You Don’t Need To Pay for the OpenAI API During Development

If you’re developing or thinking of creating an app that leverages the OpenAI API but don’t want to put down your credit card until you’re sure you have something, I have good news for you. In this article I’m going to show you how you can create a backend API which is compatiable with the OpenAI API. However, when running this API locally during development, we will use the Llama3 model running locally on your laptop. When you want to use this in production, all you need to do is change the environment variables, and everything else will remain the same :) ...

July 10, 2024 · 6 min · Arsh Sharma

How to Approach Technical Content for Dev Tools Companies

I’ve been creating technical content for quite some time now. Initially it was just a hobby - I just liked learning new things and talking about it. Then I started doing it as part of my work as well. When I joined my current company we were still a pretty early stage startup so a lot of our focus was mostly on execution. We would brainstorm ideas and areas we wanted to talk about and then I would write technical blogs, record tutorials and create other content around them. The main goal was just putting our name out there. ...

March 12, 2024 · 6 min · Arsh Sharma

WTF Is a Developer Experience Engineer

I’ve been working at Okteto for over two years now. My job title officially is Developer Experience (DevX) Engineer. I’ve been asked more times than I can count what it means and what my role involves. I think after two years, I finally have enough understanding to write about it in detail :) How It Began I’ll be completely honest - when I had joined the company, I didn’t fully know what I was signing up for. I had initially joined thinking I would be doing technical writing - blogs, documentation, and a bit of traditional DevRel stuff - conference talks, webinars, etc. I was excited for both these things so I said yes! ...

February 12, 2024 · 6 min · Arsh Sharma

Things I've Learned About Conference Speaking

On the wall across from my desk, I’ve got badges from all the conferences I’ve been to. The collection has grown quite a bit over the past two years. Recently, taking a look at it made me take a trip down memory lane and reflect on the first few talks I gave, as well as the ones I’m giving now - what’s changed, what I do differently, and the things I’ve learned. This blog is going to be about some of those learnings. ...

January 4, 2024 · 8 min · Arsh Sharma

Building a Blog With a CMS Using Hugo and Netlify

I consume a ton of media - books, shows, movies, games, you name it. And there are moments or lines in them that stick with me long after I’m done. So, I wanted a place to keep all these gems. Instagram was a big no-no for me because I have a love-hate relationship with that app. I wanted something different. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find a convenient solution to save and list all these snippets for later viewing. ...

November 15, 2023 · 10 min · Arsh Sharma

Setting Up a GitOps Workflow with Argo CD and GitHub Actions

GitOps is gaining increasing popularity these days, and for good reason. The principles of GitOps promote the use of Git repositories as the ultimate source of truth for application infrastructure and configuration. This concept revolves around storing all application-related files and manifests in a Git repository, leveraging it as the central hub for deployment management. By combining GitOps principles with declarative continuous delivery tools like Argo CD, you can significantly improve your deployment workflow and expedite the shipping processes, achieving faster and more efficient results. ...

October 14, 2023 · 9 min · Arsh Sharma

Platform Engineering and Developer Experience: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Around a year ago, the term “developer experience” was all the rage. It was on everyone’s lips, with discussions about its immense importance. However, the current focus seems to have shifted towards “Platform Engineering” - a term that, in my personal opinion, has become quite convoluted. Nevertheless, I feel both concepts essentially revolve around the same idea. Platform Engineering is merely a means to achieve a better developer experience. But what exactly does that mean? Let me explain in more detail over the course of this article. ...

September 23, 2023 · 6 min · Arsh Sharma

If You're Using Helm, Why Not Give It a Pretty UI As Well?

Helm Dashboard is an open-source project by Komodor that offers a visual and user-friendly way to manage and visualize all the Helm charts installed in your clusters. Instead of using the terminal, you can leverage the Helm Dashboard’s intuitive UI to perform a variety of tasks that make working with Helm a breeze. Here are some of its key features: Visually pleasing chart list: The dashboard presents all the installed charts in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Comprehensive K8s resource view: Get a clear overview of the Kubernetes resources associated with each chart installation. Manifest visibility: Easily access and examine the manifests included in the charts. Chart upgrade notifications and UI execution: Stay informed about available chart upgrades, and perform upgrades directly from the UI. One-click rollback: Effortlessly revert to a previous chart installation with just one click. Manifest diffing: Quickly identify and understand the differences between manifests when upgrading or rolling back to a different version. In addition to these features, Helm Dashboard offers many other handy functionalities, which I will discuss further in the article. To summarize, almost anything you can do via the CLI, you can now accomplish with a few simple clicks in this elegant UI. ...

September 17, 2023 · 5 min · Arsh Sharma

Deploying Your First Microservice to Kubernetes

I have written extensively about different Kubernetes concepts in my previous blogs, but I haven’t covered a proper, step-by-step hands-on guide for getting started with Kubernetes. In this article, my plan is to do exactly that. After all, there’s only so much you can learn by reading without trying things out yourself. We will take a simple microservice-based application, containerize it, and deploy it to a Kubernetes cluster. I will be using Google Cloud for this, but you can use any cloud provider to follow along. Without wasting any more words, let’s get started! ...

May 7, 2023 · 8 min · Arsh Sharma

Exploring minikube: A Guide to Local Kubernetes Clusters

Rushing to a cloud provider and spinning up a remote cluster every time you want to try something out with Kubernetes isn’t always convenient - nor is it economical. minikube provides a way to run Kubernetes clusters locally so that you learn and play around with K8s. It is an excellent way to test things out before working with an actual cluster in the cloud. In this article, we’re going to launch a minikube cluster and see all the interesting features minikube has to offer. If you’re new to the Kubernetes world, I recommend checking out my Kubernetes for Beginners series before proceeding with this article. ...

April 7, 2023 · 5 min · Arsh Sharma