Movie Database App: Feature Flags

So, I’ve been working little bits here and there on the movie database app, largely working on a feature flags library since my last article. This was inspired by this article, discussing whether to “make or buy” a feature flag library. Despite the article coming to the conclusion that you should pretty much “buy”, I was compelled by it to make my own, something I’d already been thinking about little bits here and there.

So, like I said, I have been working on my own for a while now. And now that I’m getting pretty close to done, I’m thinking about switching to a pre-built solution. I still haven’t fully decided, and if I finish, I’ll write an article about it. But the main reasons for this super short article are to inform you of what I’ve been doing and to link that article, which I think is pretty good.

Also, I’m thinking about revisiting my event bus and making it async, like I originally planned. We’ll see. And I’ll talk to you later!

Movie Database App: IMDb API

Thus begins the real first article in my new Movie Database App series. Today, we’ll start looking at how I’m working with the IMDb API. Keep in mind it’s still a work in progress and could potentially remain that way until the full application is done. For instance, I still don’t have any of the “safety” features put in yet, like timeouts, retries, and “circuit breakers” with maybe backups. Also keep in mind that, while I’ll tell you my process in order when it’s important, I may tell things out of order for clarity.

Start of a New Series: My Movie Database App

Okay, so I’ve wanted to get back into doing blogging and personal programming projects more for a while. I considered making this idea into a new book – and maybe I could a bit, some day – but for now, I’m just going to catalog my journey here.

Subscript Operator Overloading: Python vs Kotlin

Being able to access items in collections using subscripting (i.e. with square brackets, like myCollection[2]) is a really big convenience for me. I hate typing method names for this functionality, especially the boring old get() method. Not only is get() boring, it’s incredibly nondescript. (On a tangent: In my opinion, it would be nice if the “default” name for a method like this was sub() or subscript(), but too few people even know the term “subscript”).

Both Python and Kotlin allow you to use operator overloading in order to get this functionality, and in this article, I’m going to do a medium dive into each one, comparing and contrasting their limitations and how they work.

Don’t Decouple When it Hurts Cohesion

Hello again! I was reading an interesting article yesterday that brought the dichotomy of coupling and cohesion to a whole new understanding for me. Let’s look into it!