Raju Gandhi

Dockerfiles and Docker build—A Deep Dive

8:30 AM MDT

A Docker image is the artifact of the container world. Leaner images allow easier for quicker build times, less resource management (disk pressure and network usage), fewer attack vectors, and better performance when pulling or pushing images for storage or upon deployment. Lean images also produce smaller containers, which in turn require fewer resources at runtime, allowing for higher server density. Multistage Dockerfiles can help reduce the complexity of CI/CD pipelines by reducing the number of moving parts in building, testing, and producing a production-grade image. The key to building leaner (smaller) images, with little build-time overhead is to understand how Docker uses the Union File System (UFS), how Docker builds (and when it busts) the cache, and how to use the Dockerfile specification to it's fullest potential.

In this exercises driven, hands-on workshop, we will dive deep, peeking under the hood to get a glimpse of the Union File System, and then proceed to look at the effects of many of the important Dockerfile instructions. We will see how best to use them, and highlight any caveats that we should be aware of.

By the end of this class you will have gained a keen understanding of how best to write your Dockerfiles, and effectively build and design lean images, and containers.

Dockerfiles and Docker build—A Deep Dive

10:30 AM MDT

A Docker image is the artifact of the container world. Leaner images allow easier for quicker build times, less resource management (disk pressure and network usage), fewer attack vectors, and better performance when pulling or pushing images for storage or upon deployment. Lean images also produce smaller containers, which in turn require fewer resources at runtime, allowing for higher server density. Multistage Dockerfiles can help reduce the complexity of CI/CD pipelines by reducing the number of moving parts in building, testing, and producing a production-grade image. The key to building leaner (smaller) images, with little build-time overhead is to understand how Docker uses the Union File System (UFS), how Docker builds (and when it busts) the cache, and how to use the Dockerfile specification to it's fullest potential.

In this exercises driven, hands-on workshop, we will dive deep, peeking under the hood to get a glimpse of the Union File System, and then proceed to look at the effects of many of the important Dockerfile instructions. We will see how best to use them, and highlight any caveats that we should be aware of.

By the end of this class you will have gained a keen understanding of how best to write your Dockerfiles, and effectively build and design lean images, and containers.

Refactoring to Modern JavaScript Workshop

1:00 PM MDT

JavaScript now has a yearly release cycle. Every release introduces new features that aim to make us (JavaScript developers) more productive, while making our code succinct, expressive, and (potentially) bug-free.

By the end of this workshop you will be intimately familiar with the newer set of JavaScript features, and ready to dive into your next JavaScript project with confidence.

This workshop allows you to explore many of the new features that we use on a daily basis, including

• let and const
• Default parameters
• The new “fat arrow” function syntax
• Template strings
• Object and array de-structuring and spread
• The newly added Map / Set data-structures
• The new class syntax as well as static/private members and methods
• Promises and async/await
• Modules
• Optional catch binding
• Nullish coalescing operator / Optional chaining operator

This workshop uses tests to verify and validate all of your changes, so you can be confident in your changes as you go about refactoring your code to use modern JavaScript language features.
Each section of the workshop builds on the previous one, allowing you to continuously refactor code and get tons of practice.

If you want to be fully caught up with all of the changes that have landed in JavaScript between 2015 and 2021, this is the workshop you want to attend!

Refactoring to Modern JavaScript Workshop

3:00 PM MDT

JavaScript now has a yearly release cycle. Every release introduces new features that aim to make us (JavaScript developers) more productive, while making our code succinct, expressive, and (potentially) bug-free.

By the end of this workshop you will be intimately familiar with the newer set of JavaScript features, and ready to dive into your next JavaScript project with confidence.

This workshop allows you to explore many of the new features that we use on a daily basis, including

• let and const
• Default parameters
• The new “fat arrow” function syntax
• Template strings
• Object and array de-structuring and spread
• The newly added Map / Set data-structures
• The new class syntax as well as static/private members and methods
• Promises and async/await
• Modules
• Optional catch binding
• Nullish coalescing operator / Optional chaining operator

This workshop uses tests to verify and validate all of your changes, so you can be confident in your changes as you go about refactoring your code to use modern JavaScript language features.
Each section of the workshop builds on the previous one, allowing you to continuously refactor code and get tons of practice.

If you want to be fully caught up with all of the changes that have landed in JavaScript between 2015 and 2021, this is the workshop you want to attend!

Container Usage Patterns

5:00 PM MDT

Embraced containers yet? If so, that only presents the beginning of the journey. Designing your images to be lean, and your containers configurable requires us to leverage Dockerfiles to their maximum potential. At scale, everything matters—build times, testing, multi-stage builds, conventions around tagging and logging. There is a whole ecosystem of tools around how we can best build our images and containers.

In this session we will learn many a trick on how we can leverage Docker's own tooling as well as third-party tools to ensure that our first steps in the container world are the right ones.

On being an effective developer

7:30 PM MDT

As developers we not only operate in different contexts, but also often have these different contexts interplay as part of our work.
Each of the tools that we use — version control systems like Git (along with collaborative tools like Github/Gitlab), IDE's like Eclipse/IntelliJ, build systems like Gradle, Ci/Cd tooling like Jenkins, IaaC tools like Ansible, the command line — all introduce context.

To be effective developers we need to know when to operate in a certain context, combine or tease apart how these contexts interplay.
Can you improve your release announcements if format your commit messages consistently? You bet!
How should your build tool interact with your version control system?
What does naming your files have to do with how you use your IDE?

This session will take a look at several of these contexts — it will attempt to discern between them, explore when you should separate them and when you attempt to bring them together.

With lots of examples, and lots of quizzes this session will definitely leave you thinking about a few things.

Advanced Git

9:00 AM MDT

You have been using Git for a while. You know how to stage and commit your work, create and delete branches and collaborate with your team members using remotes. But Git often leaves your confused — ever committed to your work to the wrong branch? Even worse, ever accidentally delete a branch that you needed to keep around? And what is God's good name is “Detached HEAD state”? Why tag commits, when we have branches? Is there a better work-flow than just using merges? What's the difference between a merge and a rebase?

The answer to all of these questions, and more, lies in the constitution of a commit, and the directed acyclic graph (DAG) that Git uses to manage your history. This, right here, is the key to understanding everything in Git.

In this hands-on workshop, we will level up your Git skills. We will foray into the underbelly of Git, and reveal the mystery behind the arcane interface that is the Git CLI.

By the end of this workshop, you will have a keen understanding on how best to use Git, as well as know how to dig yourself any prickly situation you might find yourself in. You will become your team's hero(ine). Most importantly, you will walk away with a keen appreciation of how beautiful and elegant Git really is.

Advanced Git

11:00 AM MDT

You have been using Git for a while. You know how to stage and commit your work, create and delete branches and collaborate with your team members using remotes. But Git often leaves your confused — ever committed to your work to the wrong branch? Even worse, ever accidentally delete a branch that you needed to keep around? And what is God's good name is “Detached HEAD state”? Why tag commits, when we have branches? Is there a better work-flow than just using merges? What's the difference between a merge and a rebase?

The answer to all of these questions, and more, lies in the constitution of a commit, and the directed acyclic graph (DAG) that Git uses to manage your history. This, right here, is the key to understanding everything in Git.

In this hands-on workshop, we will level up your Git skills. We will foray into the underbelly of Git, and reveal the mystery behind the arcane interface that is the Git CLI.

By the end of this workshop, you will have a keen understanding on how best to use Git, as well as know how to dig yourself any prickly situation you might find yourself in. You will become your team's hero(ine). Most importantly, you will walk away with a keen appreciation of how beautiful and elegant Git really is.

\s+[Rr]eg(ular [Ee]xpression|ex[pe]?)s? for Mortals (Workshop)

1:30 PM MDT

Jamie Zawinski once said “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.“. Many consider regular expressions to be indecipherable, but the truth is that every programmer should consider regular expressions an integral part of their toolkit. From the command line to your favorite text editor, from parsing user input to scraping HTML pages once you know regular expressions you will find a use for them in almost every programming context.

In this highly interactive workshop we will decipher the cryptic construct that is a Regular Expression. Starting with the basics, we will work our way towards advanced usage, including anchors, modifiers, groups, and look arounds.

This is a HIGHLY interactive workshop — Not only will we have a lot of exercises, we will use a playground that will allow us to experiment to our heart's content! Feel free to come in with issues you may have seen at work!

Agenda:
The basics and how to read regular expressions
Character Classes
Negation
Ranges
Shortcuts
Alternations
Repetitions
Word Boundaries
Capture Groups
Anchors
Modifiers

Let's once and for all make sense of this powerful tool.

I hope to see you all there.

\s+[Rr]eg(ular [Ee]xpression|ex[pe]?)s? for Mortals (Workshop)

3:15 PM MDT

Jamie Zawinski once said “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I'll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.“. Many consider regular expressions to be indecipherable, but the truth is that every programmer should consider regular expressions an integral part of their toolkit. From the command line to your favorite text editor, from parsing user input to scraping HTML pages once you know regular expressions you will find a use for them in almost every programming context.

In this highly interactive workshop we will decipher the cryptic construct that is a Regular Expression. Starting with the basics, we will work our way towards advanced usage, including anchors, modifiers, groups, and look arounds.

This is a HIGHLY interactive workshop — Not only will we have a lot of exercises, we will use a playground that will allow us to experiment to our heart's content! Feel free to come in with issues you may have seen at work!

Agenda:
The basics and how to read regular expressions
Character Classes
Negation
Ranges
Shortcuts
Alternations
Repetitions
Word Boundaries
Capture Groups
Anchors
Modifiers

Let's once and for all make sense of this powerful tool.

I hope to see you all there.

DDD and Microservices

9:00 AM MDT

We live in a world of microservices. Yet, what is a microservice? What defines the boundaries of a microservice? How do we define the relationships between microservices? Thankfully domain-driven design gives us the concepts and practices to better design and decompose our services.

In this session we will consider many of the concepts of DDD — How bounded contexts use Ubiquitous language to model the domain, how context maps can be used to establish the interconnections between services as well aggregates and domains events, all of which will service us well as we go about creating our microservices.

We will also discuss the “tactical” patterns of DDD — We will see how we can “embed” the ubiquitous language in code, and the architectural influences of DDD.

This workshop will have you thinking about how to think in DDD using DDD concepts and ideas. Using polls, and mini-exercises we attempt to better cement the ideas of DDD so we can start applying them at work.

DDD and Microservices

11:00 AM MDT

We live in a world of microservices. Yet, what is a microservice? What defines the boundaries of a microservice? How do we define the relationships between microservices? Thankfully domain-driven design gives us the concepts and practices to better design and decompose our services.

In this session we will consider many of the concepts of DDD — How bounded contexts use Ubiquitous language to model the domain, how context maps can be used to establish the interconnections between services as well aggregates and domains events, all of which will service us well as we go about creating our microservices.

We will also discuss the “tactical” patterns of DDD — We will see how we can “embed” the ubiquitous language in code, and the architectural influences of DDD.

This workshop will have you thinking about how to think in DDD using DDD concepts and ideas. Using polls, and mini-exercises we attempt to better cement the ideas of DDD so we can start applying them at work.

Systems thinking

1:30 PM MDT

Albert Einstein once said — “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

As developers, architects, managers, tech-leads, our job entails solving big problems. However, our systems are composed of parts, and it is the interaction of those parts that ensure the system works, and tells us where to go looking when things fail. What does it mean to think in systems? What are the benefits, and what are tools are available to us? If any of this intrigues you (and it should) come join me as we explore a new way of thinking about problems, both big and small.

In this session we will take a page from Donella H. Meadows fantastic book “Thinking in Systems” and attempt to get an understanding of what makes up a system, how we can tease apart the moving parts of the system, and get into the mindset of a “systems thinker”.