Issue 34 - Embrace the Duality
The data analysts every CEO wants
While your uncle is discovering what's NVIDIA, here is something even more potentially disruptive in the chipset field: analog computing.
This sounds like a fairytale compared to how much we are aliened by numeric computers nowadays.
But the reality is that a startup has been backed by famous tech VCs to build chipsets based on analog technology.
This startup's venture with analog chips flipped a switch in my mind – it highlighted the mindset shift that comes from embracing opposing concepts.
Personally speaking, I always felt attached to vintage cars or furniture, music on vinyl, analog photography, etc. While at the same time being such a nerd, doing football analytics, looking at the latest technologies news, and writing code on the weekends.
I used to struggle with conflicting desires - engineer vs nostalgia lover. I believe embracing this duality (finally!) made me a more well-rounded person. Focus and progress became easier.
Duality is the warp and woof of our world. Especially in tech.
Clash between Linux and Windows.
Friction and collaboration between business goals and developer creativity.
"As code" approach versus user-friendly no-code option.
Open-source versus closed-source software.
A breakthrough can sometimes emerge from solving one side of the equation.
But when faced with limitations, accepting the duality helps us to move on.
Not moving away. Moving toward something that takes the duality into account to make progress.
Acceptance creates space for solutions to emerge, even if they weren't initially obvious.
Then it sometimes brings up what was lacking at first.
Then we solve the equation.
📡 Expected Contents
Node.js the documentary
That's again a top-notch documentary from Honeypot's team!
I really encourage you to watch other docs, like the one about Kubernetes.
What's interesting in these core technologies is how they emerge from very few people at first, but then diffuse through companies and teams quite quickly.
These documentaries are an ode to the open-source software while showing how much such technology is tied to business. Nothing is free, and the implicit dialogs in these shows definitely highlight this point.
Kafka to Iceberg
Confluent recently announced a move toward Apache Iceberg table format.
I think they are quite right about the ultimate split existing between the operation (transactional) and analytical worlds.
Trying to merge both would be a key progress to accelerate the time to value of data engineering.
DuckDB as the New jq
At Kestra we often got questions about Pebble, the Java templating language we used to manage small data transformation and operations between tasks (dealing with inputs and outputs for example).
Paul came here with a great idea: using SQL for small data transformation. It's taking advantage of the declarative nature of SQL and its commodity in our pipelines nowadays.
Check out the blog post for a deeper insight, and how the easy handling of JSON in DuckDB makes things easy to deal with.
Dark Matter Developers: The Unseen 99%
While I love to write about data engineering, speak at meetups, chat with fellow engineers, etc. it's always great to think about the unseen. The ones who don't talk that much, who don't come to the after-work, who just get things done.
Quietly.
Short but thoughtful read from Scott, worth the 3-minute read 👍
📰 The Blog Post
The Data Analyst Every CEO Wants
In my previous experience, I used to work with awesome data analysts. These unicorns knew business, data wrangling, and awesome human empathy!
I summarize all the qualities that make a data analyst the most valuable person in any modern company.
🎨 Beyond The Bracket
Many terms commonly used in computer programming originated with Mark I.
These terms, nowadays digital, originally referred to physical features of the machine and the paper tape that encoded the programs.
I love this kind of resource. Knowing where our daily terms come from always gives insights and opens our views.
Here are 5 terms we often use in our daily software development life - thanks Harvard for this:
The "Loop": Paper tape with sequence code, functions or numbers could be looped on itself to perform repetitive operations, such as in the interpolator shown here.
The "Patch": Small corrections to the programmed sequence could be done by patching over portions of the paper tape and re-punching the holes in that section. Photographed at the Smithsonian Archives Center.
The "Library": Sections of tape from previous problems could be cut, stored, and pasted back together with glue and iron for new uses, forming a growing repository of computer code.
The "Bug": Before 1944, electrical engineers already used the term "bug" to refer to hard-to-find physical defects that hindered the operation of an electric device. The Mark I team appropriated the term for unexpected problems in the "coding" of a problem.
A Legendary Bug: In 1947, a physical malfunction in the Mark II computer was traced back to a moth stuck in one of the relays. Grace Hopper taped it to the operations logbook with the annotation "First actual case of bug being found".
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