So, we have decided to make our Slack channel more attractive. On our team, most of the IM work-related correspondence is done on other channels (WhatsApp, Jabber), while our goal was to migrate these interactions to Slack. So, how to foster this change? Slack allows the creation of external applications…

Apache Nifi comes to mind if you are looking for a simple, but robust, tool to process data from various sources. You want to experiment it but don’t know where to start? This guide is for you. — The system I work on is about to undergo a significant tech-refresh. The goal is to improve the current hindrances that prevent ingesting more data. The remedy requires a product that receives inputs from external sources, processes them, and disseminates the outcomes to their destinations.

Short hindsight on the technical blogs I have published in the last two years — Two years ago, I published my first technical blog. Back then, my career was on cruise control while I was leading an IT project, I was in a complacent period, and everything was under control. Nevertheless, I felt something was missing; I was doing more of the same. …

Are you using C# .NET Tasks ubiquitously? What’s going on under the hood? This article reviews the various threads and thread pools solutions in the .NET framework — I recently found myself explaining the concept of thread and thread pools to my team. We encountered a complicated threads-problem at our production environment that led us to review and analyse some legacy code. Although it threw me back to the basics, it was beneficial to review .NET capabilities and…

In these unusual times, let’s try to zoom out from our daily struggles and find the benefits — These are times that we are compelled to avoid socialising face-to-face, a fundamental behaviour we have been doing since childhood, and stay at home. Everyone should dwell at his cave, with the nuclear family. That is definitely a drastic change for most of us, which brings many difficulties. Like any…

Understanding stream processing using Flink from bottom-up; cloud services and other platforms provide stream processing solutions (for some, Flink is integrated under the hood). If you miss the basics, this guide is for you. — Our monolith solution does not cope with the increased load of incoming data, and thus it has to evolve. This is the time for the next generation of our product. Stream processing is the new data ingestion paradigm, as compared to the batch processing we’ve implemented so far.

Executing and experiencing, but without shining — what’s the point? Is it better to quit and try another activity than being mediocre? — My son has a weekly rugby training. It started when he requested to try out rugby after watching the last Rugby World Cup, and I jumped on the wagon as I saw an opportunity to instil some discipline in him. …

The book Good to Great lists six concepts that have led companies to surpass their competitors and excel; can individuals benefit from the same ideas too? — The book Good to Great (by Jim Collins), was hiding at my library for almost a decade. Back then, Elbit Systems, the company I’m working at in the last decade, has handed out this book to all graduates of a Team Leads course. It was forgotten and blended with my…

Reviewing practices to implement and retain AWS S3 security using S3 Access Management, S3 encryption methods, and monitoring tools — I am an avid follower of AWS Online Tech Talks YouTube channel. It is a useful way to keep being updated with new or existing AWS features and services; I find it helpful to refresh and retain knowledge. Recently I encountered a webinar about AWS S3 security, which triggered me…