The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source Kaizen! Mop-up job (Friends)
Oct 24, 2025
The hosts dive into the post-launch excitement of Pipely, highlighting their Denver experience and the challenges faced with CDN performance. They discuss the innovative caching improvements that dramatically boosted response times. The conversation shifts to the future of video standards and the trade-offs of content distribution options. They also touch on community-building initiatives, including the Make It Work Club, where smart home anecdotes and home lab projects spark lively discussions. All this unfolds amidst humor and camaraderie!
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Launch, Lunch, And A Hidden Outage
- Gerhard launched Pipely on stage, then walked to lunch and a hike while under-provisioned instances later spiked CPU and caused slow site behavior.
- Because they had a blue-green setup, rolling back DNS restored service within minutes and avoided a visible outage.
Always Use Blue‑Green Deploys
- Always deploy new systems in parallel (blue-green) so you can roll back quickly if problems arise.
- Use DNS or traffic split to shift load gradually and revert instantly when instances under-provision.
Rattlesnake Near‑Miss Mirrors Production Risk
- While the CDN was misbehaving on stage, the team enjoyed a Red Rocks hike and nearly walked into a rattlesnake, paralleling the production near-miss.
- Matt Johnson averted the snake encounter, and the team returned to find they could roll back DNS to restore service.