It has been more than a year now since I originally deployed my COVID-19 Tracker to a live environment. In the time that it has been in production, I have learned a whole lot, both in terms of maintaining an app in production, and in watching the progression of the pandemic. At the very least, I have definitely come to truly appreciate how essential having something deployed to a live environment is to the learning process of being a good developer.

After multiple previous failed attempts, I am finally starting to get the hang of Apache Airflow and, even with a relatively basic mastery, I have been able to do some pretty interesting things with it. What is Airflow? Apache Airflow is a Python-based tool for scheduling and automating various workflows. It was originally created at AirBnB as an internal tool, and later open-sourced, under the Apache license. It has since become a top-level project at the Apache Foundation.

Very frequently in software development, we find ourselves in a situation where we need to test the functionality and/or performance of a program with random data. This data needs to be: a) seemingly realistic, b) of arbitrary volume, and c) conformant to the logic of our program. How do we solve this problem? While there are a variety of services that do exactly that, those almost always cost money, and if they do have a free version, that comes with some considerable limitations.

Let us be real, for a moment: keeping software up-to-date is critically important, but also often quite a pain. The more software you have installed on your PC, the more true this is. Fortunately, it does not have to be, even on Windows. All you need is: a package manager, a little Python, the Windows Task Scheduler, and a batch file. In a previous post, I wrote about how to easily install and update a Postgres instance on Windows.

This post will be demonstrating how to easily install, configure and update a PostgreSQL instance on Windows, specifically via the Chocolatey package manager. Yes, you can always take the old school route by going to the official Postgres website, and download an installer, followed by clicking through a wizard a bunch of times. However, using a package manager makes it easier to install, and much easier to update regularly. Installing Chocolatey To install Chocolatey, you will first need to open a Powershell terminal, specifically in admin mode.