I was trying to figure out the pattern of new technologies emerging and being replaced over the past decades. I think I have a solution:

https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/the-law-of-burden-elimination-how-to-predict-technology-trends-coming-and-dying-out-bd447ed4318e

If your employer does not allow you to post articles on your personal Medium account, show them my new article:
https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/why-you-should-post-on-medium-on-employees-accounts-aa4c5754ca07

Today is exactly 20 years that I am a programmer professionally. This is the most important text in my life with advice to my younger self and those who want to achieve the same faster. It can save you many years. Please read and share.

https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/advice-to-my-younger-self-and-you-after-20-years-in-programming-a3a2ccc7a942

Thank you for your support, my dear friends! ❤️

The largest hackathon in Russia has deleted all public records of the awards for a few years. No one in the new management could figure out why they were important even when directly pointed at the problem. This teaches us a lot. Here is a checklist of how not to be affected by such neglect:

https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/how-russia-erased-2000-award-records-and-how-to-prevent-this-in-the-future-b8aa81690840

I promised some advice on writing and publishing when I cross 1000 followers on Medium. While I was writing it, it's 2300 already. 🤔
Anyway, here it is: https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/how-i-gained-2000-followers-on-medium-and-how-you-can-do-it-faster-96435042ebf7

It shows crucial charts that are not available on Medium. For them, I wrote a custom script, and it is available on my GitHub.

After my retrospective article, people were asking me how to switch from PHP to another language while minimizing the drop in salary. Here you go:
https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/how-to-switch-from-php-and-to-what-a740623bfae5

Ever wanted to make your backend in Dart? Seen HOWTOs on simple HTTP handlers but still don't know how to make more complex architecture? Here is a tutorial on making just that, end-to-end:
https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/backend-in-dart-creating-a-pub-sub-handler-in-gke-fcd1396f0d6b

Dart 3.3 is out! Go get it with Flutter 3.19.

Traditionally, I was posting an article with new lints for each new Dart version:
3.2: https://medium.com/flutter-senior/the-new-lint-in-dart-3-2-287dbddede51
3.1: https://medium.com/flutter-senior/the-2-new-lints-in-dart-3-1-7ff35434d5f9
3.0: https://medium.com/flutter-senior/the-6-new-lints-in-dart-3-0-bfe174c169d1
2.19: https://medium.com/flutter-senior/the-8-new-lints-in-dart-2-19-765a331139a2
2.18: https://medium.com/flutter-senior/the-3-new-lints-in-dart-2-18-113354ec641e

However, in this version there are no new lints. Dismissed. Good night.

Celebrating the 500 subscribers here. 😇

On this day, 20 years ago, I launched my first commercial website, GetSoft.ru, a software marketplace. I deem this the most useful thing I did for myself in the long run although it failed in a few years. It de-trenches your mind from just coding. It gives the sense that you can start your own thing, a sense of business and economy, which adds to any equation you will have for the rest of your life. I highly recommend doing something like this in a young age.

For ages, I had this slug on my LinkedIn: alexey-inkin-784b7371
I thought that's because just alexey-inkin was busy. Today I checked, and it wasn't! So I changed to this:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexey-inkin/

Go check yours if it's long and messy. Simple URLs are important for marketing.

It's a free feature. Here's how to change your URL:
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a542685/manage-your-public-profile-url?lang=en

Also, your default URL will always be with you, so no one will get 404.

Are you writing CI/CD workflows for Google Cloud? Here's one thing you should know about. If you have a permission to grant anything, it's never limited to the permissions you have yourself.

I'm now writing the second part of my article on the backend in Dart, and this came as a surprise to me, so I took the time to write this out:
https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/the-3-permissions-in-google-cloud-you-can-escalate-to-do-anything-f312bb8ab5e7

My 24th Dart package:
https://pub.dev/packages/wif_workaround

A workaround to use Workload Identity Federation with googleapis_auth, calls gcloud CLI to get the access token.

You normally use googleapis_auth package to connect to Google Cloud services. It works with service account keys and metadata server, but not with local keys obtained with Workload Identity Federation.

This package allows you to use Workload Identity Federation if you have locally installed gcloud CLI.

Part 2. Earlier we made a simple container and deployed it manually. Time to automate things and take it to the production level:

https://medium.com/@alexey.inkin/making-github-workflows-to-deploy-to-gke-with-terraform-and-workload-identity-federation-074ac83b899c

This tutorial:
- Creates persistent environments.
- Uses Terraform for declarative management of cloud resources.
- Uses GitHub Workflows to automate deployment.
- Creates transient copies of the system to run tests on them.
- Uses Workload Identity Federation to avoid any use of service account keys.

DevOps is surprisingly hard, and it took me 1.5 months to learn and write this. These GitHub workflows failed 108 times for me while debugging, so this should save you tons of try and errors.

❓ What would be the best way to implement CI/CD for flutter apps?

🅰️ The most tricky part in CI/CD is automated testing. Otherwise, just building and deploying is relatively easy. Then, testing on the Flutter's part isn't hard. In most apps, all you need is click through some use cases. Much harder is the backend to which your app talks. You typically need a copy of the system with its storage, message queues, and all the rest. What of that you can isolate or mock varies widely. So start your CI/CD with the backend. When it's done, its specific architecture usually will hint a straightforward way to add Flutter or any other client on top of it.

See the recent article for the example for the backend.

I made a tiny package to dump the last HTTP request. It helps a lot in debugging failed requests.
https://pub.dev/packages/http_log

My new article: The 2 new lints in Dart 3.4.
https://medium.com/p/5596edbf3746