#, and all the principles applied above can be used in F#, there is a unique feature in F# that I think is worth noting. Discriminated Unions are a data type in F# (and many other languages, but not C#) that allow different types of data to be returned depending on the situation (to learn more about discriminated unions, please see ). A common use case is error handling: here =
    | Data | Error string < > type Result 'a of 'a of This above example, would allow a function to return some generic data type, but if there is an error, return a string. However, a single-case discriminated union can act as a wrapper for a primitive type, and gives type safety to your functions. For example, we may have this Person record: = {
    FirstName: string;
    LastName: string;
    EmailAddress: string;
} type Person The problem here is that an email address isn't really just a string - they have a specific format and so we might want to design some specific validation logic for it. Because of this, it is best to encapsulate it in its own type. With single case discriminated unions this is really easy: = EmailAddress string = {
    FirstName: string;
    LastName: string;
    EmailAddres: EmailAddress;
} type EmailAddress of type Person Now the Person record will only accept email address of the EmailAddress type. Conclusion In this article, I have introduced the concept of primitive obsession, what problems it may cause, and how to fix them. Hopefully, you can take away some of this information and use it in your own codebase to create safer, more maintainable code. I post mostly about full stack .NET and Vue web development (and soon maybe some more F# content!). To make sure that you don't miss out on any posts, please follow this blog and . If you found this post helpful, please like it and share it. You can also find me on . subscribe to my newsletter Twitter Also published at https://dev.to/dr_sam_walpole/a-cure-for-primitive-obsession-14l6

What is Primitive Obsession and How Can we Fix it?

¿Qué es la obsesión primitiva y cómo podemos solucionarla?

founders are often “hailed as superhumans,” but the truth is they’re not. They’re everyday people like you and me. But the thing that makes them different is their fearlessness to take risks. Startup In saying that, there is a lot that can be learned from successful entrepreneurs that have made it. So, I decided to spend a good chunk of my weekend researching billion dollar tech companies to see if there were any unique patterns or key learnings that I could distill. Here are a few things that I discovered. Lemonade Insurance 2015 Founded: Fintech Industry: $2 billion Approximate valuation: Using artificial intelligence, a mobile app and other tech-centric methods, Lemonade founders Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger are turning the centuries-old business of property insurance into a . millennial-friendly consumer product Every homeowner and renter needs insurance, but many distrust insurance providers. The two concluded that insurance, with its market value of $4.6 trillion, was ripe for disruption. The differs from that of a typical insurance company – it keeps a flat 25% fee of a customer’s premium while setting aside the remaining 75% to pay claims and purchase insurance. Unpaid premiums go to a nonprofit of the users opted for the annual “give back” deal. This builds trust with millenials. Lemonade business model Unlike fintech competitors Hippo and Jetty, Lemonade doesn’t sell policies backed by established insurers. It took the risk to become a licensed carrier itself, retaining claim liability on its own balance sheet. This risk has paid off, allowing them to create a social-compact pitch that pays claims fast. Lemonade can’t profit from denying legit claims, and customers making bogus claims are cheating charity, not some greedy insurer. Lemonade puts users first, building its product with the in mind. One of the biggest pain points of traditional insurance companies is the fact that interactions can be intimidating and time-consuming, leaving consumers powerless. Not the case with Lemonade. They started by thinking about the users and built from there. user experience Entrepreneurs can sometimes make their lives harder than they need to be. Often falling victim to things like and paralysis by analysis. By focusing purely on the most essential things I.e. the problem you’re solving and your solution to that problem. shiny object syndrome Lemonade, as a name, is brilliant in its simplicity. Each step along the customer journey? Also simple. Their content? Simple to digest. Netflix 1997 Founded: Entertainment Industry: $141 billion Approximate valuation: For nearly twenty years Blockbuster sat at the top of the US video-rental industry. In the early 2000s a small disruptive company called Netflix offered to partner with them to help run their online brand in exchange for promoting Netflix in their stores. Reed Hastings (co-founder of Netflix) got laughed out of the room. Fast forward to 2020, Blockbuster is now merely a distant memory after filing for bankruptcy in 2010 while Netflix is currently worth $166B (Feb 2020). Netflix is one of the best examples of transforming your business to stay ahead of the curve. When Netflix first launched in 1997 it was purely a website-based movie rental service — this was groundbreaking at the time. It took them 10 years before they introduced their streaming services which changed the entertainment industry forever. Like many other innovative companies, Netflix is not driven by pressure to do things first, but by delivering for the customer. The opportunities to do this evolve with technology, making it a never-ending process of testing, implementation and testing again. good experiences Netflix also shows that it pays to take risks. It took a decade for broadband internet to catch up with the founder’s vision, and Netflix’s decision to switch to "original content" and divert budgets away from licensing film releases was another famously big bet. The political drama House of Cards, cost a reported to produce the first two seasons. This bet paid off, when the show went on to win multiple awards and attract millions of viewers every episode. $100 million Airbnb 2007 Founded: Travel Industry: $35 billion Approximate valuation: Long before persuaded strangers to sleep in one another's homes and became a $35 billion company, it was just an idea to earn a bit of extra money to make rent. After their first guests, the three founders realized they were onto something bigger. Airbnb They presented a final version in 2008 but investors weren’t convinced. Out of 15 angel investors, eight said no and seven ignored them completely. It was 2009 when they finally picked up $600,000 in seed funding and the rest is history. Airbnb shows how important it is to understand your users and update your product according to their requirements. The company realized early on that receiving payments was crucial for those who are giving out their space on rent, so they promptly added the advance payments feature. Marketplace models such as Airbnb have become common today, but back in 2007, this model was mostly unproven. To apply this to your own startup, you need to have an idea that not only challenges existing solutions but is also able to create value. lesson Airbnb used disruptive technology by creating a marketplace at a time when it was rare. It created ripples in the hotel industry by providing a that was different, endearing, and reasonably priced. Airbnb used innovative and new-user discounts to build loyalty for its product. service referral programs Their focus is on providing more and incremental value to their customers. If you can build a product that adds value while providing your users with an incentive to spread the word, you can create a win-win situation for your business as well as your users. Canva 2013 Founded: Internet software + services Industry: $4.7 billion Approximate valuation: For every second that you’re reading this article, Sydney-based startup Canva (fun fact: they were originally known as ) — have helped millions of people create beautiful designs and documents using its online graphic tools. Canvas Chef More than have been created since its 2013 launch, which makes you wonder why it took three years of rejections by more than 100 potential investors before it got started. These knockbacks worked in favor of the founders, allowing them to polish their offering before it hit the market. 100 million designs Canva’s purpose is to democratise graphic design – to create a tool that is imbued with such simplicity, it allows amateurs to do things that previously were only in the domain of experienced design professionals. “Simplicity” is at the core of Canva’s brand, and it’s an attribute that the company tries to weave through its entire customer experience, from an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, to its polished design templates – even its . privacy notice The strongest attribute Canva’s founders Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams have is . Canva’s success didn’t happen overnight, with their journey starting all the way back in 2007. persistence It takes time to build a unicorn — with it almost being guaranteed you’ll experience rejection, failure and frustration along the way. A great example of the founder’s persistence is the fact that it spent three years from meeting their first investor to actually landing the first investment. Focus is another strong attribute. One of the sole reasons Canva has been a big success is that the founders focused in the early days on finding one highly influential person in their space and getting them to help with their startup. Avoid trying to meet hundreds of people that aren’t really related to your business or what you need. Concentrate on the few names that can have the most impact instead. SEEK Limited 1997 Founded: Employment Industry: $7 billion Approximate valuation: SEEK Limited (stylised as SEEK) and its subsidiary companies, known as the SEEK Group, is one of the largest . SEEK focuses on facilitating the matching between jobseekers and employment opportunities and helping hirers find candidates for advertised roles. job sites in Australia SEEK was founded by brothers Paul and Andrew Bassat and Matthew Rockman, essentially as an online version of print employment classifieds. Today SEEK makes a positive impact on a global scale, with exposure to , more than 51 million students and learners and a presence in 18 countries. 2.9 billion people While a recruitment giant and disruptive force, Seek went through “a scary period” when it found itself on the other side of the fence, with new disruptors coming in and threatening its place in the market. they were not “pushing or challenging ourselves”. Andrew Basset admits Seek started to re-focus, considering what makes a person choose one platform over another, given the way technology has evolved. Bassat and SEEK’s leadership team realized that if they didn’t innovate they would be in “a lot of trouble.” “The reality is, today, everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted,” he said. “We always need to be vigilant. There’s always someone coming to take our business from us.” Key takeaways It’s important to remember that although some of the ideas and technology leveraged by these companies had never been seen before and completely changed the game. The principles and values used by the founders have been around for a very long time. Here are 3 of the main takeaways: Canva and Netflix are great examples of two companies that took nearly a decade to really hit their stride. That’s over 120 months of riding the emotional rollercoaster that comes with building a company. Consistency: All of the companies I’ve covered in this article have benefitted from simplifying processes, tasks and experiences that were traditionally painful for their customers. Simplicity: It can be easy for founders to become distracted by vanity metrics and superficial product features. By focusing on your customers' problems and how you can solve them — your company is more likely to create real value for your customers. Be obsessed with your customers: These ideas might not be as exciting as the latest trends or tactics. But they are almost guaranteed to continue to be  essential building blocks for the billion dollar companies of the future. Summing up Establishing a unicorn startup is no easy task and it’s not meant to be. You need to become comfortable with the feeling of failure and remind yourself the journey of an entrepreneur is a marathon not a sprint. Once upon a time, unicorn startups were a rare breed. Today, not so much. Lastly, if you are looking to take the dive into startup land then: be curious, be problem focused, but above all, take action.

3 Lessons From Unicorns: Consistency, Simplicity, and Customer Obsession 

TL; DR: Copying is not inherently bad. Go as lean as possible with a rockstar team. Get the initial traction from good Marketing and PR. Retain the initial traction by spending more time with first customers. Eat numbers for breakfast, lunch, dinner. Get customer feedback. Don't deviate from the roadmap. Customer retention happens through constant engagement. A Senior Leader from Way2Online, Way2News keeps saying that marketing/Customer obsession is in my DNA, and it makes me wonder why? It was in 2011–12 at my first role as a source to pay lead at one of the world’s leading Media & Entertainment industry/Company. My responsibilities were to manage the change/adoption of SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) ERP. The business has close to 45 Business units (Approx) with thousands of end-users using the SAP ERP to raise indents for office supplies/production equipment and relatable products for their respective divisions. This ERP played a significant role in the company as these end-users place their requirements and each requirement had to go through several levels of approvals (Both at operational and financial level). Sometimes the material procurement used to be so huge (in financial terms), that the request for approval would go to the group’s CFO. The activities taking place inside the company use to happen over this SRM tool; hence, the scope of errors had to be minimal (or negligible). I led a small team of 4 people and was reporting to Senior Sourcing Directors/ Director IT & New Initiatives ( ). Since I was managing a huge group, my reporting managers were also other senior leaders in the group- / . Mr. Arif Faruki/ Alejandro Patrone Annaliza Hail Kevin Bradshaw I must say these people are the reason why I’ve become customer-obsessed. Daily interactions with them helped me understand the value of customer-centricity. Arif taught me to have shark-like instincts, while Alex (Alejandro Patrone) taught me how important was to have 100% expertise with the product. Annaliza and Kevin helped me to manage disorderliness in work by being more organized using ticketing tools. During my tenure, I’ve got several recognitions like MVP (Most Valuable Player), Best Team award at the company’s town hall, which was made possible through dedicated team members. I quit the company in 2013 to join Whackedout Media as Vice President of Business Operations, where I co-founded one of the most viewed News channel on YouTube- Mango News. Mango News was an attempt to have a neutral platform for any political party to voice out on a common platform. I managed more than 70 digital strategies of renowned politicians and deployment of colossal video content on youtube channel/website, which led to 300K to 500K MAUs in a short time. The reason for such massive attention in a short span was a fantastic packaging and simple UI, which was captivating enough to bring back the audience on the platform regularly. My other bigger and smaller stints at my other venture- Sweet Experience and a stint as Associate Vice President in a product company- OnGO framework have helped in various ways while building Truepush and achieve milestones in a short span of time. When Manoj and I started building Truepush in October of 2018, we barely had any clarity as to where to start from, and finally concluded that copying is not a bad idea to start with. We made a list of competitors, compiled by a team member and started picking on the best competitor’s features. Thus, we created a baseline product(MVP). To get validation for the base product, we took it to friends to understand what they felt about it. The feedback was not encouraging and few went ahead and suggested that it’s a simple product to create and sell it, but we know it's not a simple product as it looks. Some people accepted it and were ready to integrate our code to try the product. The process to get initial traction was very tiresome as we were doing multiple things at a time to get people to use Truepush. We started posting on Facebook groups, sent millions of messages to people on facebook/LinkedIn hoping someone will pick it up. The response was feeble, and the acceptance was not so great. In anguish and complete discouragement, we randomly updated about Truepush on ProductHunt on the 8th of January, 2019 with no clue what will happen next. The next day, we went trending with 1000+ upvotes, with sudden spikes of signups coming on to the website and couldn’t figure out the source. We eventually ended up as number # 3 product on Producthunt. Things started settling down after a few days. Both my associate ( ) and I started reaching out to all signups and within a few days, we on-boarded some big enterprise and SMEs. We realized that these are our target customers and stood as a goldmine for further approach in brand recognition. David The product started getting a lot of traction and it made us consistent for onboarding as many potential customers as possible. Subsequently, we also focused on getting coverage about Truepush in various media outlets, approached niche media houses for a story/backlink while my colleague (Eshwari) started submissions on Q & A websites like Quora, groups, etc. Concurrently other e-discovery platforms such as , , , started approaching us. We also have ensured a substantial presence for our prospects to come to know about us. Our consistent and relentless efforts for five months helped us to improve our site DA/PA/ Alexa Ranking. Facebook Capterra GetApp SaasGenius Trust radius With these efforts and maintaining SEO hygiene, our Site ranking went up, with more and more users discovering us. These users are now our loyal clients. Our users started sending notifications from March 25th (that’s when we noticed that our clients are pushing the notifications). We also started to receive feedback from users, and in an urge to retain them, we went overboard to accept every feature and enhancement they shared with us. While we saw great value in looking into every aspect of information that users shared, but in this process, we became a services company as opposed to a product company. We took a step backward and set a clear boundary for the issues/feedback coming our way viz, Incident ( Problem /issues) / Features and future enhancement. We begin to adopt a ticketing tool, where we created groups- Outreach, Tech 1, and Tech 2. Outreach deals with generic queries, Tech 1 deals with semi-technical/ basic troubleshoot, and Tech 2 deals with completely technical issues. This way we got a bit organized and matured to handling our customers. Every month, we collated all the feedback and created a pool of features that had to be released this month (Including issues/problems coming from existing tools) and remaining features were moved in future enhancement plan. We started to educate our users/clients with logical corollaries as to why a particular feature couldn’t be done immediately. It took us a while for users to get adopted to this structure, and with our consistent delivery and interactions, we broke the trust barrier. Constant interactions over chats/emails/ feature update newsletters helped us in a big way. We became more and more organized and our average response time has become lower and lower( low value indicates faster response time). Our processes become more efficient and our outreach experts went above and beyond assisting our clients. More and more people started to give us good feedback on our outreach program, and almost everyone rated us 10/10 on NPS- as an indicator of likelihood to recommend Truepush to their friends in a similar domain. Our outreach experts including me also have interacted with clients in their native language. There was an instance when the client was Puerto Rican and I could comprehend their English and speak to them in their language (used google translate voice tool). All these experiences were amazing, but if you want me to sum it up or put a suggestion in a one-liner, then here’s my take “ ”. No matter how big or small team you have, if as a founder you wouldn’t put yourself there and frequently interact with your clients, you will most likely fail as a company. Founders involvement is key Even today, I interact with the majority of inquiries that come from various mediums (Chats/Emails). This will increase the credibility of your product, as people will start respecting the fact that people at the helm of affairs are deeply involved. There were times when existing users were irate with an expert who was trying to help resolve an issue and they weren’t willing to listen, I barged into the conversation and respective user toned down and begin to address me “ Mr. Ravi, how are you ?”. Not that I’m trying to boast myself here, but justifying why founders play a key role and how the entire conversation/persona changes and immediate attention to issues play a major role too. Track all the actions, customer interactions as much as possible, have daily metrics (product performance, Growth performance, and individual performances). This played a key role in our growth and helped us understand what worked/what didn’t. We also asked our customers, as to how they found us (Google, Quora, etc). To help us understand which action gave us maximum visibility, and concluded what worked and what didn’t. We’re a small team, we got habituated to hustling because we all self-trained ourselves to hustlers and not restrict ourselves to just one role. Furthermore, our individuals got super clarity about their work which made things better and easy to grab for new hires. Now, any newbie joins Truepush, they feel much more relaxed (Smoother on-boarding), as we know where we need intervention. Our training got much more focused as we made manuals for every activity. Upskilling now is a piece of cake and more importantly, everyone knows and understands other team members' work, which helped us supporting teammates during their absence. To sum it up this entire blog into a nutshell, once more, with feeling: Copying is not bad (Helped us get a basic level product out). Take it to friends (Rejections are not bad). Go as lean as possible (The initial team should be as small as possible). Build a rock star team. Your knowledge and control over the process are most important. Get the initial traction from good Marketing and PR (E-discovery platforms, Backlinking, SEO/ Media Houses, Quora Submission, DA/ PA/ Alexa Ranking). Retain the initial traction/spend more time with first customers. (Gold Mine). There is no small/big customer. The customer is a customer. Get Customer Feedback/work on it. (Valuable). You’re a product, not a service company. Don’t deviate from Road-map.Set Clear Demarcation. Incident| Problem /issues | Features | Future Enhancement. The ticketing tool helps us organizing. Chats really helped us. Tremendous value for immediate Attention. ( Founders Involvement). Be More Metric Driven/ Have 360 Degree view — Eat Numbers for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. Customer Retention through constant engagement ( Email campaigns/Case Studies/ Interviews). The past few months have been like a roller coaster ride, as we saw many big companies adopting us and we saw 70% growth MOM. Truth be told, from August to October we saw 100 % growth in terms of the number of notifications sent. We are now sending close to 42 Million notifications per day ( reached that mark in just 11 months) and are poised to touch 1 Billion notifications in a month. Some key stats/Trends worth mentioning : Our weekly averages of sent notifications in Millions (From the day we've started tracking): : MoneyLife, IndiaGlitz, Raaga, Futooro, GetMyUni, MakeMyOrders, BombayShavingCompany, YourQuote, Bles, La Tribune, LeadsMarket, and many others. Notable Clients

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