We're trying something different this week: a full post-show breakdown of every episode in the latest season of Black Mirror! Ari Romero is joined by Tudum's Black Mirror expert, Keisha Hatchett, to give you all the nuance, the insider commentary, and the details you might have missed in this incredible new season. Plus commentary from creator & showrunner Charlie Brooker! SPOILER ALERT: We're talking about the new season in detail and revealing key plot points. If you haven't watched yet, and you don't want to know what happens, turn back now! You can watch all seven seasons of Black Mirror now in your personalized virtual theater . Follow Netflix Podcasts and read more about Black Mirror on Tudum.com .…
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Voice of the DBA
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One of the challenges in software development is coordinating database and application changes when one depends on the other. I find many software development teams struggle with this, especially in today’s environments when no one wants to take a system offline. While some companies can stage and manage deployments, many of us find our systems need to keep running 24×7 with minimal outages (if any). Lots of you work in environments where your software is changing on a regular basis. Plenty of you will either be developing those changes, or managing the systems to which those changes are deployed. You likely will be coordinating with other people (in either case) to deploy a software artifact (C#, Java, Python, etc.) and a set of database changes in order for your clients to use whatever new functionality is being delivered. My question today is do you deploy database changes first or application changes first. Certainly you can deploy both on the same day or in the same pipeline. However, even if you use parallel pipelines, likely one side will finish first, and you likely have some preferred order for deployments. My question today is what order do you prefer (or is mandated to you). Maybe you don’t care. After all, with modern coding and feature flags , you can deploy either side first (front end or back end) and not disturb your clients. I’ve seen many successful deployments from organizations both ways. Some like letting application developers deploy their code with expected database changes hidden behind flags. Others want the database to get patched and the software changed later to use the database changes. Lots of people want everything deployed at once, but if you assume that is the case, I hope you have downtime scheduled, as you can’t usually get everything deployed simultaneously. I tend to prefer database first, with dark deployed changes that don’t affect the front end. Of course the front end needs to support these dark deployed changes, but that’s easy by just following good coding practices, which aren’t that hard. Let me know today what you prefer and why. Or if you don’t care and can deploy in either order. Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…
I saw an article recently that a quarter of the Y Combinator startups have 95% of the code in their repos being AI generated . The article notes that if no other startups had any AI generated code (no idea the likelihood here, then about 24% of their code for startups is GenAI written. 24% Is that high or low? If you think about all the code you’ve written in the last year, how much of it could be reasonably generated by AI? All the queries, schema changes, test code, dummy data insertions, refactoring to add a column to a table or result set. Could it be AI written? Let’s assume you practice a bit and you could quickly get some table, view, and sproc code. If I were to ask an AI to add a date column to a table and adjust the view and sproc code, is that useful? If I can move on to another task, or start setting up a prompt to add some test queries (or tsqlt tests) for me, that might make me more efficient. Certainly I’d still have to think of how to model this, but could the AI save time? There is a lot of code that AIs might not write well. Certainly any dynamic SQL stuff that might be susceptible to SQL Injection worries me. An AI might write this, but so can a human. If the human doesn’t understand this issue, then it doesn’t matter if the AI writes it or the human does. Except the human can make more mistakes in a period of time with an AI helper than by themselves. At least, I think they will unless they just can copy/paste/search/replace the code themselves. Then maybe they can do the same level of damage to a codebase. The article has this great quote: “… even if product builders rely heavily on AI, one skill they would have to be good at is reading the code and finding bugs.” That is very true, and it needs to be said to every manager, project leader, and executive. You still need trained, skilled, experienced developers. This might be even more true for DBAs and ops people using AI to help them write scripts to change infrastructure. Plenty of people do this poorly now, but how many more quick scripts written by an AI will include unintended, insecure, or otherwise problematic code? People need to use the AI as a tool and review the output before using it. So how much help could you get from an AI in your coding? 24%? 95% Let us know today. Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…
Some of you reading this are database administrators (DBAs) who manage systems as their full-time job. Others of you might be developers, analytics people, or someone else who has another job, but you get stuck with managing the database somehow. I’ve seen a receptionist and a dental hygienist act in this role. We may call you the accidental DBAs, though that doesn’t imply you are good or bad at managing databases. I got into this line of work as an accidental DBA who was also a developer. No matter what your job title, my guess is that you aren’t over-staffed at your organization. Likely you wish you had one (or more) more person to help keep up with the work. It seems that we never have enough time to get everything done in a week. And that’s with a full staff. What do you do when someone is sick or goes on vacation? If you’re like me, you get further behind and feel extra stress while your coworker is out of the office. There is another way, and I thought this piece had a great title: Having a Part-time Database Administrator Can Help Improve your Bottom Line . It’s from DCAC , a consulting company that provides remote DBA services. There are other companies like this, such as Procure SQL , Straight Path Solutions , Dallas DBAs , and more. All of these companies are available to help augment or relieve pressure on your staff. The piece makes a good argument that often your staff is busy and might not have some of the specialized training or advanced skills that might help solve complex performance issues, architect HA solutions, perform cloud migrations, and more. For many companies, it can be hard to acquire these types of skills, and even if you have a plan, it can be expensive. What if your expert is out of town when you need them. What if you train them and they leave? I believe in training people, but I also know that you have to be able to augment your staff at times. Using trusted partners to help you improve parts of your business is something companies do in many ways. We might employ a handyman, but would still hire an outside plumber for some work, especially if it is a large job. Why not do the same thing with your technical staff? These companies might seem expensive when you look at their rates, but using them part-time, in strategic places, can often help your bottom line. Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…
The use of feature flags in software development has become more and more prevalent over time, especially as teams move to DevOps-style development with frequent releases. I’ve often thought that using feature flags allows technical people to separate out the deployment of some feature or change from the release of that to users. There are a number of articles on this style of work ( feature flag driven development , Why Use Feature Flags? ) as well as a discussion at Reddit . I am a big believer in feature flags helping with improving your software in many ways. These articles (and others) highlight the advantages that a software organization gains by using feature flags. Failed releases become less of an issue, as the specific change that doesn’t work can be turned off. This can even work with databases. I can deploy a database change and at a later time have the code (or new table/column) start being used when a feature flag is set. If there is an issue, I can turn off the feature flag and stop using the code (or populating the schema). I can then clean things up, even saving data before I make a change. I don’t love the idea of using feature flags to handle security access to features, which is pointed out in a few places. If this is for testing or evaluation by customers, perhaps. If this is to get access to data from a security standpoint, this is a bad idea. I hope most of you are savvy enough to realize this. Feature flags are not a panacea for preventing issues. They do clutter up code and make it harder to read. Once a feature is done and permanently enabled, the code for switching flags should be removed. It is also hard to stack versions of features up behind one flag, which can increase coding mistakes. Adding flags in stored procedures or functions also can wreak havoc on query optimizers, so I’d recommend you don’t do that. Instead handle feature enablement in the application code and use multiple procs/functions for the different functionality you might need. To use feature flags appropriately with database changes, you also need to be able to dark deploy those changes, with your application code able to handle additive changes to the database. A new column, a new table, or a new parameter should be easy to add without breaking the app code. This requires the use of defaults as well as good coding practices (no select *, inserts with column lists), but it can be done. Once you are in this place, life becomes a lot less stressful and feature flags work amazingly well. Steve Jones Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify , or iTunes . Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.…
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