michaelkoltsov

[michaelkoltsov]

Introducing Python book review

Introducing Python book review

This is actually the first book about Python I’ve read even though I’ve used it extensively throughout the years.

My perception that this book proves is that Pythonistas are usually not programmers by trade, they’d come to programming either due to a lucky coincidence or by taking a wrong turn on the road of career hopping.

This book has promised to give a broad look on the Python’s ecosystem,…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Continious Delivery book review

Continious Delivery book review

This book is considered a cornerstone of the DevOps movement. In my opinion, it might be that in the very beginning, but currently most of the concepts that it presents are obvious and outdated.

I will recommend it to be read to someone who’s new in the DevOps community, but if you’ve got a few years of experience in the area under your belt I would   not.

It’s nice to have all good concepts…

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[michaelkoltsov]

The DevOps Handbook book review

The DevOps Handbook book review

This book actually reminds me of the book “Release it ” but with much less emphasis on actual technical patterns but with a stronger accent on soft skills.

It’s also complimentary to the “Phoenix Project” written by the same authors.

If you’ve skipped the “Phoenix Project” or you don’t like to read the novels, like I do, I would recommend you to start with this book as it has much more momentum…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Sometimes I’m late for some of the most important events in my life. Hopefully, health is not the issue that I’ve missed. Self-awareness and consciousness have always been a nice thing to have under your belt.

This book helps to improve those skills by giving you a nice reference for all the good things you need to be aware of that might either help you to advance or suffer as a human being.

This…

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[michaelkoltsov]

"Release it" book review

“Release it” book review

There’s a relatively short list of books I would like to keep on my desk. Most often those books are references and a composition of famous quotes. After I’ve read this chap I’d like to have it on my work desk at any moment.

This book is a perfect mix of lots of useful technical insights, practices and recommendations got from the author’s hard-earned experience combined with some of the…

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[michaelkoltsov]

The phoenix project book review

The phoenix project book review

That was the first non-technical book I’ve read for the last few years. At first I was really struggling to go through the first one hundred pages as I was constantly bored due to absolute lack of any technical details. However, a good book is always a good book even though it’s an IT-concerned novel.

What I like in this book is how it reminds some of the actual projects I’ve worked. I’m not sure…

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[michaelkoltsov]

What the newly coming Java 9 will bring to your Scala?

What the newly coming Java 9 will bring to your Scala?

INTRO

Java 9 is supposedly coming in July this year. All of its features are already discussed, however, as it was in the past everyone will wait until the minor version 1 or even 2 will be released for the wide adoption to take place. What’s even more important that usually OpenJDK community doesn’t care a lot about the JVM languages if it’s not Java. Those Clojure developers who used to install…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Ansible for DevOps book review

Ansible for DevOps book review

I was given this book, which is an uncommon event for me as I usually buy all books by myself. Moreover, I was given a paper version of the book.

Therefore, there were absolutely no regrets regarding this book =) The book is concise and covers almost all parts of Ansible I’ve ever heard of. The only exception was the case when you need to deal with a server that’s under a jump host/bastion, which…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Puppet Essentials book review

Puppet Essentials book review

The book provides only a shallow knowledge of Puppet, doesn’t cover some of the most important modules you’ll need in the real world as well as it doesn’t provide practical examples.

I will recommend it only if you need to quickly brush up the technical details of Puppet’s architecture or you need to start using it quickly rather than spending some time on playing with examples its documentation…

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[michaelkoltsov]

One of my favorite quotes drawn as a comic Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction.

[michaelkoltsov]

Mesos in Action book review

Mesos in Action book review

I can recommend this book only to those who’s looking for a very shallow knowledge of Mesos. It covers only the basics, no details, no iternal APIs, a lot of references to the Mesos documentation.

It’s worth reading if you need to quickly refresh your knowledge, besides that it’s worthless. It recommends to do Service discovery within the Mesos cluster by means of HAProxy & Mesos-DNS!!!

My score…

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[michaelkoltsov]

SRE book review

I don’t normally buy paper books, which means that in the course of the last few years I’ve bought only one paper book even though I’ve read hundreds of books during that period of time. This book is the second one I’ve bought so far, which means a lot to me. Not mentioning that Google is providing it on the Internet free of charge.

For me, personally, this book is a basis on which a lot of my…

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[michaelkoltsov]

How Linux Works book review

How Linux Works book review

This book doesn’t claim to cover all Linux features, but definitely it covers some of the most important ones.

It’s easy to read, though it encompasses lots of useful information. I wish my first Linux book was like that.

The only complaint I had with it was that though its second edition has been recently issued and it wasn’t strictly specified on which Linux distribution should I run some of…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Plans for 2017

Personal

Brush up (most probably by starting from the basics) my German language skills

Start tracking expenses, again

Pass a Polish language exam

Teach Kira how to ride a bicycle, finally

Run a marathon

Play 2 etudes with Kira

Draw a vector banner

Read 20 books

Technical

Learn Python

Learn either Rust or Go, presumably both

Improve my data skills, implement at least 2 data-concerned apps as side…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Houston, seems like we have a clone situation here

[michaelkoltsov]

2016 Year Resolution

GENERAL

Read 12 books

Gave a talk regarding Akka Persistence

Went from a role in management to a technical developer/DevOps role

TECHNICAL

Languages I’ve used and abused throughout the year:

Scala – 6/10 Nice language, though it needs too much attention in comparison with other languages I know and the code is less beautiful than in Clojure/Lisp, some parts are clunky

Javascript – 7/10 Easy to…

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[michaelkoltsov]

Bash for beginner book review

Bash for beginner book review

As my previous attempts to fully learn Bash had been short-living and sporadic I’ve decided that this time I’m going to fully master it in order to prevent myself from writing one-off scripts on high-level languages to do simple stuff that can be easily lifted by Bash.

This book is a great introduction for those who are real new comers, though I thought of myself as of the same kind.

Turns out…

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