Head in the Cloud
Simon Crowe

Simon Crowe

2 followers

I have experience in backend and cloud engineering. I'm currently working with OpenTofu (AWS), Kubernetes and Python as a platform engineer.

Advent of Code 2024 with Elixir - Part 1: The Good-ish, the Ugly and the Bad

Dec 26, 20246 min read

I tried 2024’s Advent of Code using the functional language Elixir. I didn’t get as far as I did in the previous two years. This was partly due to...

Advent of Code 2024 with Elixir - Part 1: The Good-ish, the Ugly and the Bad

A Taxonomy of HTTP APIs

Oct 19, 20249 min read

Truly, this should be called An Incomplete Taxonomy of HTTP APIs, but I went with the briefer title. It covers the patterns I’ve come across over...

A Taxonomy of HTTP APIs

Python Testing Part 2: Dependency Inversion with Service Functions

Sep 21, 20244 min read

The first article in this series dealt with avoiding excessive use of mocks when testing code that performs I/O. This article deals with service...

Python Testing Part 2: Dependency Inversion with Service Functions

Python Testing Part 1: isolating external calls and minimising mocks

Sep 7, 20247 min read

Mocks are a necessary evil in Python testing. If overused, they essentially become "change detectors", meaning that every time you refactor the...

Python Testing Part 1: isolating external calls and minimising mocks

PR Size Matters

Aug 26, 20243 min read

Most developers, given a choice, would rather review a smaller pull request. It's valuable to foster team agreement about what constitutes an...

PR Size Matters

Don't Call django.shortcuts.reverse in Tests

Aug 10, 20244 min read

This post is based on a bug my team discovered in production a couple of years ago. We had to pin our Django version because a security patch changed...

Don't Call django.shortcuts.reverse in Tests