Detailed Notes
In the fast-paced world of technology, staying relevant means continually adapting to new tools and paradigms. One of the most transformative shifts in recent years has been the rise of cloud computing. In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast, hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche explore how cultivating smart cloud development habits can help you stay ahead in an ever-evolving industry.
Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting your journey, embracing cloud technologies can enhance your skills, expand your capabilities, and open doors to exciting opportunities. From practical tips on leveraging free-tier cloud services to insights on earning valuable certifications, this discussion is packed with actionable advice to help you master the cloud and boost your career.
Let’s dive in and explore how to build the habits that will make cloud technologies a cornerstone of your development journey.
Read more... https://develpreneur.com/cloud-development-habits-how-to-stay-ahead-in-tech/
*Challenge*
To solidify the lessons from this episode, Rob challenges listeners to take action:
1. Sign up for a cloud provider and explore its offerings. 2. Set up a simple project, such as deploying a virtual server or experimenting with APIs. 3. If certifications interest you, research beginner-friendly options and set a goal to achieve one.
*Additional Resources*
* Free Editors to Help With Web Development (https://develpreneur.com/free-editors-web-development/) * AWS Management Tools (https://develpreneur.com/aws-management-tools/) * Google Cloud Platform: Using the platform (https://develpreneur.com/understanding-google-cloud-platform/) * Building a Portable Development Environment That is OS-agnostic (https://develpreneur.com/building-a-portable-development-environment-that-is-os-agnostic/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] uh hello everybody we're back and we're recording again hopefully it wasn't too long before this that I said that um oh cloud services let's talk we're going to talk some Cloud this time around um this will be a fun one because spent a lot of time in this world in the last few years and I'm G to get like shifted over here a little bit and just getting into that and the habits of it because I think that's I've got a lot of self-serving kind of little things we can throw out there to like try to try to get some people back to some old episodes and such I don't even remember what seasons they were but um that'll be in the show notes we'll say was a couple years ago since we did the last uh I think video presentation so that might not be a bad one to do for next year well that could be um well because we've had it updated a couple times and then we did the whole season of Amazon stuff which was like season 10 or 12 or something like that so it was like 20 18 19 something like that fun times anyways hello and welcome back we are continuing our season of building better developers The Season's actually building better habits and we are here to help you become a better developer on develop the nor I happen to be one of the founders my name is Rob Broadhead also a founder of RB Consulting where yeah it's called Boutique Consulting basically uh I guess it's cuz it's small and it's pretty with little flowers in the window I'm not really sure why they got to that actually I am but that's a different story we'd like to help you with your technology figure out how to like get your hands around it and actually do something with it instead of let it just like sit on a shelf or have some like guys on the other side of the world that are telling you how to use your software and they have no idea what your business is we help you through simplification Automation and integration to take all that stuff get it together turn it into a nice little you know productive piece of stuff and make the most on your Investments habits out of the habits that we've done that we've talked about and we've gone through quite a few of them um I've talked about the pomodora one too much is like but the list one is one that's actually like I said before is little bit challenging to me because I like a bigger list like you know like this big kind of thing it's outside of the screen you can't see it it actually wrapped around the world um you can have like I like the big list but I think sort of a modifier to that if you're like me and you really struggle to do like three items on your list something like that is build your list but then put one at the top or two at the top because that to me has really helped it's been more about like having those two priority items which for me it's usually because like I want something I'm going something I need to get done in the morning something I need to get done in the afternoon that really helps me from a a list perspective and as I've started into that that's starting to become a habit that has been evolved into something I think very use f for me the another one that has continued that I've I've brings me joy actually is the learning new stuff is we talked about just like find a site find something and just like improve your skills a little bit every day even if it's in something that you already know so it's literally just spending some time effectively coding for fun 10 to 15 minutes every day like hey I want to learn more about this I want to see how this language does that you know whatever it is is literally honing your technology skills it's been very valuable to me so I highly recommend taking a look at those episodes if nothing else and adding those to your your challenges and to your habits uh good thing bad thing this is another one that's sort of like a it's literally like two sides of the coin so we went to see a movie the other night uh which is a good thing because we went to see red one and it turns out it's actually a good movie even though my kid had told me a couple days before it sucked and it was horrible and nobody likes it we liked it so if you don't we don't care we had a good time with it the sort of bad thing was that we went there and we were like this is we said we're just going to pay cash at the theater which like nobody does that anymore apparently so we show up 10 minutes before our movie and it was sold out I didn't know movies even got sold out postco I thought like every time I've been to a movie in the last three years been like three people in the theater it's been empty not this time totally sold out so as a bonus thing now we were able to buy tickets for the one later so as a followup on that bad thing was that the heat was out in the theater when we watched it and it actually got pretty dang cold I was like I was like to the point I didn't never get cold and I was actually a point where like I was cranking on the heat when I drove home the good thing out of all of that was the movie itself and because we had to wait till later we shifted our our uh shopping and eating schedule and actually had a really good meal got all of our shopping done so by the time we're done with with the movie we're ready to go home and go to sleep that being said it's time to switch it over to Michael and see what you led him to go through all of his good and bad stuff and how are these challenges helping you out you know the uh AC being or the heat being out at the theater that was a feature it could be it's true for a winter movie it made that's that 4dx or whatever it is 4D I never see I I didn't even have to pay extra for that wow sorry everyone my name is Michael Mage I'm one of the co-founders of developer Nur I'm also the founder of Envision QA where if you're struggling with your software your small to midsize business you don't know if your software is really helping you be productive or if you have a piece of software that you have built or are exposing to your or selling to customers if you are having problems with that we can help you through software assessments we can do deep dives into your processes identify pain points that your customers might be having and we can offer you solutions to those problems good thing bad thing uh good thing this week uh weather's getting colder I'm loving it but fall is finally done we're in winter time so my allergies are finally getting over there I'm I'm loving it uh bad thing it's got so cold this week that I had to worry about the pipes freezing so I'm now having to reinsulate the attic uh talking about our habits here I know I skipped around just a little bit so we've talked a lot about different things one of the biggest things that I have been working on this week is trying to be a little more prepared for meetings uh I've been jumping around a a lot more between calls lately and I've been a little bit behind so I'm working on getting better at meeting preparation the other thing I'm struggling with and I'm really trying to focus us on a lot is the our discussion on criticism and code reviews and not taking things personally and making sure that when I put something out there and we want to make sure that we get the CR criticism the critiques we need and and you look at and you accept that criticism it's not that they're personally attacking you you're really trying to get help to make sure that you build the best product and the last thing I've been working on especially since we're getting towards the end of year is that personal branding and kind of resume building so I've been working in the business a little bit more working on some more marketing materials to prepare for a media blast at the first quarter of next year so that I can hopefully draw in more customers and hopefully kick start the next season as a bonus if you guys ever watch the if you are watching the uh the YouTube version or if you don't you can go check it out and you will see how well we're doing on the whole like being prepared before a meeting sometime that's a little kind of thing but that's beside the point because this time we're gonna talk Cloud this has been an this has been an area that has been a favorite of mine since like 2007 or eight or something like that when Amazon AWS first like came onto the scene and they had like three services they had uh the ec2 they had S3 and they had uh the EFS they had the the file system it may have had a couple others but that's all anybody ever talked about now if you look they've got like it's like I'm not even exaggerating they've got like four billion Services okay I'm just exaggerating a little but it's literally the point if you guys go back and this is where you can if you haven't go back and listen to the season where we did every episode was on one of the Amazon Services we had a Blog Series where we had Amazon services and by the time we were done there was a whole new gr like everything that we and we just went through families of services we didn't even talk about the specifics we touched on them but we talked about all the families by the time we were done you know three months later there was I think there were new families and there was probably 50 new services and they're not alone aure Microsoft's world does the same thing they have stuff all the time they're kicking out Google's gcp same stuff funds and stuff out there so the habit is how do I know this stuff how do I get comfortable with this stuff now if you work in it day-to-day particularly if you're like devops or something like that you probably spend a lot of time in these if you're a developer you probably don't I mean maybe you spend time in them but not as much understanding it as much as you're a consumer or a user as opposed to you know a knowledge work or an admin and so the best way to to build this habit is to get off your butt and go play around with it now we've talked before every one of these have some level of a free tier now some are better than others and some are more expansive than others but with every one of them as a developer I think it's highly valuable even if it's not a free tier even if you're spending spending 15 20 30 bucks a month something like that it is worth it to go out there and have a a server of some sort that is a virtual machine a virtual server virtual environment that you can work with that you actually like connect to put something on there like have a database put some data out there take that crap that's on your local machine and put it out in the cloud just to put it out in the cloud it is especially if you want to like me I've got an ec2 server out there and I use Cloud9 so I actually can do development matter where I am I don't really need it because I have a laptop I can carry everywhere but there is a lot of times where I'm like you know what I'd rather just like log into my machine fire up AWS and I'm off and running no I'm not going to use a phone because that's like too I have man fingers I don't have like little like pixie fingers or something like that um and even using like an iPad or something like that which actually that is the best way to start using that stuff because what you'll find out is how frustrating all of the things are that we take for granted on on a desktop or when you go to a tablet because all of those clicks and double clicks and all those little things you can do with your mouse they don't exist or not the same way they're not the same functionality when you get on a little tablet or a phone and the next thing you know you're like why the heck doesn't this work it's like oh because it doesn't read it and do the same things as it does even in the same browser on a desktop slight venting session slash done the thing you want to do and is get a get an understanding of like what these cloud services provide ideally pick one that you don't know ideally if you're you know if you spent all your time like maybe I have or a lot of time in AWS then go play around with like Googles or go play around with Microsoft or just go find one of these providers most of them live on top of one of these you know major people but pick one of these and like the uh the drop the droplets and some of those kinds of stuff that are out there digital ocean I'm trying to forgot the name some of those kinds of places go spin something up and just get sort of comfortable with how those things work better yet get comfortable with the commandline interface for those because then you can start getting an idea for things like infrastructures code and some of those things that are the kinds of things that the yes devops people know them and that's why they get paid and that's why they get brought in but if you as a developer know it it will help you quite a bit when you get in front of your customers and you're helping them build out an environment or you're building out a suite of applications or something along those lines that you can build your own servers you can administer them you can get in there and you can fix stuff if they're broken and it doesn't take a lot it just take it actually probably takes more to keep you to not spend too much time on it but again it's one of those things tie box it a little bit and play around with these tools if nothing else go to their sites look at the services offered and then just periodically go wow the heck is satellite tracking doing on Amazon site and then go figure out what that thing is what are your thoughts on this one Mike so I I know I was throwing up devices like phones and iPads the interesting thing is through the history of applications in software development before Cloud we had started getting like the iPhone smartphones we had our laptops but yet we didn't have a really great way to log into companies other than maybe through a VPN through citric uh and like VMware nowadays with Cloud there's so much you can do with these Cloud applications like AWS aure uh you know Google and it's funny because as we were talking about this I was thinking back to oh almost 12 years 13 years ago where I was literally I installed an SSH client on my phone just so I could log in to work to fix a problem with a server on the company machine so even if you don't think you need to know anything about Cloud which in today's world you absolutely do but there's so much you can do if you have an idea play around with it with Cloud you know I just you know I love iPads I love tablets and and one of the biggest problems I've had over the years was you can't really write software on a tablet now as Rob mentioned though we now have online softwares as a service through these Cloud environments like Cloud9 where I can write code anywhere you can stand up your own instances in these Cloud environments to go develop from any place on the planet now with that being said it can get costly but as Rob mentioned most of these Services have free tiers now if you're struggling with the free tier idea stand up your own personal cloud you know you can set up your own machine open it up to the cloud play around with it you got kubernetes you got Docker you know there are container-based ideas or container-based applications you can use to set up your own virtual Cloud so clouds are wonderful it is also a great way to get your application out there quickly and have different people hit it from many different locations so if you have an idea and you want to play around with it and maybe like poke the barrel like hey I have this idea I want to see if it can hit the masses if it's popular throw up like an AWS ec2 tier now there are caveats to these free tiers in that where they track your credit cards and emails and things like that but there are ways around that sort of the great area I I'm not endorsing it but you can potentially have multiple free tiers for different things just read the fine print and then try it and play it around with it Amazon is wonderful for their ec2 it gives you a lot you can do so much development you can spin up a database you can spin up jira um Rob mentioned in the last episode you know where we download the uh like a $10 version of the unlimited license for jira versus paying the $10 a month for the licensed version well you could actually download a licensed version Nira install it in an AWS instance and then voila you now have a cloud-based instance of jira granted you still have to maintain it yourself it's still cheaper to do it TimeWise for at last in but anyway I digress um cloud-based ideas the other thing I want to mention with this is certifications so I'm not really a fan of certifications just because I have test anxiety it's on me certifications are wonderful for developers now with the cloud-based applications there are so many certifications out there especially on the low tier that you can easily go get a couple certifications and a couple different applications a couple different cloudbased services with little or no effort um I just recently got uh the AWS uh I think the low tier uh foundational certification of that last year I panicked I thought oh my God this is so hard I spent 60 hours on it and then I walked in I'm like this test is freaking easy even if you have test anxiety look at things like certifications especially when it comes to Cloud the other thing is look at what's online there's so many playgrounds out there if you're a JavaScript person there's like a JavaScript or what is it JS fiddle that is actually a cloud-based tool that allows you to write real time CSS HTML and JavaScript and see it work right there that's just one idea of how cloud is useful another idea if you like idees I mentioned Cloud9 Rob mentioned Cloud9 you also have Eclipse chai uh if you're or Chi I'm bad with pronunciation sometimes but it is another cloud-based IDE service that allows you to write uh your favorite uh coding language in an eclipse like IDE but in the cloud so you can actually spin up services behind the scenes deploy your code test it uh and have fun with it so cloud-based Services isn't just about deploying applications or playing around with software it is the it's playground you can go have fun doing many different things online and play around with it and you can spin it up take it down throw it away spin it up another instance so play around with this it is a playground for a reason so have fun with cloud and just you know if you're worried about cost just you know maybe go buy a gift card and or a Visa card prepaid Visa card and just make sure it has no money on it when they go to charge it wow that was just too upbeat I think that was just too much I need to find a way to bring us down but I'm not going to do that so the challenge for this week is again you may think it's a little bit self- serving but it's not entirely you need to is go sign up for one of these things go sign up for one of these Cloud providers go get a little account you it may cost you a couple of bucks or something like that make sure that you you know you can maybe get a limited card put on an account that's like you know got a very limit to it you can put spending limits on a lot of them and things like that so it'll just shut down once you're done with it uh if you ever deal in the Google world of like any their apis I highly recommend that because you can crank up some costs really quick if you don't watch out Amazon's same thing they will if you use their Wizards to create stuff you can create a really nice environment but it's also going to be a very expensive environment and then you're going to be like uhoh I messed up so keep it keep it sort of cheap check out this is where the self- serving thing is check out launching an internet business if you go to developer.com and just search for lyi for launch your internet business we've got a it's a 21-day I believe it's a 21-day thing we send you something once a day you also can find like if you just want to binge it you can run through the first seven days you can find it out there you can find it out on our YouTube the thing about is it's going to take you probably seven days cuz it takes a little bit for like to register and for them to validate it for you to get back if you to build a server for the server to be ready and blah blah blah blah blah but it will get you by the end of the week that you'll have a little server and you can go puts around on it you can go like take and continue on the course and you can we teach you we walk through it put WordPress on it put a database on it teach you a little bit of uh a little bit of Linux Unix type coding or really just like navigating the Unix world it's really simple it's it's less than 15 minutes a day it's a great way for you to get comfortable with the cloud if you haven't done it if you're comfortable with Amazon which is what it's focused on then go essentially do the same thing is take seven days and decide that you're going to go spin up a server a low-end server for example or create a database in Azure or Google or you know whatever it is and just say okay I'm going to take seven days I'm going to do 10 to 15 minutes today and I'm going to see how far I can get you're going to get far enough that you'll have something to play around with you'll have some more know if you're while you're doing that if you're poking around some of the other services at least you'll have an idea what the offerings are and just a rough idea of it you're not going to master them not in you know it's going to take a lifetime of 15minute days I'm sure there's just a lot of stuff out there as Michael's mentioned though if you want to really uh monetize it go get a certification pick pick something look at the certifications that are out there pick one that appeals to you and then go chase it down it is yes it can be super simple also it can take quite a while because sometimes they are very nitpicky and you have to understand their environment their tools their Ling their lingo and everything else but once you do it's actually very valuable to have that those are good certifications I've done that I recommend that you do that because it's a great way to like just make sure that you have useful knowledge in that area that being said I would like to have useful knowledge about what your feedback is shoot me an email info@ developer.com you can always leave us comments wherever you hear this or see this or I guess even smell this or whatever if you get into the 4D World leave us comments leave us feedback uh you can check out all of our past content out there still leave content there we still any kind of feedback you give there we still hear about it we will reply back and let you know what our thoughts are and help you out if you have questions that's why we're here one of the many reasons we're here go out there now though we're not done we're coming back with more SE more in this season this season will continue all the way into next year we've got some holiday episodes coming up the next few weeks and then we're going to wrap up this and go to season 24 now and I don't even know what that season's going to be so stay tuned because it could be really interesting or it could be a crappy little season we'll find out you be the judge go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time I need to stop getting too close to my mic there like figure out where it is because it's picking it up bonus material so we were talking about you know the cloud and everything so if you are worried about cost almost every single one of these cloud-based Services have some type of cost calculator if if you are doing free and you're like oh I I love this I want to continue using it what's it going to cost look for a cost calculator that will save you a lot of time and money and also determine if you need to stay on the cloud or go with like some prepaid service like HostGator uh Blu host or whatever be careful of that though because if you are doing like a static site sometimes those other sites are actually better than going with like AWS or Google the other thing I kind of want to mention here is you know we mentioned certifications briefly with this and I highly recomend men if you have not really touched on cloud you have not really touched on certification look at them because Google AWS Azure they have a lot of very simple certifications at least to help you understand the what the cloud is for instance AWS one is the lowend tier it's literally what are the services they offer what do they provide and what is the cost you know if you go through that even if you don't take the certification you might understand if the cost is worth the effort the last thing I think my bonus stuff is that I've as I've played around on all of these um my personal two cents is I I love the Amazon offering of stuff I I use it I literally have got I don't know a half dozen servers that I've got set up it's very easy I use it with my customers all the time if I when I've got a new customer it's very easy to either you know utilize a server I've already got or if they're big enough or they've got something then I'll I'll spin up a demo server or a server for them I can have it spun up almost you know I can have a server up running and do what it need to do with it within hours uh and and they're off and running I don't have to go order something I don't have to wait for something to get shipped to me or anything like that uh but that being said I actually enjoy the azure interface much better azure's interface is a lot easier to understand uh yeah you got to get used to it a little bit because there's a lot out there there's a lot to navigate uh but it also has a lot of useful stuff around security and things like that that are uh that are more Wizard likee or whatever they're more like a nice little flow that walk you through it Amazon will give you a lot of stuff there's a lot of power but their interface to me lacks a little bit even though they are getting better on it it is going to take a little bit of time to get used to it as you're if you've spend any time on Windows you should be able to you know sort of stumble your way through the the aure world uh Google I've spent some time it's Google I struggle with because their stuff feels disjointed a lot so you can you end up stumbling into an area and you don't realize that you've stumbled into it especially if you're like me and you've got ads you've got AdSense you've got Google analytics you've got Google developer stuff you've got various API things that are out there and you've got various customers that you've got links to with all this stuff it can take it can be daunting but again there's a lot of value out there as Michael said there's like this is one of those cases there's so much stuff out there that we may think that we need to do but it's already been solved somewhere and it may be that there's a Cloud solution that's perfect for for what your needs are that will wrap this one up because I'm going to go eat and stuff like that and like enjoy the rest of my my evening because it's been a long honking Day by the time I get to this as far as you know anyways you know could be that you're starting your day maybe your day is even longer than mine but I'm going to whine a little but I'm just going to go ahead and leave and cut this short go there to have yourselves a good one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
uh hello everybody we're back and we're
recording again hopefully it wasn't too
long before this that I said that
um oh cloud services let's talk we're
going to talk some Cloud this time
around um this will be a fun one because
spent a lot of time in this world in the
last few years and I'm G to get like
shifted over here a little
bit
and just getting into that and the
habits of it because I think that's I've
got a lot of self-serving kind of little
things we can throw out there to like
try to try to get some people back to
some old episodes and such I don't even
remember what seasons they were but um
that'll be in the show notes we'll say
was a couple years ago since we did the
last
uh I think video presentation so that
might not be a bad one to do for next
year well that could be um well because
we've had it updated a couple times and
then we did the whole season of Amazon
stuff which was like season 10 or 12 or
something like that so it was like 20 18
19 something like that fun times
anyways hello and welcome back we are
continuing our season of building better
developers The Season's actually
building better habits and we are here
to help you become a better developer on
develop the nor I happen to be one of
the founders my name is Rob Broadhead
also a founder of RB Consulting where
yeah it's called Boutique Consulting
basically uh I guess it's cuz it's small
and it's pretty with little flowers in
the window I'm not really sure why they
got to that actually I am but that's a
different story we'd like to help you
with your technology figure out how to
like get your hands around it and
actually do something with it instead of
let it just like sit on a shelf or have
some like guys on the other side of the
world that are telling you how to use
your software and they have no idea what
your business is we help you through
simplification Automation and
integration to take all that stuff get
it together turn it into a nice little
you know productive piece of stuff and
make the most on your
Investments
habits out of the habits that we've done
that we've talked about and we've gone
through quite a few of them um I've
talked about the pomodora one too much
is like but the list one is one that's
actually like I said before is little
bit challenging to me because I like a
bigger list like you know like this big
kind of thing it's outside of the screen
you can't see it it actually wrapped
around the world um you can have like I
like the big list but
I think sort of a modifier to that if
you're like me and you really struggle
to do like three items on your list
something like that is build your list
but then put one at the top or two at
the top because that to me has really
helped it's been more about like having
those two priority items which for me
it's usually because like I want
something I'm going something I need to
get done in the morning something I need
to get done in the afternoon that really
helps me from a a list perspective and
as I've started into that that's
starting to become a habit that has been
evolved into something I think very use
f for me the another one that has
continued that I've I've brings me joy
actually is the learning new stuff is we
talked about just like find a site find
something and just like improve your
skills a little bit every day even if
it's in something that you already know
so it's literally just spending some
time effectively coding for fun 10 to 15
minutes every day like hey I want to
learn more about this I want to see how
this language does that you know
whatever it is is literally honing your
technology skills it's been very
valuable to me so I highly recommend
taking a look at those episodes if
nothing else and adding those to your
your challenges and to your habits uh
good thing bad thing this is another one
that's sort of like a it's literally
like two sides of the coin so we went to
see a movie the other night uh which is
a good thing because we went to see red
one and it turns out it's actually a
good movie even though my kid had told
me a couple days before it sucked and it
was horrible and nobody likes it we
liked it so if you don't
we don't care we had a good time with it
the sort of bad thing was that we went
there and we were like this is we said
we're just going to pay cash at the
theater which like nobody does that
anymore apparently so we show up 10
minutes before our movie and it was sold
out I didn't know movies even got sold
out postco I thought like every time
I've been to a movie in the last three
years been like three people in the
theater it's been empty not this time
totally sold out
so as a bonus thing now we were able to
buy tickets for the one later so as a
followup on that bad thing was that the
heat was out in the theater when we
watched it and it actually got pretty
dang cold I was like I was like to the
point I didn't never get cold and I was
actually a point where like I was
cranking on the heat when I drove home
the good thing out of all of that was
the movie itself and because we had to
wait till later we shifted our our uh
shopping and eating schedule and
actually had a really good meal got all
of our shopping done so by the time
we're done with with the movie we're
ready to go home and go to sleep that
being said it's time to switch it over
to Michael and see what you led him to
go through all of his good and bad stuff
and how are these challenges helping you
out you know the uh AC being or the heat
being out at the theater that was a
feature it could be it's true for a
winter movie it made that's that 4dx or
whatever it is 4D I never see I I didn't
even have to pay extra for that wow
sorry everyone my name is Michael Mage
I'm one of the co-founders of developer
Nur I'm also the founder of Envision QA
where if you're struggling with your
software your small to midsize business
you don't know if your software is
really helping you be productive or if
you have a piece of software that you
have built or are exposing to your or
selling to customers if you are having
problems with that we can help you
through software assessments we can do
deep dives into your processes identify
pain points that your customers might be
having and we can offer you solutions to
those
problems good thing bad thing uh good
thing this week uh weather's getting
colder I'm loving it but fall is finally
done we're in winter time so my
allergies are finally getting over there
I'm I'm loving it uh bad thing it's got
so cold this week that I had to worry
about the pipes freezing so I'm now
having to reinsulate the attic uh
talking about our habits here I know I
skipped around just a little bit so
we've talked a lot about different
things one of the biggest things that I
have been working on this week is trying
to be a little more prepared for
meetings uh I've been jumping around a a
lot more between calls lately and I've
been a little bit behind so I'm working
on getting better at meeting preparation
the other thing I'm struggling with and
I'm really trying to focus us on a lot
is the our discussion on criticism and
code reviews and not taking things
personally and making sure that when I
put something out there and we want to
make sure that we get the CR criticism
the critiques we need and and you look
at and you accept that criticism it's
not that they're personally attacking
you you're really trying to get help to
make sure that you build the best
product and the last thing I've been
working on especially since we're
getting towards the end of year is that
personal branding and kind of resume
building so I've been working in the
business a little bit more working on
some more marketing materials to prepare
for a media blast at the first quarter
of next year so that I can hopefully
draw in more customers and hopefully
kick start the next
season as a bonus if you guys ever watch
the if you are watching the uh the
YouTube version or if you don't you can
go check it out and you will see how
well we're doing on the whole like being
prepared before a meeting sometime
that's a
little kind of thing but that's beside
the point because this time we're gonna
talk Cloud this has been an this has
been an area that has been a favorite of
mine since like
2007 or eight or something like that
when Amazon AWS first like came onto the
scene and they had like three services
they had uh the ec2 they had S3 and they
had uh the EFS they had the the file
system it may have had a couple others
but that's all anybody ever talked about
now if you look they've got like it's
like I'm not even exaggerating they've
got like four billion Services okay I'm
just exaggerating a little but it's
literally the point if you guys go back
and this is where you can if you haven't
go back and listen to the season where
we did every episode was on one of the
Amazon Services we had a Blog Series
where we had Amazon services and by the
time we were done there was a whole new
gr like everything that we and we just
went through families of services we
didn't even talk about the specifics we
touched on them but we talked about all
the families by the time we were done
you know three months later there was I
think there were new families and there
was probably 50 new services and they're
not alone aure Microsoft's world does
the same thing they have stuff all the
time they're kicking out Google's gcp
same stuff funds and stuff out there so
the habit is how do I know this stuff
how do I get comfortable with this stuff
now if you work in it day-to-day
particularly if you're like devops or
something like that you probably spend a
lot of time in these if you're a
developer you probably don't I mean
maybe you spend time in them but not as
much understanding it as much as you're
a consumer or a user as opposed to you
know a knowledge work or an
admin and so the best way to to build
this habit is to get off your butt and
go play around with it now we've talked
before every one of these have some
level of a free tier now some are better
than others and some are more expansive
than others but with every one of them
as a
developer I think it's highly valuable
even if it's not a free tier even if
you're spending spending 15 20 30 bucks
a month something like that it is worth
it to go out there and have a a server
of some sort that is a virtual machine a
virtual server virtual environment that
you can work with that you actually like
connect to put something on there like
have a database put some data out there
take that crap that's on your local
machine and put it out in the cloud just
to put it out in the cloud it is
especially if you want to like me I've
got an ec2 server out there and I use
Cloud9 so I actually can do development
matter where I am I don't really need it
because I have a laptop I can carry
everywhere but there is a lot of times
where I'm like you know what I'd rather
just like log into my machine fire up
AWS and I'm off and running no I'm not
going to use a phone because that's like
too I have man fingers I don't have like
little like pixie fingers or something
like that um and even using like an iPad
or something like that which actually
that is the best way to start using that
stuff because what you'll find out is
how frustrating all of the things are
that we take for granted on on a desktop
or when you go to a tablet because all
of those clicks and double clicks and
all those little things you can do with
your mouse they don't exist or not the
same way they're not the same
functionality when you get on a little
tablet or a phone and the next thing you
know you're like why the heck doesn't
this work it's like oh because it
doesn't read it and do the same things
as it does even in the same browser on a
desktop slight venting session slash
done the thing you want to do and is get
a get an understanding of like what
these cloud services provide ideally
pick one that you don't know ideally if
you're you know if you spent all your
time like maybe I have or a lot of time
in AWS then go play around with like
Googles or go play around with Microsoft
or just go find one of these providers
most of them live on top of one of these
you know major people but pick one of
these and like the uh the drop the
droplets and some of those kinds of
stuff that are out there digital ocean
I'm trying to forgot the name some of
those kinds of
places go spin something up and just get
sort of comfortable with how those
things work better yet get comfortable
with the commandline interface for those
because then you can start getting an
idea for things like infrastructures
code and some of those things that are
the kinds of things that the yes devops
people know them and that's why they get
paid and that's why they get brought in
but if you as a developer know it it
will help you quite a bit when you get
in front of your customers and you're
helping them build out an environment or
you're building out a suite of
applications or something along those
lines that you can build your own
servers you can administer them you can
get in there and you can fix stuff if
they're broken and it doesn't take a lot
it just take it actually probably takes
more to keep you to not spend too much
time on it but again it's one of those
things tie box it a little bit and play
around with these tools if nothing else
go to their sites look at the services
offered and then just periodically go
wow the heck is satellite tracking doing
on Amazon site and then go figure out
what that thing is what are your
thoughts on this one
Mike so I I know I was throwing up
devices like phones and iPads the
interesting thing is through the history
of applications in software development
before Cloud we had started getting like
the iPhone smartphones we had our
laptops but yet we didn't have a really
great way to log into companies other
than maybe through a VPN through
citric uh and like VMware nowadays with
Cloud there's so much you can do with
these Cloud applications like AWS aure
uh you know Google and it's funny
because as we were talking about this I
was thinking back to oh almost 12 years
13 years ago where I was literally I
installed an SSH client on my phone just
so I could log in to work to fix a
problem with a
server on the company
machine so even if you don't think you
need to know anything about Cloud which
in today's world you absolutely do but
there's so much you can do if you have
an idea play around with it with Cloud
you know I just you know I love iPads I
love tablets and and one of the biggest
problems I've had over the years was you
can't really write software on a tablet
now as Rob mentioned though we now have
online softwares as a service through
these Cloud environments like Cloud9
where I can write code anywhere you can
stand up your own instances in these
Cloud environments to go develop from
any place on the
planet now with that being said it can
get costly but as Rob mentioned most of
these Services have free tiers now if
you're struggling with the free tier
idea stand up your own personal cloud
you know you can set up your own machine
open it up to the cloud play around with
it you got kubernetes you got Docker you
know there are container-based ideas or
container-based applications you can use
to set up your own virtual Cloud so
clouds are wonderful it is also a great
way to get your application out there
quickly
and have different people hit it from
many different
locations so if you have an idea and you
want to play around with it and maybe
like poke the barrel like hey I have
this idea I want to see if it can hit
the masses if it's popular throw up like
an AWS ec2 tier
now there
are caveats to these free tiers in that
where they track your credit cards and
emails and things like that but there
are ways around that sort of the great
area I I'm not endorsing it but you can
potentially have multiple free tiers for
different things just read the fine
print and then try it and play it around
with it Amazon is wonderful for their
ec2 it gives you a lot you can do so
much development you can spin up a
database you can spin up jira um Rob
mentioned in the last episode you know
where we download the uh like a $10
version of the unlimited license for
jira versus paying the $10 a month for
the licensed version well you could
actually download a licensed version
Nira install it in an AWS instance and
then voila you now have a cloud-based
instance of jira granted you still have
to maintain it yourself it's still
cheaper to do it TimeWise for at last in
but anyway I digress um cloud-based
ideas the other thing I want to mention
with this is certifications so I'm not
really a fan of certifications just
because I have test anxiety it's on me
certifications are wonderful for
developers now with the cloud-based
applications there are so many
certifications out there especially on
the low tier that you can easily go get
a couple certifications and a couple
different applications a couple
different cloudbased services with
little or no effort um I just recently
got uh the AWS uh I think the low tier
uh foundational certification of that
last year I panicked I thought oh my God
this is so hard I spent 60 hours on it
and then I walked in I'm like this test
is freaking
easy even if you have test anxiety look
at things like certifications especially
when it comes to Cloud the other thing
is look at what's online there's so many
playgrounds out there if you're a
JavaScript person there's like a
JavaScript or what is it JS fiddle that
is actually a cloud-based tool that
allows you to write real time CSS HTML
and JavaScript and see it work right
there that's just one idea of how cloud
is useful another idea if you like idees
I mentioned Cloud9 Rob mentioned Cloud9
you also have Eclipse chai uh if you're
or Chi I'm bad with pronunciation
sometimes but it is another cloud-based
IDE service that allows you to write uh
your favorite uh coding language in an
eclipse like IDE but in the cloud so you
can actually spin up services behind the
scenes deploy your code test it uh and
have fun with it so cloud-based Services
isn't just about deploying applications
or playing around with software it is
the it's playground you can go have fun
doing many different things
online and play around with it and you
can spin it up take it down throw it
away spin it up another instance so play
around with this it is a playground for
a reason so have fun with cloud and just
you know if you're worried about cost
just you know maybe go buy a gift card
and or a Visa card prepaid Visa card and
just make sure it has no money on it
when they go to charge
it wow that was just too upbeat I think
that was just too much I need to find a
way to bring us down but I'm not going
to do that so the challenge for this
week is again you may think it's a
little bit self- serving but it's not
entirely you need to is
go sign up for one of these things go
sign up for one of these Cloud providers
go get a little account you it may cost
you a couple of bucks or something like
that make sure that you you know you can
maybe get a limited card put on an
account that's like you know got a very
limit to it you can put spending limits
on a lot of them and things like that so
it'll just shut down once you're done
with it uh if you ever deal in the
Google world of like any their apis I
highly recommend that because you can
crank up some costs really quick if you
don't watch out Amazon's same thing they
will if you use their Wizards to create
stuff you can create a really nice
environment but it's also going to be a
very expensive environment and then
you're going to be like uhoh I messed up
so keep it keep it sort of cheap
check out this is where the self-
serving thing is check out launching an
internet business if you go to
developer.com and just search for lyi
for launch your internet business we've
got a it's a 21-day I believe it's a
21-day thing we send you something once
a day you also can find like if you just
want to binge it you can run through the
first seven days you can find it out
there you can find it out on our
YouTube the thing about is it's going to
take you probably seven days cuz it
takes a little bit for like to register
and for them to validate it for you to
get back if you to build a server for
the server to be ready and blah blah
blah blah blah but it will get you by
the end of the week that you'll have a
little server and you can go puts around
on it you can go like take and continue
on the course and you can we teach you
we walk through it put WordPress on it
put a database on it teach you a little
bit of uh a little bit of Linux Unix
type coding or really just like
navigating the Unix
world it's really simple it's it's less
than 15 minutes a day it's a great way
for you to get comfortable with the
cloud if you haven't done it if you're
comfortable with Amazon which is what
it's focused on then go essentially do
the same thing is take seven days and
decide that you're going to go spin up a
server a low-end server for example or
create a database in Azure or Google or
you know whatever it is and just say
okay I'm going to take seven days I'm
going to do 10 to 15 minutes today and
I'm going to see how far I can get
you're going to get far enough that
you'll have something to play around
with you'll have some more know if
you're while you're doing that if you're
poking around some of the other services
at least you'll have an idea what the
offerings are and just a rough idea of
it you're not going to master them not
in you know it's going to take a
lifetime of 15minute days I'm sure
there's just a lot of stuff out there as
Michael's mentioned though if you want
to really uh monetize it go get a
certification pick pick something look
at the certifications that are out there
pick one that appeals to you and then go
chase it down it is
yes it can be super simple also it can
take quite a while because sometimes
they are very nitpicky and you have to
understand their environment their tools
their Ling their lingo and everything
else but once you do it's actually very
valuable to have that those are good
certifications I've done that I
recommend that you do that because it's
a great way to like just make sure that
you have useful knowledge in that area
that being said I would like to have
useful knowledge about what your
feedback is shoot me an email info@
developer.com you can always leave us
comments wherever you hear this or see
this or I guess even smell this or
whatever if you get into the 4D World
leave us comments leave us feedback uh
you can check out all of our past
content out there still leave content
there we still any kind of feedback you
give there we still hear about it we
will reply back and let you know what
our thoughts are and help you out if you
have questions that's why we're here one
of the many reasons we're
here go out there now though we're not
done we're coming back with more SE more
in this season this season will continue
all the way into next year we've got
some holiday episodes coming up the next
few weeks and then we're going to wrap
up this and go to season
24 now and I don't even know what that
season's going to be so stay tuned
because it could be really interesting
or it could be a crappy little season
we'll find out you be the judge go out
there and have yourself a great day a
great week and we will talk to you next
time I need to stop getting too close to
my mic there like figure out where it is
because it's picking it up bonus
material so we were talking about you
know the cloud and everything so if you
are worried about
cost almost every single one of these
cloud-based Services have some type of
cost calculator if if you are doing free
and you're like oh I I love this I want
to continue using it what's it going to
cost look for a cost calculator that
will save you a lot of time and money
and also determine if you need to stay
on the cloud or go with like some
prepaid service like HostGator uh Blu
host or whatever be careful of that
though because if you are doing like a
static site sometimes those other sites
are actually better than going with like
AWS or
Google the other thing I kind of want to
mention here is you know we mentioned
certifications briefly with this
and I highly recomend men if you have
not really touched on cloud you have not
really touched on
certification look at them because
Google AWS Azure they have a lot of very
simple certifications at least to help
you understand the what the cloud is for
instance AWS one is the lowend tier it's
literally what are the services they
offer what do they provide and what is
the cost you know if you go through that
even if you don't take the certification
you might understand if the cost is
worth the
effort the last thing I think my bonus
stuff is that I've as I've played around
on all of these um my personal two cents
is I I love the Amazon offering of stuff
I I use it I literally have got I don't
know a half dozen servers that I've got
set up it's very easy I use it with my
customers all the time if I when I've
got a new customer it's very easy to
either you know utilize a server I've
already got or if they're big enough or
they've got something then I'll I'll
spin up a demo server or a server for
them I can have it spun up almost you
know I can have a server up running and
do what it need to do with it within
hours uh and and they're off and running
I don't have to go order something I
don't have to wait for something to get
shipped to me or anything like that uh
but that being said I actually enjoy the
azure interface much better azure's
interface is a lot easier to understand
uh yeah you got to get used to it a
little bit because there's a lot out
there there's a lot to
navigate uh but it also has a lot of
useful stuff around security and things
like that that are uh that are more
Wizard likee or whatever they're more
like a nice little flow that walk you
through it Amazon will give you a lot of
stuff there's a lot of power but their
interface to me lacks a little bit even
though they are getting better on it it
is going to take a little bit of time to
get used to it as you're if you've spend
any time on Windows you should be able
to you know sort of stumble your way
through the the aure world uh Google
I've spent some time it's Google I
struggle with because their stuff feels
disjointed a lot so you can you end up
stumbling into an area and you don't
realize that you've stumbled into it
especially if you're like me and you've
got ads you've got AdSense you've got
Google analytics you've got Google
developer stuff you've got various API
things that are out there and you've got
various customers that you've got links
to with all this stuff it can take it
can be daunting but again there's a lot
of value out there as Michael said
there's like this is one of those cases
there's so much stuff out there that we
may think that we need to do but it's
already been solved somewhere and it may
be that there's a Cloud solution that's
perfect for for what your needs
are that will wrap this one up because
I'm going to go eat and stuff like that
and like enjoy the rest of my my evening
because it's been a long honking Day by
the time I get to this as far as you
know anyways you know could be that
you're starting your day maybe your day
is even longer than mine but I'm going
to whine a little but I'm just going to
go ahead and leave and cut this short go
there to have yourselves a good one and
we will talk to you next time
[Music]