Holly Cummins
Red Hatter, Java Champion, occasional maker and regular speaker.
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Faster, greener, and happier- why Quarkus should be your next tech stack
Java never went away, but it’s having a renaissance. After some initial teething pains on the cloud (too big, too slow, too hard to…
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What is cloud native and how can it generate business value?
Knowing what cloud native is and where it benefits enterprise operations is essential for competitive cloud development
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Will Generative AI Kill Developer Jobs?
Large language models are astonishingly good at producing large volumes of code quickly. That’s also, sort of, what I do for a living…
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The future of development: Are our jobs getting harder or easier?
In the early days of computing, software developers had to encode their programs on punch cards, and carry the bits around by hand. By the…
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Faster, greener, and happier- why Quarkus should be your next tech stack
Java never went away, but it’s having a renaissance. After some initial teething pains on the cloud (too big, too slow, too hard to…
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LCC 307 - Interview sur la passion, la créativité et le fun sur le long terme avec Holly Cummins et Mark Jane
Enregistré le 27 février 2024
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Is Efficiency A Good Thing? Part II: All the Things That Can Go Wrong
In part I of this blog, I discussed what efficiency even is, and explored the question of whether we’re any good at it. Although in some…
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Is Efficiency A Good Thing? Part I: What is Efficiency, and Are We Any Good At It?
This talk is based on a keynote I presented at Tech.Rocks Summit. I’m grateful to the organisers for suggesting the topic. Is efficiency a…
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Tame Microservices with Contract Testing
Every time you change one microservice, the others break. But you had unit tests! What’s going on? Unit tests aren’t enough to give system…
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Six things we learned implementing Rockstar on Quarkus
Let’s run Rockstar programs on Quarkus! What could possibly go wrong? Rockstar is an example of an “esoteric language,” designed to be…
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The future of development: Are our jobs getting harder or easier?
In the early days of computing, software developers had to encode their programs on punch cards, and carry the bits around by hand. By the…
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears – The World of Java Optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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Taming Microservices with Contract Testing
Every time you change one microservice, the others break. But you had unit tests! What’s going on? Unit tests aren’t enough to give system…
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Is efficiency a good thing?
We live in a golden age of efficiency. Our modern cloud native applications have tiny footprints. Our infrastructure is now code. Everything…
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The AI skills gap is becoming incredibly troubling for companies everywhere
The solution isn’t so clear, report claims
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Faster, greener, and happier- why Quarkus should be your next tech stack
Java never went away, but it’s having a renaissance. After some initial teething pains on the cloud (too big, too slow, too hard to…
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Cloud Native Users Struggle to Achieve Benefits, Report Says
Of those organizations that have “gone cloud native,” 95% said that challenges are keeping them from seeing the full benefits, in a new…
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Quarkus Unveiled: Efficiency & Green Impact • Holly Cummins & Charles Humble • GOTO 2023
This interview was recorded at GOTO Aarhus for GOTO Unscripted. #GOTOcon #GOTOunscripted #GOTOaar http://gotopia.tech Read the full…
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Spécial Tech.Rocks Summit 2023 - Holly CUMMINS (Red Hat) et Philippe ENSARGUET (Orange) - #S05EP31
🎤 Dans cette nouvelle mini-série dédiée à notre Summit qui se tient les 7 et 8 décembre prochains en hybride, nous avons aujourd’hui le…
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The necessary death of software systems
Sometimes, death is a feature, not a defect It’s Hallowe’en! Let’s talk about mortality, death gods, and zombies. I know, I know, you…
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The Vroom Model, or Why Naming is The Hardest Problem In Computer Science
TL;DR If you’re looking for the talk where I describe the Vroom Model, the best source is this GOTO Aarhus talk. You might also like to…
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Expert Talk: The Current State of Software Engineering • Jez Humble & Holly Cummins • GOTO 2023
This interview was recorded at GOTO Aarhus for GOTO Unscripted. #GOTOcon #GOTOunscripted #GOTOaarhttp://gotopia.techRead the full…
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The future of development: Are our jobs getting harder or easier?
In the early days of computing, software developers had to encode their programs on punch cards, and carry the bits around by hand. By the…
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8 Talk Title Mistakes We've All Made
Why crafting a good presentation title is annoyingly important, and annoyingly hard I hate choosing titles for my talks. Titles have to be…
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Creating Custom QR Codes
Last week, I was at Devoxx Belgium. It was great, and I learned loads. I also have a big list of talks to go look up later. Some talks I…
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears – The World of Java Optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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So, you want to speak at conferences
Colleagues who’ve noticed that I occasionally abandon my day-job duties and gallivant around at conferences sometimes ask me for conference…
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Where Can I Get Pictures for Talks?
Should your talk have images? Yes! Lots! Before going further, stop reading this and go read the Noun Project primer on visual design for…
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Pact Contract Testing for Quarkus
Every time you change one microservice, others break. But you had unit tests! What’s going on? Unfortunately, unit tests aren’t enough to…
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Tame Microservices with Contract Testing
Every time you change one microservice, the others break. But you had unit tests! What’s going on? Unit tests aren’t enough to give system…
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How to avoid common pitfalls with modern microservices testing
Have you ever wondered why your microservices break in production after all the tests have passed during CI/CD? Have you ever wondered if…
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Faster, greener, and happier- why Quarkus should be your next tech stack
Java never went away, but it’s having a renaissance. After some initial teething pains on the cloud (too big, too slow, too hard to…
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Cloud Native Development With Quarkus (masterclass)
Cloud native development means running on the cloud (obviously), releasing on a rapid cadence, and automated testing, so that you have the…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The cloud is just someone else’s data center, but it has fundamentally changed how we design software and what we expect from our platforms…
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These Five Tricks Can Make Your Apps Greener, Cheaper, & Nicer
The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping? What’s…
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Uh, Does This Thing Actually Work? Modern Microservices Testing
To realise the promise of microservices, individual services must be independently deployable, and they should be deployed often. But that’s…
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Quarkus and Contract Tests with Holly Cummins
Our guest today is Holly Cummins, a Java Champion, developer, author, and a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat working on Quarkus…
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Redis, Quarkus, OpenShift From Cache to Modern Apps at Scale
Redis, Kubernetes OpenShift, and the Quarkus Java stack is a powerful combo for deploying highly available, clustered databases at scale.
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Cloud Native Development With Quarkus (masterclass)
Cloud native development means running on the cloud (obviously), releasing on a rapid cadence, and automated testing, so that you have the…
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These Five Tricks Can Make Your Apps Greener, Cheaper, & Nicer
The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping? What’s…
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Quarkus 3 Technical Spotlight: Pact contract testing with Holly Cummins
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Using Pact and Quarkus to Tame Microservices Testing
In a microservices architecture, making sure each microservices works is (relatively) easy. The microservices are usually small, and easy to…
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Holly Cummins at Devoxx UK: How Would the Business Benefit from Your Greener Java Application?
At her Devoxx UK presentation, Holly Cummins, senior software principal engineer at Redhat, presented approaches that could make Java…
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How to avoid common pitfalls with modern microservices testing
Have you ever wondered why your microservices break in production after all the tests have passed during CI/CD? Have you ever wondered if…
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Writing Greener Java Applications
The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping? What’s…
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Contract testing with Pact and Quarkus
Every time you change one microservice, the others break. But you had unit tests! What’s going on? Unit tests aren’t enough to give system…
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Wicked Good Development Episode 32: Java Queens at Devnexus 2023
Kadi Grigg and Theresa Mammarella sit down for a conversation with Erin Schnabel, Emily Jiang, Mary Gygleski, and Holly Cummins at Devnexus…
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Resources for Writing Quarkus Extensions
I’m sometimes asked for a list of resources for writing Quarkus extensions. It’s a topic I’ve been meaning to write more about, but I haven…
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Writing Greener Java Applications
The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping? What’s…
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Redis: du cache à la time series!
Redis est devenu extrêmement populaire. Redis est souvent utilisé comme solution de cache ou pour stocker les sessions utilisateurs. Mais…
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How to avoid common pitfalls with modern microservices testing
Have you ever wondered why your microservices break in production after all the tests have passed during CI/CD? Have you ever wondered if…
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Happy Path podcast
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Duke's Corner podcast
In this conversation Oracle’s Jim Grisanzio talks with Holly Cummins about her passion for being “in the engine room of Java” in that she’s…
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Why Cloud Zombies Are Destroying the Planet and How You Can Stop Them
At QCon London, Holly Cummins, Quarkus Senior Principal Software Engineer at RedHat, talked about how utilization and elasticity relate to…
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Why Cloud Zombies Are Destroying the Planet and How You Can Stop Them
Wait, zombies? Really? Zombies are servers which aren’t doing useful work. They’re everywhere, costing money, eating electricity, and…
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Expert Talk: War Stories from Moving to the Cloud • Holly Cummins & Lorna Jane Mitchell • GOTO 2022
This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted at GOTO Copenhagen. #GOTOcon #GOTOunscripted #GOTOcphhttp://gotopia.techRead the full…
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Why Your Desk is the Worst Place to Work, and Other Life Lessons from a Lazy Developer
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Quarkus Insights #117: Contract Testing with Pact and Quarkus
Holly Cummins discusses how contract tests combine the lightness of unit tests with the confidence of integration tests, and should be part…
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Pecha Kucha: Making IT Greener
What’s a Pecha Kucha? It’s a talk format of 20 slides, displayed for 20 seconds each. The slides auto-advance, so the whole talk lasts…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The cloud is just someone else’s data center, but it has fundamentally changed how we design software and what we expect from our platforms…
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Writing Greener Java Applications
The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping? What’s…
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Sustainable Software and Systems: Lightswitch Ops for the Triple Win - A RedMonk Conversation
In this video I talk to Red Hat’s Holly Cummins about sustainability, the imperatives for greener software, and how to achieve it with…
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Modern Java runtimes: No Regrets energy efficiency with Quarkus and GraalVM - A Redmonk Conversation
In this video we talk to Red Hat’s Holly Cummins about modern Java runtimes and how they can make your software and systems more efficient…
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Sustainable software and systems, efficiency and the triple win. Policy, progress, and modern Java runtimes like Quarkus.
The imperative for more sustainable and power efficient applications and systems is stronger than ever. Not only is the green agenda…
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The Cloud Should be Fun … and if not, you're probably doing it wrong
Some days, everything seem like it’s hard, and getting harder. Credentials, and configurations, and audits, and provisioning, and checklists…
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Nine Ways To Fail at Cloud Native
Cloud native – the perfect recipe for innovation, adaptability, and engineering excellence. Right? Well, when it goes right. When it goes…
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears – The World of Java Optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Expert Talk: Cloud Chaos & How Contract Tests Can Help • Holly Cummins & Kevlin Henney • GOTO 2022
This interview was recorded at GOTO Amsterdam 2022 for GOTO Unscripted. #GOTOcon #GOTOunscripted #GOTOams
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How to write greener Java applications
There is a need to reduce the impact of the software industry on the environment. Read to discover more about how Quarkus reduces carbon…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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Writing Greener Java Applications
The code we write has a climate impact. But how big is that impact? How do we measure it? How do we reduce it? Is the cloud helping? What’s…
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The Sad Case of the Tech T-Shirt (Fashion and Programming, part ii)
A year or two ago, I wrote about the connection between fashion and programming. For reasons I don’t totally understand, it’s my second most…
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Innovation Anti-patterns
In a world where there’s always too much to do and too little time, how can organisations make time to innovate? (Spoiler: siloes probably…
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears – The World of Java Optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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How to avoid common pitfalls with modern microservices testing
Have you ever wondered why your microservices break in production after all the tests have passed during CI/CD? Have you ever wondered if…
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Cloud is about culture, containers, and impact - not data centres
Talk for Adyen Tech Event 2022.
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Cloud Native Development With Quarkus (masterclass)
Cloud native development means running on the cloud (obviously), releasing on a rapid cadence, and automated testing, so that you have the…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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Expert Talk: Cloud Chaos & How Contract Tests Can Help • Holly Cummins & Kevlin Henney • GOTO 2022
This interview was recorded at GOTO Amsterdam 2022 for GOTO Unscripted. #GOTOcon #GOTOunscripted #GOTOams https://gotopia.tech Read the full…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The cloud is just someone else’s data center, but it has fundamentally changed how we design software and what we expect from our platforms…
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Innovation Anti-patterns: Bonkers Beans and Magic Numbers
The innovation fizzle, the fauxnnovation, the maximal viable product. Holly’s seen them all. In a world where there’s always too much to do…
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Refactor This Podcast - vFunction
Refactor This by vFunction brings the world of app modernization into the spotlight through friendly conversations with industry luminaries.
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Uh, Does This Thing Actually Work? Modern Microservices Testing
To realise the promise of microservices, individual services must be independently deployable, and they should be deployed often. But that’s…
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears – The World of Java Optimisation
[Charity conference for Ukraine] Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases…
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Hackerstations: clean and minimalistic setup in London, UK
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Quarkus Insights #98: Using Minecraft as an Observability client
In Quarkus Insights Ep.98 Holly Cummins joins the team to discuss her Quarkus observability demo that uses Minecraft as a client.
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Around IT in 256 seconds #81: Quarkus: supersonic, subatomic Java
Author: Holly Cummins
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Amigas: programar software no es más difícil que aprender idiomas
Qué hace para ganarse la vida? Explíquenoslo a mi abuelo y a mí. Soy ingeniera de programación informática en Quarkus. Habrá oído hablar del…
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Why You Can't Buy Cloud Native
The virtual shelves are filled to bursting with cloud native technologies; containers, runtimes, CI pipelines, observability tools. The more…
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Stackd 59: Holly Cummins, Quarkus, IBM, and the Garage
Kito, Danno, and Josh welcome special guest Holly Cummins, Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Quarkus team at Red Hat and fellow Java…
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Getting Into and Testing Microservices
Senior Principal Software Engineer Holly Cummins teaches us about microservice architecture and how to test it.
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mcd: the missing shell command
Eight years ago, my MacBook suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure. Of course, I was no fool. I had everything backed up to our…
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How to draw when you can’t draw, part ii: no really, how to draw
In part i, I explained why I started drawing despite not having much artistic talent. Practice has helped me move from ‘totally inept’ to…
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How to draw when you can’t draw, part i: a growth mindset story
I’ve never been particularly artistic. As a kid, like all young children, I liked drawing. At some point, probably once I started having art…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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Why You Can't Buy Cloud Native
The virtual shelves are filled to bursting with cloud native technologies; containers, runtimes, CI pipelines, observability tools. The more…
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Why you're missing out if you're not making Quarkus extensions
Do I need an extension? And how do I write it? Extensions are a great way of enabling your favourite library to fully take advantage of…
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Innovation Anti-patterns: Bonkers Beans and Magic Numbers
The innovation fizzle, the fauxnnovation, the maximal viable product. Holly’s seen them all. In a world where there’s always too much to do…
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Why You Can't Buy Cloud Native
The virtual shelves are filled to bursting with cloud native technologies; containers, runtimes, CI pipelines, observability tools. The more…
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears – The World of Java Optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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Present and Future of the Microservice Architecture
The panelists reflect on various microservices topics.
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The Future of Java
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Seven Ways to Fail at Microservices with Holly Cummins
Implementing microservices is really challenging, and there are many ways to fail. Holly Cummins has identified seven ways to fail at…
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SRE: The Good, The Bad, and the Ouch
SRE sounds like a plan with no drawbacks … but making it work in practice can be trickier than the theory says. This talk shares stories of…
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Could new software tools make anyone a programmer?
The development of low-code and no-code systems makes it far easier to create new software, with benefits for both amateurs and…
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tradeoffs, bad science, and polar bears: the world of java optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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A Farewell to IBMs
Twenty one years ago I was heading into the Hampshire countryside for a job interview. I was a little graduate student, exploring…
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マイクロサービスに失敗する7つの方法
昨年 11 月の QCon Plus、私は、マイクロサービスがうまくいかない理由について講演しました。取り上げた問題は私の経験に基づくものであると同時に、残念なことに、現場で何度も目にするものでもあります。
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简历驱动开发？微服务中的几种失败路径_文化
简历驱动开发？微服务中的几种失败路径本文要点：微服务是一种手段而非目标分布式并不能确保解耦性契约测试在所有微服务架构中都是重要组成部分前
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GitOps in Regulated Industries Webinar
Ian Miell, Daniel Jones, Holly Cummins, and Jamie Dobson discuss the rewards and challenges of GitOps in regulated industries.
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7 Façons D'échouer Dans Les Microservices
Lors de QCon Plus en novembre dernier, j’ai présenté certaines des façons dont les microservices peuvent mal tourner. Ces problèmes sont…
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7 Ways to Fail at Microservices
At QCon Plus last November, I presented some of the ways microservices can go wrong. These problems are based on my experience – which…
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Is your innovation funnel an innovation fizzle?
World-changing ideas don’t seem normal and sensible – at first. They usally teeter somewhere between ‘impossible’ and ‘idiotic’. Take IBM’s…
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Why Your Innovation Team May Be Stifling Innovation, and Other Strategy Lessons From Peas
Innovation is great. I think so, I’m sure you think so, and I suspect we all think so. Innovation is good for business, and it’s good for us…
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(Developer) Joy to the World
I love this time of year. There are so many celebrations, both new (Kwanzaa) and ancient (Winter Solstice). My friends’ timelines become a…
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What How Why - Quantum explained
IBM is working with businesses embracing new challenges and part of this investment is focused on high quality STEM education.
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Bonkers Beans and Magic Numbers: Innovation in a Changing World
Where do ideas come from? How to make time to innovate Have you got an innovation funnel or an innovation fizzle? How to design your MVP…
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How this site is built
A long time ago, I used to write semi-regularly on Blogger. But then I stopped. What was up? Was it that I wasn’t making time to write? Was…
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Why You Can’t Buy Cloud Native
The virtual shelves are filled to bursting with cloud native technologies; containers, runtimes, CI pipelines, observability tools. The more…
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A Journey to Automation from Observability to Sustainability
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Why I never want to build another MVP
Holly Cummins, Innovation Leader at IBM, discusses the benefits and challenges of building minimum viable products (MVPs).
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7 ways to fail at microservices
We all know the promise of microservices - organisational, agility, decoupling, pizza lunches, autonomy, fewer meetings. Some organisations…
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SRE: The Good, The Bad, and the Ouch
SRE sounds like a plan with no drawbacks … but making it work in practice can be trickier than the theory says. This talk shares stories of…
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Our Digital Futures
This presentation was given to year 7 - 10s as part of an Ada Lovelace digital + tech day.
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The Adventurer’s Guide To Breaking Production
This was a keynote commissioned for a private client conference.
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Tradeoffs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears - The World of Java Optimisation
Welcome to the Java optimisation jungle. Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? It turns out, in most cases, we need to first work out…
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Software Engineering Unlocked: Driving innovation and engineering practices
In this episode, I talk to Dr. Holly Cummins. Holly was the development practice lead for IBM Garage for Cloud, before becoming an…
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Nine ways to fail at cloud native and how to avoid them
Cloud native is a perfect recipe for innovation, adaptability, and engineering excellence … when it goes right. Dr. Holly Cummins outlines…
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Nine Ways To Fail at Cloud Native
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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Trade-Offs, Bad Science, and Polar Bears—The World of Java Optimization
Why can’t we “just make it go faster”? First we need to work out “Faster for whom?” and “Why?”…and “What even is faster?” Holly Cummins…
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DevOps and Cloud InfoQ Trends Report - July 2021
This article summarizes how we see the “cloud computing and DevOps” space in 2021.
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WTF is Cloud Native Quantum?
Quantum computers represent an extraordinary feat of engineering. Dr Holly Cummins explains their potential, how they work, why they are…
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Cloud Tech Thursdays: How To Love Kubernetes and Not Wreck The Planet
Cloud Tech Thursday explores the full modern open source cloud stack, from hardware to serverless. Learn about new ideas, projects, and…
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in the IBM Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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In the Open with Luke and Joe | Holly Cummins | Innovation Leader (a podcast, but with pictures)
Please join us for a conversation with IBM Innovation Leader Holly Cummins.
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in the IBM Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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How To Love Kubernetes and Not Wreck The Planet
The past five years have been the warmest since records began. Human activity, including the IT industry, is driving worrying climate change…
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WTF Does Tech Have to Do With the Planet?
Our industry consumes around 1% or 2% of the world’s energy. If you consider the broader IT industry, our energy usage is higher still.
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The InfoQ Podcast: Software Architecture and Design InfoQ Trends Report—April 2021
An overview of how the InfoQ editorial team sees the Software Architecture and Design topic evolving in 2021, with a focus on what…
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Software Architecture and Design InfoQ Trends Report—April 2021
An overview of how the InfoQ editorial team sees the Software Architecture and Design topic evolving in 2021, with a focus on what…
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Serverless doesn't have servers, except when it does
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. — Phil Karlton…
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The Cloud Should Be Fun - and If It’s Not You’re Probably Doing It Wrong
Is the cloud a fun place? Does the question even make sense? Is fun at work possible? As a consultant with the IBM Garage, Holly has seen…
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When TDD gets hard
Test-driven development (TDD) is a core IBM Garage practice. It provides the foundation for the other practices such as continuous delivery…
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Scaling your enterprise innovation with start-up speed
Practical strategies to accelerate the delivery of your future growth initiatives A collaborative chat between Sabine VanderLinden – CEO…
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Cloud-Native Is about Culture, Not Containers
At QCon London last year, Holly Cummins, innovation leader in IBM Corporate Strategy provided a session titled: Cloud-Native is about…
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What do fashion and programming have to do with one another?
Last night I dreamt that Roger Daltry’s wife told me to write about fashion and programming. We were in a small skate-punk shop. It was…
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IBM Developer Lead: What Software Does Next
Working to try and anticipate what comes next, how to harness current programming methodologies and build software for tomorrow and the day…
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Coronavirus: Managing software development during lockdown
The Computer Weekly Developer Network (CWDN) examines the impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus on the software application development…
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The great microphone face-off, or 'how I spent lots of money in 2020'
The past year saw an unprecedented flourishing of “photos of home offices,” “recommendation threads for microphones,” and “microphone review…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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Programming in the pandemic: personal insights & professional process - CW Developer Network
The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 on the software application development community. With only a…
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Remote working: 10 lessons leaders should apply in 2021
In 2019, the Enterprisers Project made a number of end-of-year predictions: One of them was that remote work would increase in 2020. It did…
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No, Really, Cloud Native Is About Culture, Not Containers
For most of 2019 and 2020, I felt uneasy and slightly guilty about the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s definition of ‘Cloud Native’. The…
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Want to Save the World? Start by Cutting Your Cloud Costs
How the IT sector can minimize the damage it does to the earth’s climate.
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97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know
If you create, manage, operate, or configure systems running in the cloud, you’re a cloud engineer—even if you work as a system…
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WTF is Culture In Cloud Native
In this WTFinar, Holly Cummins, Worldwide Development Leader at IBM Garage, discussed these and other pressing questions (WTFs and others…
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WTF is Cloud Native Culture (Container Solutions WTFinar)
It’s really easy to spin up a project in the cloud these days. So easy, millions of abandoned apps are actually contributing to global…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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The Cloud Should Be Fun - and If It’s Not You’re Probably Doing It Wrong
Is the cloud a fun place? Does the question even make sense? Is fun at work possible? As a consultant with the IBM Garage, Holly has seen…
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How to Love Kubernetes and Not Wreck The Planet Part I: Elasticity and Utilization
I gave a keynote at KubeCon Europe. Our community should be thinking about climate change and how kubernetes impacts the climate when it is…
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How to Love Kubernetes and Not Wreck The Planet Part II: Revenge of the Zombies
What are the climate impacts of our technology habits? Part I of this blog discusses the importance of multi-tenancy, utilisation, and…
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How to work in Tech and Not Wreck The Planet
The world is changing. The past five years have been the warmest since records began. Human activity, including the IT industry, is driving…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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Stack Overflow Podcast 283: Cleaning up the cloud to help fight climate change
It’s really easy to spin up a project in the cloud these days. So easy, millions of abandoned apps are actually contributing to global…
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Nine Ways To Fail at Cloud Native
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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Blood-curdling tales of microservices misadventure, devops dread, and grisly governance
Cloud native – the perfect recipe for innovation, adaptability, and engineering excellence. Right? Well, when it goes right. When it goes…
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Cloud Chaos and Microservices Mayhem
The way we use Java has changed. Applets - or any browser-side Java - are a long, long, time ago. Java moved to the back end, and stayed…
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How - and why - to modernize your scruffy old Java applications
Once upon a time, that application was great - it was built using the latest technology, it was easy to understand, users loved it. Now, not…
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KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2020 Keynote Summary
The annual KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event ran as a virtual conference in August. Key takeaways included: there is an increasing…
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How to Love K8s and Not Wreck The Planet
The past five years have been the warmest since records began. Human activity, including the IT industry, is driving worrying climate change…
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People, Planet, Clouds
The world is changing. The cloud gives us dazzling computational possibilities, and … potentially uses a lot of energy. As climate change…
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Using Lease Resources to Manage Concurrency in Tekton Builds
I’ve recently started using Tekton as my main build system. In combination with Argo CD for GitOps management of the pipeline scripts, it…
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How to Become an IBM Garage Developer
The IBM Garage is a highly dynamic, multi-disciplinary consulting practice working with clients and partners of any size across all…
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The Climate Service + IBM Garage: Weathering Disruption to Deliver Results
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97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know
If you want to push your Java skills to the next level, this book provides expert advice from Java leaders and practitioners. You’ll be…
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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Nine Ways to Fail At Cloud Native
Cloud native is the perfect recipe for innovation, adaptability and engineering excellence – when it goes right. When it’s not right, it can…
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仕事場における楽しさの重要性
仕事において笑顔になることや、笑ってしまうことはチームの団結、生産性、組織のパフォーマンスを証明してくれる。楽しさは強制できるものではないが、促進できるものであると Holly Cummins 氏は FlowCon France 201…
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Garbage Collection Is Your Friend
Poor old garbage collection. One of the unsung heroes of Java, often blamed, rarely praised. Before Java made garbage collection mainstream…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace (Interview)
Things at work that make us smile or laugh can improve team cohesion, productivity and organisational performance. Fun can’t be forced, but…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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People, Planet, Clouds
The world is changing. The cloud gives us dazzling computational possibilities, and … potentially uses a lot of energy. As climate change…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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Nine Ways To Fail at Cloud Native
Cloud native – the perfect recipe for innovation, adaptability, and engineering excellence. Right? Well, when it goes right. When it goes…
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Java Should Feel Fun
I started my Java career using J2EE 1.2. I had questions: Why were there four classes and hundreds of lines of generated code for each bean…
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Creativity in the Age of Quantum Computing
It’s very unlikely that we are going to have quantum computers at home anytime soon (if that ever happens) but this type of computation…
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Tales From The DevOps Transformation Trenches
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The Future of Work is (More) Fun - Part 1 - IBM UK Blog
The evidence that fun boosts productivity is compelling. A happy work environment means fewer sick days, harder work, and greater…
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The Future of Work is (More) Fun - Part 2 - IBM UK Blog
Automation eliminates toil When the printing press was invented, it almost immediately eliminated the arduous practice of copying books by…
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The importance of fun in the workplace
A shorter version of https://www.slideshare.net/HollyCummins/software-developers-guide-to-fun-in-the-workplace-euphoria-despite-the-despair…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Cats, Qubits, and Clouds - The Quantum Future
The classical computer on your lap or housed in your data centre manipulates data represented with a binary encoding. Quantum computers are…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Cats, Qubits, and Clouds - The Quantum Future
The classical computer on your lap or housed in your data centre manipulates data represented with a binary encoding. Quantum computers are…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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The Hero's Journey to Cloud: Why Star Wars, Prometheus, and Cloud Are All Interconnected
In the Cloud Garage, we see some patterns over and over again—an organisation wants to achieve an improvement and realises moving to cloud…
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The story of designsparkmarketplace.com
The IBM Cloud Garage worked with RS Components to create designsparkmarketplace.com, a peer to peer maker marketplace. This is the story of…
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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The Importance of Fun in the Workplace
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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What Zebrafish Can Teach Us About Healthy Workspaces
A core part of the IBM Cloud Garage practices is a “sustainable pace.”
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Cloud Native is about Culture, not Containers
As a developer in IBM’s Cloud Garage, Holly Cummins works with customers who are trying to shift their businesses to the cloud, and to cloud…
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Cats, Qubits, and Clouds - The Quantum Future
The classical computer on your lap or housed in your data centre manipulates data represented with a binary encoding. Quantum computers are…
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Gatos, Qubits e Teletransporte: O estranho mundo dos algoritmos quânticos (Parte 3)
Os mesmos fatores que tornam a teoria quântica tão surpreendente também tornam os computadores quânticos em algo muito difícil para ser…
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Gatos, Qubits e Teletransporte: O estranho mundo da computação quântica (Parte 1)
Há vinte anos, computadores quânticos eram puramente teóricos e existiam apenas em quadros brancos e em trabalhos acadêmicos. Agora, os…
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猫、量子位和远距传动：令人匪夷所思的量子计算世界（第三部分）_语言
猫、量子位和远距传动：令人匪夷所思的量子计算世界（第三部分）关键要点让量子理论显得如此惊人的因素同样也让得量子计算机在实践中很难实现：量子现象并未在日常生活中表
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猫、量子位和远距传动：令人匪夷所思的量子计算世界（第二部分）_语言
猫、量子位和远距传动：令人匪夷所思的量子计算世界（第二部分）关键要点远距传动是最先被描述的量子信息处理过程之一。它使用纠缠在瞬间远距离传输信息，但它不能用于传送
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Cats, Qubits, and Teleportation: The Spooky World of Quantum Computation Applications (Part 3)
The same factors which make quantum theory so startling also make quantum computers very difficult to implement in practice. This article…
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猫、量子位和远距传动：令人匪夷所思的量子计算世界（第一部分）_语言
猫、量子位和远距传动：令人匪夷所思的量子计算世界（第一部分）关键要点二十年前，量子计算机还只处在理论阶段，只存在于白板和学术论文中。而现在，量子计算机已经在云端
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Cats, Qubits, and Teleportation: The Spooky World of Quantum Algorithms (Part 2)
The relationship between complexity theory, quantum algorithms and machine learning is becoming increasingly important. This article…
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Cats, Qubits, and Teleportation: The Spooky World of Quantum Computation (Part 1)
Twenty years ago, quantum computers were purely theoretical, and existed only on whiteboards and in academic papers. Now, quantum computers…
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Cloud Surprises for the Java Developer
Many businesses are moving to the cloud. This journey to the cloud is in fact a quest, complete with a hero (us!), a call to action, a…
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The importance of fun in the workplace
One of the key elements of the Cloud Garage Method is Culture. That single word encompasses a whole range of practices about how we manage…
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Working out how much a project will cost
When customers visit the IBM Cloud Garage to discuss a potential project, one of the most frequently asked questions is “how much is my…
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Chatbot Best Practices
One of the most frequent questions clients ask when visiting a Cloud Garage is “Can you build us a chatbot?” This question is reflective of…
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So You Say You Want a Chatbot Revolution
Not so long ago, we interacted with websites by clicking buttons, and with people by talking to them. Those lines, however, are becoming…
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Software Developers Guide to Fun in the Workplace: Euphoria Despite the Despair
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Innovation Stories from the Bluemix Garage
Everyone’s talking about innovation, but how do you know if you’re actually doing it? What are the ingredients for successful innovation? In…
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Thinking Strategically About IoT
Cool? Useful? Disruptor? All of the above? IoT is having an impact on more and more industries. As the cost of instrumenting things and…
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Thomson creates travel search chatbot with IBM Watson
Travel search tool uses Watson’s natural language processing and speech-to-text capabilities.
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IBM Garage radically changes how you deliver tech-enabled innovation
How well do you know the Bluemix Garage? CTO Rachel Reinitz calls it “a collaborative environment to work as one team with clients to…
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Confessions of an Automation Addict
I’ve never seen a job I didn’t want to automate. Sometimes it’s worked out well, sometimes automation has turned a small nuisance into a big…
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Software Developers Guide to Fun in the Workplace: Euphoria Despite the Despair
An in-depth look at what makes software development a roller coaster where the highs of 0 compiler warnings are quickly cancelled out by the…
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Microservices: from dream to reality in an hour
Are microservices a wonder-pattern for rescuing intractably complex applications? Or are they just a restatement of the software engineering…
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Building Stuff for Fun and Profit - confessions from a life in code and cables
I love making stuff. I’m so happy that my job allows me to make stuff, and when I’m not at work, I’m making stuff anyway. Some of the stuff…
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Putting the 'Micro' Into Microservices With Raspberry Pi - DZone IoT
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The Cuddly Throwable Application Server
Computers are getting small enough and cheap enough that they’re almost disposable. It’s possible to sock computers away almost anywhere…
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How the Bluemix Garage is helping a blind athlete run marathons - solo
The Bluemix Garage London has written an application to guide a blind-runner on an ultra-marathon in the desert, using a GPS route and beeps…
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This blind man is running a 155 mile ultra-marathon with the help of an IBM app
Simon Wheatcroft is completely blind. But that’s not going to stop him running a 250 kilometer (155.3 mile) race in the Namibian desert.
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That’s not useless, it’s just … unusual
Talk presented at the London Java Community’s Mad Scientists event: http://mad-scientists.mybluemix.net. Innovation is the new currency of…
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Microservices: from dream to reality in forty five minutes
Are microservices a wonder-pattern for rescuing intractably complex applications? Or are they just a restatement of the software engineering…
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Confessions of an Automation Addict
I’ve never seen a job I didn’t want to automate. Sometimes it’s worked out well, sometimes automation has turned a small nuisance into a big…
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Microservices: from dream to reality in an hour
Are microservices a wonder-pattern for rescuing intractably complex applications? Or are they just a restatement of the software engineering…
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An Arduino, an Application, Server, and me - Adventures In and Out of the Cloud by Holly Cummins
Computers are getting smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper. It’s possible to sock computers away almost anywhere, and to connect…
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Confessions of an automation addict
I’ve never seen a job I didn’t want to automate. Sometimes it’s worked out well, sometimes automation has turned a small nuisance into a big…
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Microservices: Storm in a teacup, or teacups in a storm? - JAXenter
Somehow, the buzz around microservices has us believing that every single employee and enterprise must break up their monolith empires and…
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Confessions of an Automation Addict
I’ve never seen a job I didn’t want to automate. Sometimes it’s worked out well, sometimes automation has turned a small nuisance into a big…
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The Cuddly Throwable Application Server
Computers are getting small enough and cheap enough that they’re almost disposable. It’s possible to sock computers away almost anywhere…
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Interacting with headless computers (or "How to not keep losing your raspberry pi on the network")
I spend a fair amount of time playing with Raspberry Pis and other ARM-based boxes, like pcDuinos and Utilite. (If my boss is reading this…
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The Wearable Application Server and Other Adventures in Software Engineering
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The Lazy Developer’s Guide to Cloud Foundry
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The Lazy Developer’s Guide to Cloud Foundry
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The Wearable Application Server and Other Adventures in Software Engineering
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Enterprise OSGi in Action
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Enterprise OSGi In Action
Enterprise OSGI in Action is a hands-on guide for developers using OSGi to build the next generation of enterprise Java applications. By…
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OSGi vs Spaghetti - Part II, The Enterprise strikes back
Software engineering sometimes seems like a struggle against spaghetti. Without lots of care, modern projects risk becoming an unwieldy…
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The Wearable Application Server and Other Adventures in Software Engineering
Mobile technology has so far mostly been confined to the client side, for fairly obvious reasons - traditionally, clients are mobile, and…
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How to embed an application server into a hat
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Everything I know about software, I learnt from spaghetti bolognese
IBM’s Holly Cummins and ‘Diabolical Developer’ Martijn Verburg discuss ways of overcoming complexity in software development. None of of us…
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Java basics: converting a collection to a string
If you look up how to write a map or a list out as a string, you can find lots of complicated answers involving loops and even XMLEncoders…
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OSGi and the Enterprise - A match made in a … box?
The Enterprise OSGi specification provides a compelling programming model for creating modular, portable, and dynamic enterprise…
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Java performance - not so scary after all
No one likes slow applications, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start when trying to fix a performance problem. This talk will…
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Performance for the Performance-Shy
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Health Center 1.0 released
Last week was a big week for the Health Center team. Version 1.0 of the Health Center was released. Full installation instructions are…
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How to interpret a method profile
In a previous post, I described the general methodology I use to diagnose performance problems. Once an application has been identified as…
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How do you solve a performance problem?
I was talking to a friend today about a performance problem he was seeing, and he explained that he wasn’t entirely sure how to fix it…
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Java Performance
Devoxx University session with Kirk Pepperdine.
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Garbage collection flavours
In my previous post, I described the basic garbage collection algorithms. Within these basic categories, there are many variants, or…
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Garbage collection algorithms
Garbage collection has been the subject of much academic research . In particular, the volume of new techniques with various claimed…
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Garbage collection myths
I’ve been lucky enough in my work to learn a fair bit about garbage collection. One of the things I’ve discovered is how many myths and half…
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IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java™ - Health Center™ is now available
I’m part of a team in IBM’s Java Technology Centre which develops diagnostic tools, and we’ve just released a brand new tool. It’s called…
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Java Performance Tooling
The right tooling is essential part of any Java performance tuning effort. Tuning relies on accurate diagnoses of bottlenecks; tools allow…
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Java Performance - Myths, Mysteries, and Paradoxes
Java performance advice is easy to find; sometimes good performance advice is harder to find! This talk will explore popular performance…
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Java Performance Tooling
The right tooling is essential part of any Java performance tuning effort. Tuning relies on accurate diagnoses of bottlenecks; tools allow…
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Java Performance Tooling
The right tooling is essential part of any Java performance tuning effort. Tuning relies on accurate diagnoses of bottlenecks; tools allow…
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Interpreting GC Pauses
I’ve just got back from speaking at JavaZone in Oslo. I’ll post links to the presentation videos when they’re available. The feedback on my…
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Getting the most out of garbage collection
Garbage collection is an invisible but extremely helpful part of the Java language. Investing a bit of effort in understanding garbage…
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Six Myths and Paradoxes of Garbage Collection - MSc Thesis
This dissertation was written in 2007, so in tech terms, it can be considered quaintly antique - back when it was written, there was still a…
