Fascination Street #9

Writing for the week of March 17, 2025

A few weeks ago I mentioned people have contacted me about getting the AWS Data Engineering cert. I get the sense some feel like it is a career direction change. It’s not. I’ve been thinking about it in college terms, I’m not changing my major. Data Engineering is my minor. Software Engineering is my major.

I don’t know if this way of thinking about it will resonate with everyone. After nearly 3 decades of being a software engineer or programmer or developer, whatever we call it now, I’ve gotten certified in another discipline. Only, I don’t really think of it as another discipline. I think data engineering is an aspect of software engineering. Sure, most software engineers are focus on implementing features in a specific language or even stack. But the products I have worked on in recent years have all had a heavy data aspect. In order to deliver good analytics for example, your application needs to be able to not only persist loads of data, but also access it to present in various forms. No matter how good your interactive frontend is, it still needs a solid data layer on the backend. These are the types of problems I have enjoyed working on lately.

Relatively recent advancements in the processing of large amounts of data allows us to do some really great things. We can slice and dice and present data in ways we weren’t able to do efficiently in the past. I’m not talking AI. I’m talking about data that was larger than what a database like MySQL or Postgres could handle out of the box. Granted, RDBMS at scale has come a long way in recent years as well. OLAP at scale has really come a long way. But so has the other aspects of the data ecosystem, like pipelines and movement.

I think this is all software engineering, the way I think of CI/CD to be a part of software engineering. You need it to deploy your app in smart efficient ways, therefore it is part of the process. Sidenote: Rails gets this really right. It really is a one-person framework.

Short explanation, but hopefully thinking of it as a major and minor makes sense.

This week has been mostly writing Rust code for a system migration. I also had to triage a production outage on an older single tenant instances Rails app. Nothing like a firedrill on an app you haven’t spent a lot of time with over the last few months. I’ve also been working on a new app I am excited about on nights and weekends. Hopefully can share more soon.

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Links

• https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?tag=david-mccullough-writing-shed quote: “we both love to write.  I say that with some trepidation as one of my favorite writers, Fran Lebowitz, once said, “Anyone who says they love to write is generally not very good at it.” I’ve always wanted a office shed, something outside of the house and with a distinct purpose and environment.
• https://lazyvim-ambitious-devs.phillips.codes/course/chapter-1/ - this is such an amazing open resource, kudos to the author. Lots of respect.

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Music

• https://music.apple.com/us/album/its-okay-to-punch-nazis-single/1274268497 - I’ve been a punk kick this week and this single from Cheap Perfume is the anthem of 2025, written nearly 8 years ago, but so relevant for today’s world.
• https://music.apple.com/us/album/remain-in-memory-the-final-show-live/291540484 - one of those live albums that I would pay a lot of money to be able to go back and attend. Good Riddance is by far the most skate punk band I have listened to over the last ~30 years.

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A couple of promotions each week. First, use my invite link to try Warp as your terminal. It’s fast and has some great features. I’m not affiliated with them at all, just really like it. Also, check out my project–Schemabook, especially if you work in an organization that wants to get organized around defining data through contracts and collaboration. Lastly, I’m writing a book about learning Rust if you are familiar with Ruby. Stay tuned. As always, you can connect with me more at https://mikekrisher.com.