2021 Best of the Best Blog Posts
We ranked the top Capital One Tech blog posts of 2021 – here’s what we learned
Loved it or hated it, 2021 was quite the year. At Capital One Tech we’re proud of the work we published and the amazing technologists we collaborated with in 2021. As we look back on the year that was, we know some of our content may have gotten lost in the social media shuffle. It’s okay, we’re all busy. So we created a cheat sheet profiling some of our best pieces from 2021. Enjoy!
Most Viewed Article of 2021
My Guide to CRUSHING the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam by Maddy Pet
Keeping our skills fresh is an eternally evergreen topic. Especially so in the era of cloud computing, when understanding the ins and outs of AWS is increasingly important to a wider swath of tech roles. In this article, Capital One Principal Engineer Maddy Pet shares how she studied for -- and passed -- the AWS Cloud Practitioner Exam.
Want to read more of Maddy’s work? Check out her article on Starting Out with AWS & DevOps - 10 Tips From an Expert.
Most Recommended Article of 2021
How to Avoid Coupling in Microservices Design by Mariam Rajabi
How can we avoid distributed monoliths and build microservices that are truly loosely coupled? In this article, Capital One Senior Software Engineer Mariam Rajabi covers how to minimize implementation coupling, temporal coupling, and deployment coupling in your microservices design.
Two systems are loosely coupled if changes to the design, implementation, or behavior in one won’t cause changes in another. When it comes to microservices, coupling can happen if a change to one microservice enforces an almost immediate change to all other microservices that collaborate with it directly or indirectly.
Most Shared on Social in 2021
Ah, So That’s What’s in My Wallet by Sahana Arya and Alana Alfeche
We love when our work resonates with our readers and they hit that social share button on our content. Our most shared article of 2021 was an explainer on the EMV chip inside your credit card.
Like many others at Capital One, we know what needs to be done to support credit card initiatives, but we were curious about how physical credit cards actually work! Our curiosity propelled us to dig deeper and learn more about this technology. We were fascinated by what we learned about physical credit card technology and figured other software engineers would be interested in learning the same.
Shared almost 300 times on Twitter and LinkedIn, it seems that many of you were equally curious about this credit card chip technology!
Most Articles in a Series
Madhuri "MJ" Jakkaraju is on a roll!
MJ wrote not one, not two, not three, but FIVE articles on how women in tech can approach their career advancement!
You can read parts 1-3 here:
- Establishing Your Professional Brand as Women in Tech
- Approaching Career Advancement as Women in Tech
- Increasing Your Sphere of Influence as Women in Tech
And keep on eye out for parts 4 and 5 later this month:
Most Clicks From Google Search
10 Microservices Best Practices for the Optimal Architecture Design by Sandeep Jandhyala
As far as we know, there’s no engineering problem Google can’t find an answer for… and if not, try AskJeeves.
In 2021 it turns out a lot of you had questions about the best practices for your microservices architecture. This deep dive by Director, Software Engineering Sandeep Jandhyala lays out ten ways to build microservices that are loosely coupled, distributed, and optimized. 10/10 recommend!
Want to read more of Sandeep’s work? Check out the following articles:
Most Successful Pieces by Topic Category
To see the most viewed pieces in each of our content pillars — everything from AI and ML to Cloud to Open Source — check out the links below.
- AI/ML - 10 Common Machine Learning Mistakes and How to Avoid Them by Erik Mueller
- Case Study - Dynamic Design for Routing Customer Calls by Ram Mepperla
- Cloud - Essential Cloud Governance Disciplines and Best Practices by David Leigh
- Culture - Why Pursue Technical Certifications? roundtable featuring Madhuri "MJ" Jakkaraju, Kelly Brown, Lakshmi Krishnan Raman, and Richard Shi
- Data - Three Tips for Harnessing Snowflake’s Data Cloud by Salim Syed
- DevOps - Using CloudFormation to Create DynamoDB Global Tables by Kelly Brown
- Mobile - Getting Started With iOS UI Testing by Rob Whitacker
- Open Source - Data Profiler - An Open Source Solution to Explain Your Data by Grant Eden
- Software Engineering - The Five Principles of Successful Software - by Jon Bodner
- Web - When To Use GraphQL and How It Compares to REST by Sandeep Jandhyala
Congrats again to all of our 2021 writers!
...And a special shout out and thank you to all of YOU, our loyal readers. We can’t wait to show you what we’re writing in 2022.
Stay tuned for more from Capital One Tech!