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Why Asynchronous?

Or why stick to synchronous communications should we ask? It is true that synchronous communications has come to be regarded as the de facto pattern to exchange information between any two endpoints. Think of TCP, HTTP, FTP … . It does indeed exhibit the following advantages:

1. Simpler reasoning and tracing: Everything starts when an outbound request in made from the client, and we can step through the whole process all the way until the request is processed by the server and a response is sent accordingly.
2. “Instantaneous” feedback: When a client breaks the contract, or the server deems the current request as invalid, feedback is sent right away to the client. This can take the form of response codes, redirects, or event stack traces.
3. Natural: In the sense that we like to think about thing A happens before thing B, or thing C happens as a consequence of thing B.
4. Translates directly to models: We’re all used to sequence diagrams on UML, and very few people can tell from the back of their head how asynchronous calls are modeled. Instead, we like to think of them as a succession of synchronous calls.

Source: Microservices: Why Asynchronous Communications? – DZone Microservices

For this reason, it is absolutely critical that KRs be specific enough to be measurable (this is where KPIs come in), and that they contain a numerical element that makes them easier to form metrics for. In fact, one technique to ensure KR accuracy is creating KRs according to the S.M.A.R.T. method. The S.M.A.R.T. method dictates that goals should be: Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Relevant; and Timebound.

Source: Trillion-Dollar Teamwork: Goal-Setting With OKRs – DZone Agile

If event time is not relevant and latencies in the seconds range are acceptable, Spark is the first choice. It is stable and almost any type of system can be easily integrated. In addition it comes with every Hadoop distribution. Furthermore, the code used for batch applications can also be used for the streaming applications as the API is the same.

Source: Spark Streaming vs. Kafka Streaming – DZone Big Data

The Long Game
The long game is the opposite of the short game, it means paying a small price today to make tomorrow’s tomorrow easier. If we can do this long enough to see the results, it feeds on itself.

Source: The Surprising Power of The Long Game

In this article, we will discuss different ways of running Spring Boot applications:
1. Running from an IDE
2. Running as a Packaged Application
3. Using the Maven Plugin
4. Using External Tomcat
5. Using the Gradle Plugin

Source: 5 Ways to Run Spring Boot Apps – DZone Java

What to Read

Knowing how to read is only half the battle. Too much of what we consume these days is the mental equivalent of junk food. Quality matters more than quantity. The Pot-Belly of ignorance talks about the importance of selecting your reading material wisely.
Arthur Schopenhauer’s timeless advice on reading is also worth reading (be quick to start books, quicker to stop them, and read the best ones again right after you finish). Montaigne’s rule with reading was the promiscuous pursuit of pleasure.
Whatever you do, don’t read what everyone else is reading. Rather than read new books, focus on old ones.

Source: A Helpful Guide to Reading Better

WHAT YOU NEED ARE THE 6CS OF PRESENTATION STORYTELLING

If you are going to tell stories in your presentations, make sure you cover these six points.

1) Context

This is the setup and the situation. This is where you bring people into your story and change the tone of your wider presentation. Probably you will also lower your voice, change its tone, maybe even slow down and turn the projector off. Or have a picture to illustrate the scene you are setting up. Evocative, specific details help – the clouds scudding, the waves kicking up, smoking, etc.  This brings your story alive and gives it realism. Detail is good.

2) Character

All your stories need a hero. In my prison story, it’s Andy. In my presentation story the hero is me. Your audience needs someone they can identify with and who overcomes some sort of challenge, or resolves a mystery.

3) Challenge

What is the obstacle our hero has to face? Typically, this will be something that they overcome and results in some sort of change. How they overcome the challenge will typically result in some lesson or moral – the point of your story.

4) Conflict

This is where the outcome is unclear. You need some tension and jeopardy. Something goes wrong. Will there be a positive outcome?

5) Conclusion

Success! The challenge is overcome and the conflict is resolved. (For example, I resolved my situation by making the links between my case studies and the client’s challenges much more obvious.)

6) Connection

This is where you bring the story back to the audience and draw out the key lessons for the audiences. Ancient fables used the technique “and the moral of the story is….”. We’ve lost this expositional technique in modern storytelling but the risk of leaving it out is that the audience doesn’t ‘get it’. Make it clear and squeeze the meaning for them.

Source: How to…Tell Stories in Your Presentations | Presentation Guru

Acquiring an edge in investing is not easy. Building a business around that edge is even more challenging. Managers must tiptoe the line between disclosing enough to win new clients and maintain the trust of existing ones, and guarding their secrets enough to protect their lead over the competition.  The following schematic describes the situation:

Source: What Billy Beane and Jim Simons Have in Common | Institutional Investor

Mental Models

Munger has a way of thinking through problems using what he calls a broad latticework of mental models. Mental models are chunks of knowledge from different disciplines that can be simplified and applied to better understand the world. The way he describes it, they help identify what information is relevant in any given situation, and the most reasonable parameters to work in. His track record shows that this doesn’t just make sense in theory but is devastatingly useful in practice. The last eight years of my life have been devoted to identifying and learning the mental models that have the greatest positive impact and trying to understand how we think, how we update, how we learn, and how we can make better decisions.
In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins¹. Removing blind spots means we see, interact with, and move closer to understanding reality. We think better. And thinking better is about finding simple processes that help us work through problems from multiple dimensions and perspectives, allowing us to better choose solutions that fit what matters to us. The skill for finding the right solutions for the right problems is one form of wisdom.
This website is about the pursuit of that wisdom, the pursuit of uncovering how things work, the pursuit of going to bed smarter than when we woke up.
Decisions based on improved understanding will be better than ones based on ignorance. While we can’t predict which problems will inevitably crop up in life, we can learn time-tested ideas that help us prepare for whatever the world throws at us.
Source: The Ultimate Guide to Making Smart Decisions

Here’s how to assemble your personal dream team, with tips from business expert Anthony Tjan.

Everyone can use a mentor. Scratch that — as it turns out, we could all use fivementors. “The best mentors can help us define and express our inner calling,” says Anthony Tjan, CEO of Boston venture capital firm Cue Ball Group and author of Good People. “But rarely can one person give you everything you need to grow.”
In this short list, Tjan has identified the five kinds of people you should have in your corner. You probably already know them — and it’s possible for one person to cover two or more categories — so use this list as both a guide and a nudge to deepen your bond with them.
One reminder from Tjan: Mentorship is a two-way street — a relationship between humans — and not a transaction. So don’t just march up to people and ask them to advise you. Take the time to develop genuine connections with those you admire, and assist them whenever you can.

Source: The five types of mentors you need in your life |