The Hacker’s Tribute Vol. 67: Meet the Spartans!

Salutations, Coders and Codebreakers!

Experience the future, filled with security, confidence, and a flurry of new organisational energy. But what could bring you to this not-too-distant utopia of Django 3.2, Kubernetes 1.20? Sometimes, we ought to learn from the past. Here’s where a breath of fresh air and Spartan fighting spirit straight out of the Greek islands come into play. Rethink, and revaluate your relationship with Scrum, and don’t be afraid to challenge the norm. I mean, what’s so terrific about PostgreSQL, anyway?

If you’ve come for an issue packed with positives, negatives, and explosives – then this edition of The Hacker’s Tribute might be the dynamite you need.

This is Sparta, after all.

Dan ‘the Man’ Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief, The Hacker’s Tribute

An Imperfect 10

There are some things that we simply hate about PostgreSQL. While credit should be paid where its due, sometimes, software just isn’t that perfect. And there’s no better voice to rally against this open-source relational database than that of Rick Branson. For those looking for words of anger, wrath, and irrational fury, be sure to read all about the horrific XID wraparounds, data loss with failover, corruption-causing replication, lack of block compression… and other maladies. Seeing red yet? We are!

Scrum’s Done Baby, Scrum’s Done

It’s so yesterday – it seems. A favourite among Agile frameworks, Scrum seems to be drifting away from companies, once loyally-trusting of its efficiencies. But don’t just take our word for it, we’re merely reflecting David Pereira’s Medium article suggesting a shift towards the likes of Kanban, SAFe, and others. Some agree that Scrum is due for a restart – it’s been 20 years, after all! What do you think – time for a refinement of this beloved process?

Meet the Spartans

Kallithea is the latest ingenuity to come out of the Greek archipelago and might just be the match giving GitHub a run for its money. In a show of tribute to the Cradle of Democracy, it’s a free software source code management system and a member project of Software Freedom Conservancy. Explore a Built-in push/pull server, with ease of integration, code review, and an online mode for contributing to code. Oh, and the name refers to a locality of Rhodes. It means ‘the best view’. That kind of title can work for us.

AKS and you shall Receive

Microsoft’s Azure Kubernetes Service (the meaning behind the mysterious AKS acronym) is opening its arms to Kubernetes 1.20. Our advice? Upgrade when you can, for what’s termed as ‘the raddest release’. And if Microsoft deems it cool – then we’re on to something promising. What features, you ask? Try stable volume snapshot operations, Process ID limiting, and the alpha release of graceful node shutdown – if that’s your thing. If not – then wait for v1.21 in June. We’re not fussed.

Django Unlimited!

You know the stars have aligned in our favour when Django 3.2’s debut offers long-term support (LTS), automatic AppConfig discovery, BigAutoField migrations, and expression-based functional indexes. Simplify configuration of pluggable applications, customise auto-created primary key types, and build to heart’s desire, with extended fixes for bugs and other security features. Be sure to upgrade by the end of 2021 – when 3.1 ends its support. For those still on the unprotected 3.0 – we’re terrified yet quite impressed by you!

Knowledge is free and shared. We’re always on the lookout for new insights into the world of Web and Mobile App Development.

We’ll be in touch with more news, as it happens!