October 27, 2020

How realistic is the promise of low-code?

“Grady Booch, one of the fathers of modern computer science, said the whole history of computer scientists layering is adding new layers of abstraction. On top of existing technology, low-code is simply a layer of abstraction that makes the process of defining logic, far more accessible for the most people. “Even children are being taught the code programming through languages such as MIT‘s scratch, a visual programming language. Just like humans communicate through both words and pictures with a picture, being worth roughly 1000 words. So, developers can develop using both code, and low-code or visual programming languages. “Visual language is much more accessible for many people, as well, much safer. So many business users who are great subject matter experts can make small dips into defining logic or user interfaces, through low-code systems, without necessarily having to commit hours and days to developing a feature through more sophisticated methods.” ... Tools that use a visual node editor to create code paths are impressive but the code still exists as a base layer for advanced control. I once built a complete mobile video game using these visual editors. Once workflows get slightly more complex it’s helpful to be able to edit the code these tools generate.

“The Surgical Team” in XXI Century

In the surgical team of XXI century, every artifact shall have a designated owner. With ownership comes responsibility for quality of the artifact which is assessed by people who consume it (for example, consumers of designs are developers, and consumers of code are other developers who need to review it or interface with it). Common ownership as advocated by Extreme Programming can only emerge as the highest form of individual ownership in highly stable teams of competent people who additionally developed interpersonal relationships (a.k.a. friendship), and feel obligated to support one another. In other situations, collective ownership will end up with tragedy of commons caused by social loathing. Each team member will complete his assignments with least possible effort pushing consequences of low quality on others (quality of product artifacts becomes "the commons"). This is also the reason why software development outsourcing is not capable of producing quality solutions. The last pillar is respect. It is important for architect and administrator not to treat developers, testers and automation engineers as replaceable grunts (a.k.a. resources). An architect being the front-man of the team needs to be knowledgeable and experienced but it doesn’t mean that developers or testers aren’t. 

The great rebalancing: working from home fuels rise of the 'secondary city'

There are already signs of emerging disparity. Weekday footfall in big urban centres, which plummeted during lockdown, has not bounced back – the latest figures suggest less than one-fifth of UK workers have returned to their physical workplaces – which has led to reductions in public transport. This disadvantages low-income workers and people of colour, and has led to job losses at global chains such as Pret a Manger and major coffee franchises. Meanwhile, house prices in the Hamptons have reached record highs as wealthy New Yorkers have opted to weather the pandemic at the beach. Companies have also started capitalising on reduced occupancy costs – potentially passing them on to workers. The US outdoors retailer REI plans to sell its brand-new Seattle campus, two years in the making, in favour of smaller satellite sites. In the UK, government contractor Capita is to close more than a third of its 250 offices after concluding its 45,000 staff work just as efficiently at home. Not every community will be able to take advantage of the remote working boom, agrees Serafinelli. Those best placed to do so already have – or are prepared to invest in – good-quality schools, healthcare and transport links.

Deno Introduction with Practical Examples

Deno was originally announced in 2018 and reached 1.0 in 2020, created by the original Node.js founder Ryan Dahl and other mindful contributors. The name DE-NO may seem odd until you realize that it is simply the interchange of NO-DE. The Deno runtime: Adopts security by default. Unless explicitly allowed, Deno disallows file, network, or environment access; Includes TypeScript support out-of-the-box; Supports top-level await; Includes built-in unit testing and code formatting (deno fmt); Is compatible with browser JavaScript APIs: Programs authored in JavaScript without the Deno namespace and its internal features should work in all modern browsers; Provides a one-file executable bundler through deno bundle command which lets you share your code for others to run without installing Deno. ... Putting simplicity and security into consideration, Deno ships with some browser-related APIs which allows you to create a web server with little or no difference from a client-side JavaScript application, with APIs including fetch(), Web Worker and WebAssembly. You can create a web server in Deno by importing the http module from the official repo. Although there are already many libraries out there, the Deno system has also provided a straightforward way to accomplish this.

How to Successfully Integrate Security and DevOps

As digitalization transforms industries and business models, organizations increasingly are adopting modern software engineering practices such as DevOps and agile to become competitive in the modern marketplace. DevOps enables organizations to release new products and features faster, but this pace and frequency of application releases can conflict with established practices of handling security and compliance. This leads to the enterprise paradox to go faster and innovate but stay secure by avoiding compromises on controls. However, integrating security into DevOps efforts (DevSecOps) across the whole product life cycle rather than being handled independently or left until the end of the development process after a product is released can help organizations significantly reduce their risk posture, making them more agile and their products more secure and reliable. When properly implemented, DevSecOps offers immense benefits such as easy remediation of vulnerabilities and a tool to mitigate against cost overruns due to delays. It also enables developers to tackle security issues more quickly and effectively.

Forrester: CIOs must prepare for Brexit data transfer

According to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), while the government has said that transfers of data from the UK to the European Economic Area (EEA) will not be restricted, from the end of the transition period, unless the EC makes an adequacy decision, GDPR transfer rules will apply to any data coming from the EEA into the UK. The ICO website recommended that businesses consider what GDPR safeguards they can put in place to ensure that data can continue to flow into the UK. Forrester also highlighted the lack of an adequacy decision, which it said would impact the supply chain of all businesses that rely on technology infrastructure in the UK when dealing with European citizens’ personal data. The analyst firm predicted that cloud providers will start to provide a way for their customers to make this transition. The authors of the report recommended that companies should focus on assessing compliance with UK data protection requirements, including the UK’s GDPR, and determine how lack of an adequacy decision will impact data transfers and work on a transition strategy. While the ICO is the UK’s supervisory authority (SA) for the GDPR, in July the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) stated that it will no longer qualify as a competent SA under the GDPR at the end of the transition period.

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