In this podcast, Johnny Boursiquot, Site Reliability Engineer at Heroku, sat down with InfoQ podcast co-host Daniel Bryant and discussed topics that included: why Go is a useful language for building Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) style applications; how Heroku implement the role of Site Reliability Engineer (SRE); and why the ability to teach is such a valuable skill.

Why listen to this podcast:

- Go is a useful language for building Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) style applications. The ability to build Go applications into a static binary reduces the need for dependency management, and the quick runtime and application start time is good for initiation and scaling

- The FaaS development toolchain has improved over the years. Many cloud providers now provide local runtimes, e.g. AWS SAM Local, and service simulators, e.g. LocalStack. Testing in production is facilitated by the ability to do dark launches and canary releasing at the ingress/API gateway

- Developing “serverless” applications typically does not remove the need for operational expertise on a development team. Designing systems appropriately and getting the most out of the runtime (with minimal cost) requires knowledge of the underlying infrastructure components

- The role of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) looks different across practically every organisation. The Heroku SRE team have adapted well-established patterns and practices into their roles. They act as “diplomats”, working closely with product teams to share knowledge around operational best practices

- The ability to teach is a valuable skill, regardless of your job. Teaching people to code or to embrace important operational principles is extremely rewarding. - Engineers who teach must seek to escape the pull of their ego; by focusing on the needs of the people you are teaching, much more progress can be made.

More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2UV0tqK

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