Week 504 - Interesting links

AWS CDK Developer Preview

The AWS CDK allows you to define infrastructure as imperative object-oriented code (e.g. JavaScript, TypeScript, Java) and provision it through AWS CloudFormation. The “Abstract the Details” section says the CDK can “automatically synthesize key resources such as IAM policies, security groups, and network configuration” which sounds pretty handy! Via Tom H. — JM

A call for the creation of a Trade Union Digital Service

An article by Harry R of Outlandish and CoTech:

Business “got” digital 20 years ago, charities got it 10 years ago, and even the government got it five years ago with the creation of the Government Digital Service. The trade union movement needs to engage with digital at a strategic level, not just with ad-hoc tactical use of campaign tools. I call for the (gradual) creation of a Trade Union Digital Service to amplify and co-ordinate our efforts.

— JM

The Monzo Reliability Report

I think this is all good but the following point in particular caught my eye:

We don’t accept deviant behaviour

If systems regularly misbehave in a minor way, it’s easy to fall into the trap of writing it off as ‘normal.’ We actively try to avoid thinking this way: if it’s not behaving as we designed it to, something is wrong and we make sure we understand it.

I’ve recently read about the “Normalization of Deviance” and realised that it’s a term we could use to describe the sort of problem we often find ourselves trying to fix in code/teams we’re working with. I’d like to learn more about it in the hope that it makes it easier to communicate the reason we think these things are important.

— CR

A pre-history of weeknotes, plus why I write them and perhaps why you should too (Week 16)

I think it’s fair to say that we collectively struggle to write weeknotes so I enjoyed reading this and being reminded about some of the reasons we do it. James A encouraged us to start writing weeknotes back in week-138 (over 7 years ago!) and, although I don’t know for sure, I’m fairly confident it was at least in part because BERG were doing the same.

— CR