A Book Review, Summer School, and Blog Updates
Plus a shameless plug
Book Review: We, Programmers by Robert C. Martin
I thoroughly enjoyed reading We, Programmers by Robert C. Martin, aka Uncle Bob Martin. The book contains an introduction titled “Setting the Stage,” followed 3 main parts:
“The Giants” traces individuals (legends) of computing starting with the ideas and work of Charles Babbage, follows the work of David Hilbert, Alan Turing, von Neumann, Grace Hopper, John Backus, Edsger Dijkstra, Kristen Nygaard, Ole-Johan Dahl, John Kemeny, Thomas Kurtz, Judith Allen, Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, and Dennis Ritchie.
“The Knee of the Curve” follows the history of the machines starting in the 1960’s and continuing through 2023.
In this context, “The Future” offers uncle Bob’s thoughts on where we, programmers, are headed from here. No spoilers. I found chapter 17 (again, in context - meaning I don’t think I would have felt the same had I read chapter 17 immediately after receiving the book) compelling and well-written.
Recommended.
Shameless Plug
My daughter, Emma Leonard, recently interviewed me. May 2025 marks an anniversary for me, I am “Celebrating 50 Years in Software” this month! Thanks, Emma, for suggesting the idea and for doing such a wonderful job interviewing an old coder like me. Love you, Baby Grrl!
Summer School
<ad>
Summer 2025 is right around the corner. Why not join the architects at Enterprise Data & Analytics for some skill-building training - and save money (see below) while learning?
Register today to learn more about Azure Data Factory and Fabric Data Factory!
Use the coupon code “eodsubstack” at checkout and save 10% just because you read my newsletter.
</ad>
New Blog Posts
Configure Azure Security for the Fabric Data Factory REST API
“Configure Azure Security for the Fabric Data Factory REST API” is part 1 / 2 - and mini-series, if you will - of a larger series I’ve been writing for over a year. The larger series is titled Data Engineering Execution Orchestration Frameworks in Fabric Data Factory Series, and that series stalled while I contemplated how to overcome three obstacles:
Configure security to use a (hopefully) non-expiring method to authenticate connection to the Fabric ReST API (which is the topic of this post).
Automatically populate table containing Fabric Data Factory pipeline metadata, so that I could…
Dynamically execute Fabric Data Factory pipelines from said metadata table.
(I have not yet blogged about my solution. Patience, padawans…)
Fabric Data Factory Pipeline Execution From Azure Data Factory
“Fabric Data Factory Pipeline Execution From Azure Data Factory” is part 2 / 2 of the mini-series. I owe a debt of gratitude for both of these posts to my fellow data engineer-blogger, Koen Verbeeck (LinkedIn | @Ko_Ver), for showing me a way to overcome the aforementioned obstacles 1 and 2.
In this post, we put the security configuration to work, crafting a basic Azure Data Factory pipeline to execute a basic Fabric Data Factory pipeline.
Execution Orchestration must needs follow.
Join me for Data Engineering Fridays at 12:00 PM ET Most Fridays
If you’re interested in metadata-driven data engineering execution orchestration frameworks, I’m live most Fridays at 12:00 PM ET for Data Engineering Fridays. Since mid-January 2025, I’ve been designing and building - live, on-air, making mistakes, changing my mind, trying-failing-trying-again, right there in front of God and everybody - a metadata-driven Azure Data Factory-based data engineering execution orchestration framework.
Tinkering with AnalyticsCreator
I was recently able to view a demo of a data engineering code automation / generation platform named AnalyticsCreator. I share my thoughts on this innovative and time-saving tool in a post titled “Tinkering with AnalyticsCreator.”
Spoiler alert: I am impressed!