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ESPRESSO FRIDAYS

Every once in a while I send hand picked things I've learned. Kind of like your filter to the tech internet. No spam, I promise!

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You’ve been parsing JSON wrong your whole life

You’ve been parsing JSON wrong your whole life This issue is brought to you by: Secure Your AI Future at DevSecCon 2025 Software development is undergoing a seismic shift as AI transforms how we build, deploy, and secure applications. Register for the 1st-ever Global Community Summit on AI Security, covering critical strategies to empower AI innovation without compromising security. Register for DevSecCon 2025 (It’s Free!) Ever opened a massive “.log” file and realized it’s just one long,...

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Postgres is not a database. For years, we’ve been taught to see Postgres as the reliable, open source workhorse for storing our data. Everyone called it "The Toyota of databases", you know... it just works. But to leave it at that is to miss the whole story.Postgres isn’t just a place to put your data, it’s a powerful development platform that can become the core of your entire backend, an operating system (yea, bold) for your application’s stack. Diving deep into its capabilities I learned...

How I Setup Terminal On My Mac To Make It Amazing I often get asked about my "terminal setup", and I try to throw tips but it's never enough. This answer took a long time to compile but I'm glad to share it: A terminal setup from scratch (literal white screen terminal) to multiplexing, color output, auto-completion, history manager, fonts, nerd fonts etc etc etc... I learned that the journey to a “perfect” terminal setup is a personal one, built from years of small, incremental improvements....

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of 12-Factor Apps This issue is brought to you by: Twingate: It's time to ditch your VPN. Keep private resources and internet traffic protected with Zero Trust security tools built for the modern world of work. Start securing your Kubernetes clusters today! The title of this newsletter isn’t just fluff; it points to a fundamental truth in software development. Often, the most expensive problems stem from ignoring a few simple, foundational rules. The...

Custom computer build with blue led lighting

FFmpeg Converts ANYTHING - The Trick Book I Wish I Had This issue is brought to you by: Learn backend development the smart way with boot.dev Use the code DEVOPSTOOLBOX to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. Get Started Today The title of this newsletter isn't an exaggeration. There's a single, free tool that can genuinely convert, create, and manipulate almost any media file you throw at it. It’s the hidden engine powering everything from YouTube, through OBS, online media...

Is Gemini CLI Worth The Hype? This issue is brought to you by: Securing AI agents is now possible with Auth0 . AI agents are reshaping digital experiences. But securing them requires rethinking identity and access controls built for a human-first world. Get Started Today With a new AI coding assistant announced every other week, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the “paradox of choice.” Google entered the game late with its Gemini CLI, but they made a smart move: they made it free and...

I Used Heroku Open Source Alternatives So You Don't Have To This issue is brought to you by: Enjoy fast, secure and reliable web hosting with Hostinger. Use "devopstoolbox" at checkout of extra discounts on op! Start hosting with Hostinger today! I recently went down the rabbit hole of self-hosted application platforms. Just 5 weeks ago I made a video covering Coolify end 2 end.Once that got released (or maybe, because of that?) I started seeing many similar, open source, self-hostable...

SQLite Is the ULTIMATE Choice For 99% of Projects When you need to crack a nut, you grab a nutcracker, not a sledgehammer. So why, when it comes to databases, do so many of us immediately reach for a heavy, complex solution, just because we “feel” it’s right? too much? This simple question changes how you look at building software.The default solution for most developers is to spin up a dedicated database server like MySQL, Postgres, or a NoSQL option. This means dealing with separate running...

I've Been Using AWS Wrong for YEARS... For years, my approach to AWS felt like a battle. As a DevOps engineer and later and architect, building infra always involved a tedious process of carefully building templates and structure, reviewing, deploying, testing and iterating over and over. I’d either spend hours clicking through the console or writing endless infrastructure code, always feeling like I was one misconfiguration away from a headache. It turns out, I was making it much harder than...