DevToolsDigest: Issue #104

The Week in Developer Tools

How to Test Software, Part I: Mocking, Stubbing, and Contract Testing

This post covers the techniques of mocking and stubbing, and test-driven development to help each testing layer of the test pyramid. This helps illustrate the difference between different kinds of tests and when it’s advantageous to do them.

Using Serverless Reapers to Lower Your AWS Bill

There are a lot of factors to consider when thinking about building your applications and services inside of Amazon Web Services. Often times there is a learning curve that individuals have to climb to get a full understanding.

GitHub: Lyft/Cartography

Cartography is a Python tool that consolidates infrastructure assets and the relationships between them in an intuitive graph view powered by a Neo4j database. Cartography aims to enable a broad set of exploration and automation scenarios. It is particularly good at exposing otherwise hidden dependency relationships between your service's assets so that you may validate assumptions about security risks.

Introducing Warp: Fixing Mobile Internet Performance and Security

Cloudflare finally announced what they began to plan more than two years ago: the 1.1.1.1 App with Warp performance and security technology. They built Warp from the ground up to thrive in the harsh conditions of the modern mobile Internet.

Introducing the New Chef: 100% Open, Always

Chef has always believed in the power of open source software development. This philosophy is core to the way that they think about software innovation. They will expand the scope of their open source licensing to include 100% of their software under the Apache 2.0 license.

Industry Research

Amazon Aurora: Design Considerations for High Throughput Cloud-Native Relational Databases

Werner Vogels recently published a blog post describing Amazon Aurora as their fastest growing service ever. That post provides a high level overview of Aurora and then links to two SIGMOD papers for further details. Also of note is the recent announcement of Aurora serverless.

Postgres and Superuser Access

Postgres superuser is a role that should be treated with extreme caution. A recent CVE drew some extra attention to running commands as superuser. While the CVE itself isn't actually a real risk, it is a good time to discuss how to manage superuser access.

Developer Venture News

Mailgun Changes Hands Again as Thoma Bravo Buys Majority Stake

Mailgun, an email API delivery service, announced that it was selling a majority stake in the company to private equity firm Thoma Bravo. The companies did not share terms, but this is the second owner in the company’s eight-year history.

Startup Segment is Worth $1.5B Thanks to Companies’ Troves of Customer Data

Segment helps companies such as Glossier Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Atlassian Corp. and Intuit Inc. provide better support and service by combining together all the different ways a company might collect data on a customer—in a store, through a mobile app, through email and more.

From The Heavybit Library

High Leverage Ep. #4: Backend Development with Paul Biggar of Dark

In episode 4 of High Leverage, Joe is joined by Paul Biggar, CTO and Co-Founder of Dark, to discuss the challenges of backend development, and how Dark aims to simplify them with a new programming language.

JAMstack Radio Ep. #37: Web Analytics with Ben Schwarz of Calibre

In episode 37 of JAMstack Radio, Brian is joined by Ben Schwarz, founder of Calibre, to discuss the shortcomings and frustrations of the modern web experience for everyday users, and the tooling available to improve it.

The Secure Developer Ep. #27: Open Source Security with Jeff McAffer of Microsoft

In episode 27 of The Secure Developer, Guy is joined by Jeff McAffer, director of Microsofts Open Source Programs Office, who shares his insights on how to keep open source projects sustainable and secure for the whole community.