These days Docker is everywhere! Since this popular, open-source container tool first launched in 2013 it has gone on to revolutionize how we think about deploying our applications. But if you missed the boat with containerization and are left feeling confused about what exactly Docker is and how it can benefit you, then we’ve put together this post to help clear up any confusion you might have.

Mint is a shiny new Elixir package which allows you to make HTTP requests using the HTTP 1 and HTTP 2 protocols. It can transparently handle ALPN (Application Layer Protocol Negotiation), which essentially means that it can figure out if a server uses HTTP2 or HTTP1 on its own. It also comes with an optional dependency on a castore package which verifies the SSL certificates of the servers (that you connect to).

Spark is known as a fast general-purpose cluster-computing framework for processing big data. In this post, we’re going to cover how Spark works under the hood and the things you need to know to be able to effectively perform distributing machine learning using PySpark. The post assumes basic familiarity with Python and the concepts of machine learning like regression, gradient descent, etc.

This past week some of the Scout team had the opportunity to hang out at PyCon USA in Cleveland. This was the first time the Scout APM team had attended PyCon. It was great to spend some time with an awesome swath of the Python community. With a great booth location situated across the aisle from the innovative and fun Slack booth, we had fun getting to know everyone with a solid amount of traffic heading past our booth over the exhibition days.

The 2019 edition of PyCon USA takes place over the next few days in Cleveland, Ohio. Scout is delighted to be there, sharing our APM tool with the Python community. Plus, we'll have great t-shirts and stickers for you, and we love to get geeky - one of our lead product engineers, plus two of our smart support engineers, are working the booth, ready to help you figure out your Python performance problems.

I'm an engineer by trade. I rely on intuition when investigating a slow Django app. I've solved a lot of performance issues over the years and the short cuts my brain takes often work. However, intuition can fail. It can fail hard in complex Django apps with many layers (ex: an SQL database, a NoSQL database, ElasticSearch, etc) and many views. There's too much noise.

Forecasting traffic to your web app is important for capacity planning, but generating a seasonally accurate model of your traffic is pretty daunting.

Using the right Ruby interpreter to run your programs can make all the difference. Unfortunately, it can be tough to find resources about different Ruby interpreter options, or about how to choose the right one.

Interested in Learning the Elixir language? Join us in this entertaining Elixir tutorial and overview. This post will spin a yarn about an ambitious wizard, Alatar, and his quest to revamp a magic web storefront using Elxir. We will observe Alatar decide on Elixir as his development platform, and follow him on the journey of learning and implementation. Along the way, he will utilize several frameworks written for Elixir (including Phoenix, Ecto, and Poison).