Welcome to the first issue of Things I Found Interesting – an irregular series of links to, well, interesting content. Below are eleven articles and resources on various software-related topics, which I stumbled upon in the last several weeks.
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Tools
Pin exact dependency versions
Buckle up, for some of you this may be controversial, but maybe for some others – obvious. This is how to prevent a problem causing your application to out of the sudden stop behaving correctly, or, even more funny, stop behaving correctly only on one developer’s computer. We can solve this with one two simple tricks.
AWS
Three ways to create Amazon Athena tables
Here I show three ways to create Amazon Athena tables. More importantly, I show when to use which one (and when don’t) depending on the case, with comparison and tips, and a sample data flow architecture implementation. Also, I have a short rant over redundant AWS Glue features. All in a single article. Enjoy.
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Programming
Minimal safe Bash script template
Bash scripts. Almost anyone needs to write one sooner or later. Almost no one says “yeah, I love writing them”. And that’s why almost everyone is putting low attention while writing them.
I won’t try to make you a Bash expert (since I’m not a one either), but I will show you a minimal template that will make your scripts safer. You don’t need to thank me, your future self will thank you.
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AWS
Auto-generated website environment parameters
There are multiple articles on how to host a static website or Single Page Application (SPA) on AWS. But they rarely go into the topic of setting up the environment variables for the frontend application.
Let’s look beyond the part where most tutorials end – with the website deployed, how to parametrize it to call correct backend APIs and resources. We will look at the usual deployment process and improve it. In the end, the application will automatically reference the services from its own environment, both when deployed and locally.
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AWS Tools
My AWS toolbox – tools, plugins and applications
Developers, like all specialists, discover and collect their favorite tools over time. Having a good, proven set of tools makes the work easier and more pleasant. We can focus on getting the job done. Sometimes eliminating minor inconveniences or improving a small element of everyday activity makes the greatest impact on the comfort of work.
It’s not always easy to find the best tools. There is a wide choice. More importantly, everyone has different habits and preferences. The best way is to test them yourself and see what suits you.
To help a little bit with that, here I present a collection of my AWS tools. These are applications, plugins, and extensions that I use in my daily work with AWS.
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AWS
Serverless Swagger UI for API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway provides an option to export the API schema as an OpenAPI Specification. With it, we can display our REST API as an interactive website. But we do not get a public URL to that specification file which we could use as a source for an interactive page like Swagger. Instead, we can only get the file from the AWS Console, CLI, or SDK.
This is why we need to do a few additional steps to get our beautiful documentation working. As a result, we will get a fully customizable website, with easy to implement access protection. And, maybe the most important, it will be always up-to-date, with no work required after changes in the API Gateway endpoints.
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Tools
Command line arguments anatomy explained with examples
Many of the scripts and executables allow providing some command line arguments. They may be required or optional. There are flags, that are just switches changing command behavior. There are, of course, arguments with values. And there are so-called positional arguments – parameters given in some order without any extra indications.
In this post, I analyze the anatomy of CLI arguments and point out how to read them in our own application.
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Tools
Speed up everyday work with handy Git aliases
Git allows us to define aliases, which are basically our own commands we can use. They may be just a calls for other commands with parameters, or even shell scripts. Possibilities are unlimited.
Do you ever google for this Git command you forgot every time? Often execute several commands one by one, every time in the same combination for a final effect? Or saw a really nice Git command on the internet, but with way too more flags to use it in a real-life? Git aliases are the solution.
Here I will show Git aliases that I use in everyday work. With
Tools
Simpler Git branch first push with no more errors
How many times did you try to make git push for a