--- title: "Advancing Excel as a programming environment?" publication: "StatusCode Weekly" issue: 315 published_at: "2021-05-05" canonical_url: "https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/315" --- Plus Nginx finally overtakes Apache httpd. | #​315 — May 5, 2021 [Web Version](https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/315) StatusCode Weekly What's happening in software development, ops, platforms and tools. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/md59t0d2wa9rlqrozypu.jpg)](https://blubrry.com/microsoftresearch/76856095/120-advancing-excel-as-a-programming-language-with-andy-gordon-and-simon-peyton-jones/) ▶[Advancing Excel as a Programming Language](https://blubrry.com/microsoftresearch/76856095/120-advancing-excel-as-a-programming-language-with-andy-gordon-and-simon-peyton-jones/) — Andy Gordon and Simon Peyton Jones (yes, he of Haskell fame) discuss Excel’s unusual journey as a programming environment, the new [LAMBDA function](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ultimatae-excel-worksheet-function/), and a future where Excel is _“the first language for budding programmers.”_ _(40-minutes)_ Microsoft Research podcast 💡 Not in the mood for a podcast? I get it. This look at [Excel's history of research collaborations](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/innovation-by-and-beyond-the-numbers-a-history-of-research-collaborations-in-excel/) covers similar ground in written form. [What Serverless Computing Is and Should Become: The Next Phase of Cloud Computing](https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/5/252179-what-serverless-computing-is-and-should-become/fulltext) — Leaning on some of the prescient writing on cloud computing back in 2010, the authors make the case for ‘serverless computing’ being a second phase of cloud computing in contrast to ‘serverful’ computing. This is a pretty good high level overview of serverless as a phenomenon. ACM [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/d30f70c3.jpg)](https://tsdb.co/time-series-details-blog) [👋 The What, Why, and How of Time-Series Databases](https://tsdb.co/time-series-details-blog) — Time-series databases are the fastest growing database category – but what are they? [Get a primer on what time-series data is](https://tsdb.co/time-series-details-blog), when and why “normal” databases aren’t enough, and ways to get started. Timescale sponsor [A Brief History of Rust at Facebook](https://engineering.fb.com/2021/04/29/developer-tools/rust/) — Facebook explains why it’s embracing Rust and, into the bargain, announces [it has joined the Rust Foundation](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2021/04/29/facebook-joins-rust-foundation/) at its highest tier. Facebook Engineering - In 2009 Nginx had 3.7% of the market and Apache httpd was at 73%, but W3Techs claims the tables have turned with [Nginx growing past a declining Apache.](https://w3techs.com/blog/entry/nginx_is_now_the_most_popular_web_server_overtaking_apache) Eagle eyed readers will notice the even more rapid growth of Cloudflare though.. - Amazon has [introduced CloudFront Functions](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-cloudfront-functions-run-your-code-at-the-edge-with-low-latency-at-any-scale/), basically another 'serverless at the edge' platform, a la [Cloudflare Workers.](https://workers.cloudflare.com/) What about Lambda@Edge, you say? They explain the difference, but we'll cover it in [Serverless Status](https://serverless.email/) on Friday too :-) - Google wants you to know [Go(lang) is powering enterprise developers](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/go-powering-enterprise-developers-developer-survey-results) and adoption is growing. - Skipping Docker Desktop updates is now a paid 'Pro' feature, [it seems](https://twitter.com/moyix/status/1388586550682861568). - [Logica is a logic programming language](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2021/04/logica-organizing-your-data-queries.html) Google is working on as a way to compile Datalog-like code down to SQL queries. # Tutorials, Opinions and Stories 📖 [Hosting SQLite Databases on Github Pages (or Any Static File Host)](https://phiresky.github.io/blog/2021/hosting-sqlite-databases-on-github-pages/) — A clever bit of hacking around here. [sql.js](https://github.com/sql-js/sql.js/) provides an SQLite client in the browser but the author created a virtual file system to fetch chunks of remotely hosted SQLite databases over HTTP. Some interesting potential here, I think. Phiresky ['Please Fix The AWS Free Tier Before Somebody Gets Hurt'](https://cloudirregular.substack.com/p/please-fix-the-aws-free-tier-before) — There really does need to be more protection against running up a large unexpected bill. Forrest Brazeal [Beta Console: Discover 100+ Developer Tool Beta Programs](https://console.dev/betas/?ref=status) — A live list of every new developer tool beta program and early access release. Console.dev sponsor ▶[What's Next? The Future of Node.js](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrnToZP47Ro) — A 27-minute session by Red Hat and IBM’s Joe Sepi, Michael Dawson and Bethany Griggs on tracking what’s coming up in the Node world. NearForm ['We Need to Talk About Your Q3 Roadmap'](https://larahogan.me/blog/we-need-to-talk-about-your-q3-roadmap/) — The protracted changes and upheaval of the past year have burnt a lot of people out, says Lara, so if you’re in a position to tweak the Q3 roadmap, maybe it’s not quite time to double down on the workload just yet. Lara Hogan [Build An HTTPS-Intercepting JavaScript Proxy in 30 Seconds Flat](https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/javascript-mitm-proxy-mockttp/) — Node and [mockttp](https://www.npmjs.com/package/mockttp) do the heavy lifting. Tim Perry [Kubernetes The Hard Way: Setting Up Kubernetes Without Scripts](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way) — This helpful guide has been around _years_ (we featured it in [issue 85](https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/85)!) but has now been updated to Kubernetes 1.21 standards. Kelsey Hightower [Load Balancing and Auto Scaling with HAProxy](https://blog.stefan-koch.name/2021/05/02/load-balancing-auto-scaling-open-source-haproxy) Stefan Koch [How Airbnb Achieved Metric Consistency at Scale](https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/how-airbnb-achieved-metric-consistency-at-scale-f23cc53dea70) Robert Chang [Why Replit Built Its Own DNS Infrastructure](https://blog.replit.com/dns) repl.it # Code and Tools 🔧 [usql 0.9: A Universal CLI for Databases](https://github.com/xo/usql) — A CLI tool (written in Go) for working with Postgres, SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite3, Oracle Database, CockroachDB, and [many more.](https://github.com/xo/usql#database-support) A database Swiss Army knife, if you will. [v0.9.0](https://github.com/xo/usql/releases/tag/v0.9.0) adds command autocomplete, a `\copy` command to move data between databases, and more. Kenneth Shaw [Better Together? AWS SAM and AWS CDK](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/better-together-aws-sam-and-aws-cdk/) — AWS has announced a public preview of AWS Serverless Application Model CLI (AWS SAM CLI) support for local development and testing of AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) projects. Great news if you’re more a CDK person than a CloudFormation person. Eric Johnson (AWS) [Book a Demo. Ship Fast. Rest Easy. LaunchDarkly](https://learn.launchdarkly.com/demo/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=21q1-cooperpress) LaunchDarkly sponsor [htui: A Heroku Terminal User Interface](https://github.com/PierreKieffer/htui) — A terminal app for managing Heroku apps and dynos. Pierre Kieffer [tfquery: Run SQL Queries on Terraform Infrastructure](https://github.com/mazen160/tfquery) — Lets you “ask questions that are hard to answer.” Mazin Ahmed [Datanymizer: A Database Anonymizer with Flexible Rules](https://evrone.com/datanymizer) — Written in Rust, this tool offers in-flight template-driven data anonymization for Postgres (only, for now - MySQL support is on the way). [GitHub repo](https://github.com/datanymizer/datanymizer). Evrone [Hurl.it: An Online Tool for Making Custom HTTP Requests (is Back)](https://www.hurlit.com/) — The history is arguably more interesting the tool, given it was first created in 2009 by Chris Wanstrath (co-founder of GitHub) and Leah Culver ([also famous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Culver)) for a Rails hackathon. Hurl [Cinder: Instagram's Performance Oriented Fork of CPython](https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder) Facebook Incubator [New Relic Open Sources Pixie, a Kubernetes In-Cluster Observability Platform](https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-relic-open-sources-pixie-its-kubernetes-native-in-cluster-observability-platform/) Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (ZDNet) [QEMU 6.0.0 Released](https://www.qemu.org/2021/04/30/qemu-6-0-0/) 📭 **Got a new email?** You can [change your address here.](https://weekly.statuscode.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) --- **Bored of us?** [Click here to stop getting StatusCode Weekly.](https://weekly.statuscode.com/leave/*|UID|*) --- **Got a link for us?** Reply and tell us. We can't include everything but we'll look at anything you send. Thanks! --- **Want to sponsor?** Email `[kristina@cooperpress.com](mailto:kristina@cooperpress.com)` for details. --- Published by Cooper Press Ltd. 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