Extract. Transform. Read.A newsletter from Pipeline: Your Data Engineering ResourceHi past, present or future data professional! Data engineering can be dangerous; ok—not, like, physically, but by building and maintaining data infrastructure, data engineers are given a surprising amount of access and responsibility. Every commit, table alteration and deletion must be made with care. It took 2 years, but I finally learned a shortcut to make developing SQL staging tables less risky and more efficient. Even seemingly minor mistakes like joining on the wrong key can result in losing days or months of valuable data, which can be equal to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in revenue visibility. Outside of code mistakes, not paying attention to logistic factors like vendor contracts and API usage can not only result in downtime, in a worst-case scenario it can lead to an all-out blackout. If the stakes sound ominous, I’d suggest examining the root of your hesitation to work more confidently and efficiently—it may even be the code itself. There is a happy medium between freely building data pipelines and using the appropriate guard rails. As long as you take your time and don’t commit code directly to the main branch then you can do data engineering safely and avoid bursting your pipelines. For those who are anti-virus minded, here are this week’s links as plain text:
P.S. Want to learn how to go from code to automated pipeline? Take advantage of my 100% free email course: Deploy Google Cloud Functions In 5 Days. Thanks for ingesting, -Zach |
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Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from Pipeline Hi past, present or future data professional! It’s hardly controversial to say debugging is everyone’s least favorite part of programming. One widely-used debugging method is the rubber duck method, popularized in Pragmatic Programming, which suggests you talk through your code, aloud, to an inanimate object. Being able to speak intelligently about what prompted a technical decision is one of the most underrated data engineering skills. One...
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from Pipeline Hi past, present or future data professional! If you’re like me, in school you were always envious of your classmates that may not have applied themselves academically but were “good test takers.” Fortunately (for them at least), these folks would likely do well on what is quietly becoming the SAT of programming the GCA, or General Coding Assessment. Now, the General Coding Assessment isn’t any kind of board certifying test like the Bar...
Extract. Transform. Read. A newsletter from Pipeline Hi past, present or future data professional! While many tech-oriented companies have (in one way or another) reneged on remote working arrangements, my employer made an extreme gesture to demonstrate its commitment to the ongoing office-less lifestyle: It removed an entire floor of our two-floor New Jersey office space. Other companies, like Spotify, have unveiled slogans like “Our employees aren’t children. Spotify will continue working...