It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end
~ Ernest Hemmingway 🚂

Intro 👒

Attending the Open IoT Europe Summit (Edinburgh) was an amazing experience. I returned from Europe just a couple of days ago. Yep, Edinburgh is an amazing city, filled with kind people: That made the Open IoT Summit extra special, on top of the technical agenda that was packed with exciting presentations, working sessions, and discussions! 🚀

The EdgeX Foundry open-source project—it’s hosted by The Linux Foundation—is going places, so it’s especially gratifying that a substantial chunk of my waking hours go (as a committer on EdgeX) into the fun work of helping change the world of IoT as we know it today 😅 📫 📡 📺 📬 📮 📭 📟 📬 🕙 📭 🚜 🚁 📬 🛁 🚑 📭 🚃 🚝 📬 🎤 🎮 📫 🎰 📬 😎

(Okay, so that is a lot of emoticons right there: Seldom do I get carried away like so, but then again, this is heady stuff and I wanted to get across the essence, if you will, of the variety of IoT experiences in their many hues and shapes; it’s all right, I say, plus nobody has complained so far).

Well, whether it was the IoT Summit or the alluring Edinburgh surroundings—likely a combination of the two—that did it, I was inspired to write up some light verses one evening in Edinburgh when I had an idle hour or two to pass in the comfort of my pleasant hotel room. Today, I added a handful more verses—yo, someone stop Akram from writing even more while you still can, someone, please!—and which I unabashedly offer here 💠

And what good would be a blog post that did not have at least an accompanying picture or two? 📷

I jest not, so all you bonnie lassies and laddies, find yer pictures right after the verses that now follow, because this yin*—when you are ready, go to the end for a translation of this and a handful of similar, inimitably Scottish words and phrases—is as good as it gets around here in our (Programming Digressions) digs 👕

Yer Edinburgh Ode to Microservices 🎻

They ask, in all seriousness, this innocent question,
“Will my microservices forever remain performant?”
They might as well, instead, ask this question,
“Will production problems evermore remain dormant?” 🐻

But first—and curiously for some—we now unabashedly switch to (non-alternating) pairs of verses,
So there, ‘cuz the first four lines atop have already warranted much juggles and rehearses! 🎪

Oh, laddie, so you say that some of yer microservices are on fire,
Yo, you should have alerted me right away for something so dire! 🌋

But have no fear, to the rescue will come tracing,
And handily solve the problem yer facing 👺

Do tell me—please do—that you’ve already instrumented yer source code,
If not, all is still not lost, no laddie it isn’t, and yes, that’s me doon the road 🚴

Anyway, hey, hey, hey now! I ain’t calling anyone an eejit** or that they be straying into the land of weed,
Aye, I hear you, lassie: Other, higher-priority matters had beckoned, meanwhile, and “you’re a long time deid”*** 🍁

All I be saying is that when it comes to monitoring systems with many a wee—and occasionally waylaid—moving part,
It would be best if all components communicate in the same, simple ways, lest hopes of tracing them do depart! 🙈

Let’s divine what ails your darling system on which you have plainly showered much care,
Though, as I understand it, for it’s upkeep and instrumentation you did not quite prepare 🐜

All is not lost because—with your lovely workflows in place—you can still do stuff to monitor and estimate,
Aye, mate, surely, to take a message-oriented perspective, you need to monitor yer message-flow rate 💼

There’s nothing quite like getting eyeballs to peer into the workings of your application,
That is, should you wish to avoid sleepless nights and many a similar complication 😴

You see, we expect great things from the exciting microservices revolution,
They are, after all, the next step in the remarkable SOA*** evolution 🐳

Microservices, to be sure, have emerged from the molten-pit kindled by flames of a brave new world,
Arrr, domain-driven design, continuous delivery, and systems at scale, to use but a few bonnie word 🌞

The clamor for scaling, resilience, ease-of-deployment, and composability verily could not be left unaddressed,
And was answered—in the shape of wee bonnie microservices of course!—by a legion of developers, all self-possessed 😎

Aye, but there be no silver bullet, lassie, so mark those words as you merrily go down that road,
Noo***** go on, don’t you be looking at me with them forlornly moist eyes: yes, this was the ode! 👡

Translation Of Scottish Words And Phrases 🐝

* Yin: 

One ⛩

** Eejit:

Idiot 👻

*** “You’re a long time deid”:

**** SOA:

***** Noo:

Now⏳

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people 📚
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Oh, the joy, the joy of writing, a joy so intense, so pure, so all-absorbing and free and all-encompassing, flooding the soul in mystical ecstasy, elevating and sanctifying, infusing beauty in the humblest subjects and a purpose in the most wayward life 💰
~ Anais Nin (in her Diary 2, pg. 8) The Quotable Anais Nin: 365 Quotations with Citations (Sky Blue Press)

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in it! 🏄

~ William Shakespeare (in The Tempest)

If you want to talk about Nature, you’re going to talk about something complicated and dirty, and therefore at first approximations, ever increasing in accuracy 📈
~ Richard P. Feynman, in The Quotable Feynman (Princeton University Press)

Explaining Metaphysics to the nation–
I wish he would explain his Explanation 😉
~ Lord Byron (from Don Juan: Dedication) 

[Beverly Hills is so exclusive]…even the police have an unlisted telephone number 🙊
~ Morey Amsterdam

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds 🏰
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about 😿
~ Oscar Wilde

Knowledge he shall unwind
Through victories of the mind,
Till, clambering at the cradle-side,
He dreams himself his mother’s pride,
All knowledge lost in trance
Of sweeter ignorance.’  🎬

~ W. B. Yeats

‘Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
~ Thomas Campbell 🏀