EP133: API vs SDK
This week’s system design refresher:
Why is Kubernetes Popular | What is Kubernetes? (Youtube video)
API vs SDK
How does Terraform turn Code into Cloud?
HTTP Status Code You Should Know
Top 5 Most-Used Deployment Strategies
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Why is Kubernetes Popular | What is Kubernetes?
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API vs SDK
API (Application Programming Interface) and SDK (Software Development Kit) are essential tools in the software development world, but they serve distinct purposes:
API: An API is a set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications and services to communicate with each other.
It defines how software components should interact.
Facilitates data exchange and functionality access between software components.
Typically consists of endpoints, requests, and responses.
SDK: An SDK is a comprehensive package of tools, libraries, sample code, and documentation that assists developers in building applications for a particular platform, framework, or hardware.
Offers higher-level abstractions, simplifying development for a specific platform.
Tailored to specific platforms or frameworks, ensuring compatibility and optimal performance on that platform.
Offer access to advanced features and capabilities specific to the platform, which might be otherwise challenging to implement from scratch.
The choice between APIs and SDKs depends on the development goals and requirements of the project.
Over to you: Which do you find yourself gravitating towards – APIs or SDKs – Every implementation has a unique story to tell. What's yours?
How does Terraform turn Code into Cloud?
There are multiple stages in a Terraform workflow:
Write Infrastructure as Code
Define resources, providers, and configurations in Terraform configuration files.
Use variables, modules, and functions to make the code reusable and maintainable.
Integrate with Terraform community registries for ready-to-use modules.Terraform Plan
Preview the changes Terraform will make to the infrastructure by running “terraform plan”. It can be triggered as part of a CI/CD pipeline.
Terraform compares the desired state defined in the configuration file with the current state in the state file.Terraform Apply
Run “terraform apply” to create, update, or delete resources based on the plan.
Terraform makes API calls to the specified providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, etc) to provision the resources.
The state file is updated to reflect the new state of the infrastructure.Infrastructure Ready
Terraform state file acts as a single source of truth for the current state of the infrastructure.
State file enables version control and collaboration between team members for future changes.
Over to you: Have you used Terraform in your projects?
HTTP Status Code You Should Know
The response codes for HTTP are divided into five categories:
Informational (100-199)
Success (200-299)
Redirection (300-399)
Client Error (400-499)
Server Error (500-599)
These codes are defined in RFC 9110. To save you from reading the entire document (which is about 200 pages), here is a summary of the most common ones:
Over to you: HTTP status code 401 is for Unauthorized. Can you explain the difference between authentication and authorization, and which one does code 401 check for?
Top 5 Most-Used Deployment Strategies
- Big Bang Deployment
- Rolling Deployment
- Blue-Green Deployment
- Canary Deployment
- Feature Toggle
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If you don't know the difference you should consider a different career.
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