https://batchofcode.com/Recent content on Batch of CodeHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usWed, 18 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2019-12-18-kotlinconf-2019/Wed, 18 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2019-12-18-kotlinconf-2019/KotlinConf 2019 has come to a close, and overall it was a fantastic event. The Kotlin community is an extremely diverse group of folks who genuinely love thier Kotlin, and are basically all just the nicest people in the world. This was my first time at KotlinConf and I’ll be doing everything I can to make sure I don’t miss it next year. The team had a great conference lined up starting with the locale.https://batchofcode.com/about/Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/about/My name is Ryan Batchelder and I’m a software engineer building cloud-native web applications using modern technologies at Liberty Mutual Insurance. Starting with a background in C# and .NET, I moved into the Java world and was promptly disgusted by the language. This led me to Kotlin and started a trend of pitching Kotlin to anyone who would listen. I also enjoy working with Swift and Python when the opportunity arises.https://batchofcode.com/post/2018-07-04-herman-open-source/Wed, 04 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2018-07-04-herman-open-source/Just about one month ago, a group of us from Liberty Mutual open sourced a project that we had been working on for a long time internally. This project is called “Herman”, and lives here on GitHub. Herman is a tool that was originally built to help simplify the deployment of a Docker-ized application to AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS). Up until this point, most of our AWS deployments had been at the IaaS level: using Cloudformation to spin up EC2 instances and deploy applications in AMIs, or using a Pivotal Cloud Foundry-based PaaS.https://batchofcode.com/post/2018-04-13-kotlin-best-practices/Fri, 13 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2018-04-13-kotlin-best-practices/For many Kotlin adopters coming from Java, it’s natural to start writing Kotlin in the same style that you’re used to. After all, many of the constructs and libraries are the same, so it’s easy to continue writing code the same way you always have. Kotlin is all about saving time and improving code maintainability through readability, and these Java conventions frequently detract from that. Our teams tend to start writing Kotlin the same way, though we’ve come a long way in the past year and a half.https://batchofcode.com/post/2017-03-11-behavior-driven-canaries/Wed, 15 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2017-03-11-behavior-driven-canaries/The concept of canary deployments is not new. At a high level, this method of deployment involves rolling out a new version to a small subset of users in order to minimize the potential impact of a bad build. When the canary is determined to be healthy, it is promoted and released to all users. If the canary is bad, it is removed from service and users are reverted to the previous stable version.https://batchofcode.com/post/2016-08-15-kotlin/Mon, 15 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2016-08-15-kotlin/Just 6 months ago, JetBrains Kotlin language hit 1.0 release and became the newest contender in the arena of JVM languages. Kotlin is interesting because it was released out of need for JetBrains, who was seeking a language to cut down on the size of their codebase in their products. This means that it’s here to stick around for a while, and tooling support is going to be first class coming from JetBrains.https://batchofcode.com/post/2015-11-08-hacktoberfest-postmortem/Sun, 08 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2015-11-08-hacktoberfest-postmortem/October marks DigitalOcean’s hacktoberfest, an event which I’ve had some participation in for the past two years. This event exists to encourage contributions to open source on GitHub. Last year, my total commits through the month of October earned me a commemorative t-shirt, which I felt a bit guilty about receiving given that almost all of my commits were to personal projects in some form (though, that code was and still is open source).https://batchofcode.com/post/2015-10-02-first-program/Fri, 02 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2015-10-02-first-program/This post is inspired by a tweet that I came across today from DigitalOcean: We asked developers in Vancouver: What was the first program that you can remember writing? 

Here are the answers: https://t.co/UqmM1P1Ftn — DigitalOcean (@digitalocean) October 2, 2015 I was really impressed with a lot of the responses in the video. I certainly remember my first program, and it was nowhere near as awesome as building a FTP client in C++.https://batchofcode.com/post/2015-07-12-hello-world/Sun, 12 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000https://batchofcode.com/post/2015-07-12-hello-world/If you’ve stumbled here, you’ve found my blog! You can find out some information about me on my about page, but here’s some more of my history. I started in this field by building a small tiny company with a friend doing web design for local businesses while we were still in high school. We were doing what we thought to be some really cool stuff at the time, taking some bold design ideas and learning how to implement them.