connectivity – Codecraft

Most software has a profoundly inadequate concept of “health.” In order for applications to run, they must:

have adequate resources (RAM, disk, network, CPU)
receive cooperation from services exposed by the operating system or by network endpoints
be adequately and correctly configured
not be hacked
acquire delegated privileges from users

… and so forth. And yet, most software that I’ve encountered in my career does little to see whether it’s working properly and has what it needs. Sure, it may log a catastrophic error if the disk fills up, but it makes no effort to see the problem coming or to plan more graceful recovery than a crash.

In my most recent post on cloudifying your software, I explore how cloud computing is magnifying the need to understand and to regularly check your software’s vital signs. Head on over to adaptivecomputing.com/blog and check it out.

Checking vitals isn’t just for healthcare… Photo credit: U.S. Pacific Fleet (Flickr)

Stay tuned for further installments of this series each Friday. As I said in Part 1, I believe that a competence with cloud–cloud-oriented programming, if you will–will be a checkbox on future tech resumes.

The blogosphere has plenty to say about cloud computing, but most content targets the business, CIO, or IT crowds. Information exists for developers who want to produce software friendly to cloud computing, but it’s more scattered, it’s vendor-centric, and it doesn’t match the SEO profile that obsesses much of the industry. As a result, I believe that many developers have only hazy ideas about how they can leverage the power of the cloud to provide radical improvements in scale, responsiveness, and connectivity for their customers.

This ought to change. Cloud computing isn’t just interesting to datacenter managers; it enables many new technological strategies. Cloud-savvy engineering can boldly go where no software has gone before—if we’re smart enough to take it there.

Clouds on the horizon… Photo credit: fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au

On my company’s website, I’ve begun a new series of blog posts about how to “cloudify” your code and designs. Read the inaugural post, and check back on Fridays for new installments in the series. I’ll be making connections back to concepts here on codecraft, such as what the programming language of the future ought to look like, how to encapsulate for cloud, and so forth.

I believe that a competence with cloud–cloud-oriented programming, if you will–will be a checkbox on future tech resumes.