Chris ShafferWhy do cloud hosting costs fly off the rails? — Scout CorpsLet’s do a thought experiment, envisioning two alternate realities.May 9May 9
Chris ShafferTwo bad strategies and three good ones for mitigating against cloud vendor lock-in — Scout Corps“Hedge your bets” by having a presence on multiple clouds (bad)Nov 15, 2023Nov 15, 2023
Chris ShafferBridging the Divide: How to Evaluate Engineers’ Work When You’re Not Technical — Scout CorpsLet’s set a baseline: if you understand the mindset of your customer, you know full well whether a product you’re looking at is one they’d…Sep 26, 2023Sep 26, 2023
Chris ShafferJust how much data do you need for machine learning anyways? And how clean?Wormtongue: It will take a number beyond reckoning, thousands.Aug 24, 2023Aug 24, 2023
Chris ShafferHow To Do Zero-Downtime Database ReleasesMost teams at this point know how to update web applications without downtime. Few know how to update the databases behind them, though…Jul 25, 2023Jul 25, 2023
Chris ShafferWhat Makes a “Tech” Company? — Scout CorpsReading this ( https://www.economist.com/business/2023/07/06/a-lego-lovers-guide-to-preparing-for-the-ai-age ) article inspired me to put…Jul 17, 2023Jul 17, 2023
Chris ShafferOn LLMs, Thought, and the Concept of TruthHere’s a fun conversation I had today with ChatGPT:Jun 8, 2023Jun 8, 2023
Chris ShafferOn the Crypto Debacle (Aug. 2021)I sent this letter to the local newspaper of record in August 2021. This was after numerous attempts to contact and convey this message to…Nov 17, 2022Nov 17, 2022
Chris ShafferHow Code Structure Influences Culture and Work Habits — Scout CorpsMuch as a nation’s constitution and structure of its public institutions shapes its governing philosophy and society, the structure of…Jan 7, 2022Jan 7, 2022
Chris ShafferYour Grandpappy’s Cross-Database SQL Copy — Scout CorpsIf you’ve worked a decent amount with databases in the past, you’ll know that “one does not simply move data from one database to another.”Mar 18, 2020Mar 18, 2020