Photo credit Earlier this year, I received a new work laptop with the recent Apple silicon chip (versus Intel chip). The new M1 has been critically examined with avid enthusiasm and criticism, so I wasn’t sure what my outcome would be. Thus far, it’s been positive, and I really haven’t noticed too much disruption in my work. Things have been faster, but I’m not sure whether to entirely attribute that new chip itself, or just the new machine, in general.

Photo credit I created a demo project a couple of years ago that included a lot of technical setup - containers, data import, queries, and such. I presented it for a conference or two, and while it was one of my favorite projects, it was a lot of preparation for the live demo. I recently rediscovered the project, and submitted it to a couple of conferences. It got accepted, so I needed to upgrade the versions of all the software.

Photo credit You may have heard quite a bit of buzz around reactive programming or reactive principles in recent months or years. Some people say it is the future, while others prefer their existing monoliths. So what is all the fuss actually about? What is reactive? Is it beneficial? As with all things in life, it depends. :) Remember, that technical decisions are often large investments of time - resources to create it and/or maintain for lengths of time.