[Video 251] Josh Berkus: Shootout at the PAAS Corral

Is it a good idea to put PostgreSQL in the cloud? If so, then which cloud (“Platform as a service” — “PaaS”) provider provides the best performance? And which options should you use, once you have settled on a vendor?  These are questions that I’m increasingly asked by my clients, and I was thus particularly happy to have discovered this talk, in which  Josh Berkus describes his investigation and comparison of various PostgreSQL cloud providers. If you’re wondering whether the cloud is an appropriate location for your database, but weren’t sure which provider might make the most sense, this talk should be quite interesting for you.

[Video 250] Trevor Norris: High Performance JavaScript

As JavaScript becomes an increasingly pervasive part of the technical world, it’s important to squeeze as much performance out of it. If you’re running node.js on the server, then you want to maximize your server’s potential. And if you’re running client-side JavaScript, then you want to waste your users’ time and computer power as little as possible.  In this talk, Trevor Norris describes techniques (particularly on the server side) that JavaScript developers can use to reduce the footprint and execution time of their code.

[Video 249] Sarina Canelake: I18N — World Domination the Easy Way

If you want your software to be used by people around the world, then you will probably want to incorporate internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n). In this talk, Sarina Canelake demonstrates how we can and should approach i18n/l10n in our Web applications, using Python and Django in her examples. Regardless of what language you use, if you’re using i18n/l10n, or thinking about doing it, then the ideas in this talk will be useful for you in the near future.

[Video 248] Jon Rowe: RSpec 3 and why I `expect(you).to care`

RSpec is one of the best-known test frameworks in the Ruby world.   With RSpec 3.0, the framework has made a large number of changes, mostly aimed at making tests cleaner, easier to write and understand, but also making RSpec itself easier to maintain. In this talk, Jon Rowe describes the changes and improvements in RSpec 3.0, and why these are changes that everyday developers (and RSpec users) should notice, care about, and even incorporate into their work.

[Video 247] Gayle McDowell: Cracking the Coding Interview

Congratulations!  You’ve been invited to interview with the company of your dreams. Of course, this means that you’re going to be put through a grueling technical interview.  What do companies look for, both before and during the interview? What strategies can you employ to increase your chances of success? In this talk, Gayle McDowell tells you how to apply for jobs — starting with your resume, and then with the knowledge that you should have and demonstrate during an interview.

[Video 246] Soren Macbeth: Data Science in Clojure

Data science is a growing field, in size and importance. Data scientists use a variety of tools and languages to accomplish their goals — including, according to Soren Macbeth, Clojure. In this talk, Macbeth describes how Clojure can be used for data science, what libraries are available for Clojure developers, and why Clojure is a good choice for developers looking to join the ranks of data scientists.

 

[Video 245] Paul Snively and Amanda Laucher: Type Systems — The Good, Bad and Ugly

Dynamic vs. static typing is a debate that programmers, and programming language designers, have had for many years.  Is the flexibility of dynamic typing a decent trade-off from the safety of static typing?  Is one really more (or less) safe than the other? In this talk, Paul Snively and Amanda Laucher explore the different ways in which languages implement types, and how we can (and should) think about them, their tradeoffs, and how to use them effectively.

[Video 244] Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale: Bending the Curve — How Rust Helped Us Write Better Ruby

Rust and Ruby are both open-source languages. But that’s about all that they have in common.  (Fine, and the letter “R.”)  In this talk, Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale, two experienced Ruby developers who have done some work on Rust, describe how their understanding and use of Ruby improved as a result of working on Rust — a radically different language.

[Video 243] Robert Haas: Limitations of the PostgreSQL Core Technology

PostgreSQL is a great database — but every technology involves trade-offs and limitations.   In this talk, Robert Haas lists many of issues that PostgreSQL faces, from the on-disk format to logical replication to connection pooling. What issues exist, what can be done to improve things, and what are the core developers doing to move in that direction? If you’re a user of PostgreSQL, or just curious to learn about the architecture of relational databases, this talk should be of great interest to you.

[Video 242] Lukas Fittl: Advanced use of pg_stat_statements

PostgreSQL has been growing in popularity for the last few years, partly because its performance continues to be excellent as it scales. But this doesn’t mean that PostgreSQL scales magically or automatically, or that we don’t need to worry about which queries are consuming the greatest resources. pg_stat_statements is a PostgreSQL extension that lets you track query performance over time. In this talk, Lukas Fittl describes some advanced ways in which you can use pg_stat_statements to understand, and then improve, your PostgreSQL database performance.