Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
When running a large real-time processing system, monitoring is critical. But it does more than allow you to keep an eye on your system. During development it allows you test hypotheses about how it works, how it performs when certain…
The Boost ASIO Library is a wonderful piece of software. I’ve built high-performance event-driven IO C++ programs that just scream — it works very well. However, there is one subtlety when it comes to timers — specifically when it comes…
Cassandra is an open-source, distributed database, informally known as a NoSQL database. It is designed to store large amounts of data, offer high-write performance, and provide fault-tolerance. I recently needed some hands-on experience with Cassandra, and being relatively new to…
I needed some C++ code to generate Type-1 time-based UUIDs. The Boost libraries, while offering support for other types, don’t have support for time-based UUIDs. A cut of my code can be found in github.
I finally moved to mutt for my Loggly e-mail (which runs on Google Mail). After moving from e-mail client to e-mail client, I was keen to give it a try — the minimalist design and speed really appealed. It took…
After almost 5 years at Riverbed Technology, it’s time for new challenges. I’ve started a new development position at Loggly in San Francisco, helping to build their Cloud-based Logging-as-a-Service platform. I spent significant time at building systems that needed comprehensive…
Dogfood testing is an effective way to increase testing, and get valuable feedback, on one’s products. It can be especially effective in the earlier stages of a product’s development, when the user base can be small. Having a forgiving —…
My experience with Fedora 15 was not as I had hoped. The ATI graphics driver was particularly problematic (regular minute-long hangs due to spinlock issues) so I decided to try a completely different distribution. I decided to go with Kubuntu…
Another post for the Riverbed Technology Blog, on the value of looking back. You can read it here.
CPU emulation, particularly of older processors, is an interesting topic. While emulation source code for various CPU cores is easily available, I wanted to better understand how to interface the emulated CPU with my host machine. Therefore I decided to…
It’s been almost 18 months since I installed Fedora Core 12, so I decided to move onto Fedora 15. While the install went OK, I am not (yet) convinced it was worth the hassle. While it’s nice to pick up…
Another post, written by me, for the Riverbed Technology blog — this time about the value of Alpha and Beta testing. Software developers, such as myself, can get very involved with a single part of the new software on which…
I recently wrote a entry for the Riverbed Technology blog, describing an interesting collaborative development experience I had with the AWS EC2 Cloud. You can read it here.
I came to Django development from much lower-level development — embedded software, device drivers, and system software. What has impressed me most about Django (and python in general) is the manner in which it guides you to do the right…
I really like having inline source when using gdb. Code Complete, by Steve Mcconnell has an entire chapter explaining how you should proactively step through all code you write — and not just when you’re actively debugging an issue. Having…
expect is a tool built using Tcl which allows you to automate many tasks that would otherwise mean tedious repetition at the command line. While many tools come with a command line interface, they don’t lend themselves well to scripting…
After a good experience with Fedora Core 8, and a reasonable experience with Fedora Core 11, I decided to install Fedora Core 12 on my Chembook laptop. In summary, while FC8 and FC11 worked out of the box, FC12 failed…
Valgrind comprises a bunch of very useful tools for detecting problems with your programs. I first came across it a couple of years back and find it to be excellent. In particular I use its memory profiler, which helps you…
I cannot praise the revision-control tool git highly enough, and often use it as a buffer between SVN and me. Much of my professional work flow involves fixing a bug here, fixing a bug there — lots and lots of…
A colleague at work gave me the idea of storing metadata for each photo on my brother’s site inside its EXIF data. I liked this idea as I originally thought I would need another text file on disk, which described…
I am a Yahoo! Mail Plus subscriber and recently noticed that my outbound e-mail rewrote my name as Philip O'Toole. Seemingly it had been like this for weeks, but it only caught my attention when I sent an e-mail to…
I got around to installing Yellow Dog 6.1 using a DVD of the full distro. The installation went OK, and the installer fired up in graphical mode. However it proceeded to create the swap partition almost immediately because of low-memory…
In between bouts of Wipeout HD, I net-installed english-language 64-bit PowerPC Fedora Core 12 on my 80GB PS3. Installation with PetitBoot didn’t present any problems, though audio didn’t seem to work. However FC12 is quite slow on my PS3, so…