We live in an unprecedented era of customizability of physical goods and services. One problem that still appears relatively unsolved is the proliferation of settings. I will speak about software, since it’s the domain I’m …
My next instalment on distributed systems after Elasticsearch and Redis is Apache Kafka. The intended audience, as usual, is absolute beginners with distributed systems. I’ve spent a significant amount of time on doing the diagrams to …
On my quest to make shorter videos on programming fundamentals, I’m kicking this initiative with a video explaining the mechanics of compiled and interpreted programming languages and the trade-offs associated with each. The presentation inside …
One of the most interesting datasets I have is my own Apple Health data, which I’ve always liked playing with. Some years ago, I did share a post analyzing the data using Jupyter Notebook. Today is …
After a month and half of making, in this 3-part series I go over the How Video Streaming Works, if you find any of the videos useful – like & subscribe! Terminology HTTP Live Streaming …
People often ask me why do I blog and how much time do I spend doing it? I often reply that some posts take 3 months to write or longer and I see shock on …
Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of people (novices and experienced developers) are not using even the popular shortcuts in Windows File Explorer, which prompted me to share some tips and tricks I’ve learned over the …
In this post we’ll explore what is GraphQL and when it makes sense to use it. We’ll map an existing SQL database (SQLite) with an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) system – SQLAlchemy in Python, and …
This setup guide is intended for people starting up web development and some of the best tips & tricks when working with Visual Studio Code in 2020. Nowadays, you have quite a few options for …
It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog post, let alone a one building a new tiny game. So the latest addition is https://pong.ivaylopavlov.com as you can probably guess, it’s a simple game …
I’ve received a very positive feedback after the Elasticsearch presentation, available here. It’s been almost exactly a year, since I published it. Recently, I’ve been exploring a different type of data store, that’s all the …
Since writing Setting up Oh-my-Zsh, I’ve levelled up in terms of shell usage and customization. I’ve also switched to Windows as my primary development environment due to variety of reasons. The main one being that …
I’ve been contemplating recently if there is value in legacy code and if so, what is it? It’s the result of inheriting a new codebase coupled with more free time at home due to social …
I was looking for a project to improve my knowledge of the most significant ReactJS feature in recent time – hooks, alongside the new bits in TypeScript 3.7. Something relatively simple, in the spirit of …
I was curious to see if over time the type of music I listen to has changed. Have I started listening to quieter genres or more bass-heavy tracks? After a small search, it turned out …
This year during 4-8th November 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal, I had the pleasure of attending the WebSummit Conference. To my pleasant surprise, I won a free ticket via the open source initiative on their website. …
Welcome to Part IV of the series. If this is your first encounter with this collection of articles, it might be worth having a read through the first three parts. All of which are relatively …
Let me start with a question, how many software engineers do you know that enjoy Frontend development? One question has always baffled me – Why is frontend universally unloved? Let’s throw a few suggestions: Is …
After the success of the post “Building a Python REST API with Flask”, a worthy follow up is how to go from sending static data to streaming data and putting it in a React Table …
The entire software engineering community has focused on converting their Python 2.7 code to Python 3. From Jan 1st 2020, Python 2.7 will no longer be officially supported. But beyond gaining ability to use a …
I often get asked why markets behave the way they do. If I had an exact answer to this question, I’d be a billionaire. Hundreds of books are written on this topic, each with its …
For the first time ever, I attended the Python Software Foundation’s PyCon Conference in Cleveland, USA. I was nothing short of impressed, a great variety of talks and keynotes and very friendly people. I consider …
In the past two or so months, I’ve immersed myself in the world of Apache Lucene and Elasticsearch. I wanted to share the knowledge I’ve gathered and have distilled it in less than 20 slides. …
What is a REST API? It stands for REpresentational State Transfer. This means each unique URL is a representation of an object. It’s one of the web services that allows for data transport, other notable …
If you are interested in Technical Analysis of Financial Markets, the below books are the ones I can recommend as a good foundation for understanding of the field. Believe me when I say I have …
Welcome to Part III of the coder to software engineer series. You might be interested in reading the first two posts – Part I and Part II. Optimization is mostly useless You would meet a …
It’s not once I’ve reiterated that predictions are a loser’s game. I don’t expect this to be any different here. I’ve pondered on this opinion piece for more than two months. It’s by far the …
If you just want to play the Sudoku game, it’s available here: sudoku.ivaylopavlov.com I was wondering what game to make next using ReactJS to solidify my knowledge with the framework. The choice was between a …
This post is an evolution of Introduction to Computer Science in 5 Amazing Books. You will see a skew towards object-oriented programming towards the end of the list, which I confess to in advance. The …
There is no other language that divides the software development community today as much as JavaScript does. It’s a language with rich history and the way it got to the state it is in today is …
Originally this post was about to be explaining all investment fund types and their differences so I created the diagram above after a month of research. After writing more than 15 000 words and being …
I often like to contemplate on what professions will the future hold. In 10 years time, we’ll definitely have jobs nobody could foresee today. Predicting the future is tough. Ask Jeff Bezos who says that …
If you want to play the game – Ivo Peg Solitaire, it’s available here: http://pegsolitaire.ivaylopavlov.com On my journey to try out new technologies and languages, the next stop after the IvoTetris Game built in Angular and …
This is the continuation of the discoveries I’ve made since switching from coding as a hobby to a profession. If you haven’t read the first post, you can find it here. Text Editors vs IDEs …
When I made the switch from finance to software development, I was doing mostly scripting on small projects, nothing major. Since I started the job, I learned a bunch of very valuable lessons. I didn’t …
Every once in a while I come upon an article or a blog post that I say to my self – “I wish I was the author of that one”. So I decided to share …
As a person who’s always been keen on trying the latest gadgets. In the past 2 years I discovered the almost ultimate nerd-vana – The Smart Home gadgets and gimmicks. So I decided to share my …
The above image is created by Jamie Tate from Rukkus Room and I stumbled upon it randomly on the web. It inspired me to write this blog post, as it resonated deeply with me. With the …
This is by far the most requested post I’ve had from friends. As a person who has been exposed to both sides, people are curious on what my opinion is. I’ll start from the absolute …
If you want to play the end game, It’s available on Desktop only http://tetris.ivaylopavlov.com It’s also playable from Xbox and PS4 in their respective browsers, as it’s pure HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Mobile is currently …
I’m a big fan of TED Talks. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone. Below are the 5 talks that have influenced me most and changed my understanding of the world one way or …
It was not long ago that email ruled the world. A technology invented in 1960s, in my opinion, reigned until the 2010s. Companies made (still are) billions from selling software working on an ancient and …
I’ve set myself to write this Home Theatre Setup Guide, as there is a lot of information on home theatre systems, however none of it is well compiled and to the point or it’s just …
After setting up Oh-My-Zsh as out default shell, the natural flow, goes to set up a multi-screen environment. Nowadays, most of the GUI consoles that comes with Gnome, KDE, etc. have support for tabs, however …
Starting up in Computer Science could be a scary experience for many, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everybody starts somewhere. The below 5 books are my personal favorites that provide high quality knowldege …
Everything started when my flatmate, Stefan, wanted to play Battle City. It’s a very old game with tanks defending their base for NES. It was very popular in the 90s. When I was little I loved …
Let me start by saying I’m a visual learner, so I’ve always had an inclination towards UML graphs and charts. So during one rainy day in London, I decided to aggregate the data from my …
Part II, deserves a follow up XKCD comic. Creating a GitHub account and a Repository Before we proceed forward we’ll need a GitHub account. Open www.github.com and create an account. Then click on the + sign …
Let’s start with a classic XKCD covering the situation. This is the first from a collection of posts of the type “Zero to Hero”. So first things first… What is Git? It’s a version control system …
As a finance geek, I’ve read quite a few books on the topic, below you will find the Top 5 (non-textbook) books that I’ve really enjoyed and believe others would too. Obviously, the list can …