https://letsbuild.cloud/ Notes on building software, shipping it, and the engineering practices in between — by Simon Bracegirdle, a software engineer in Perth, Western Australia. en-au Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://letsbuild.cloud/2025-05-22-write-evals.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2025-05-22-write-evals.html Thu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 As software engineers increasingly integrate LLMs into products, prompt evaluations—using tools like promptfoo—are essential for systematically testing and ensuring prompt reliability, much like traditional software tests. https://letsbuild.cloud/2025-03-01-simplest-static-site-generator.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2025-03-01-simplest-static-site-generator.html Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 A look at how this blog is generated using a custom-built static site generator written in Go. https://letsbuild.cloud/2024-06-21-reorg-commits.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2024-06-21-reorg-commits.html Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000 How I clean up commits by squashing and creating new logical commits before opening for code review. code-review commits git https://letsbuild.cloud/2024-02-22-react-anti-patterns.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2024-02-22-react-anti-patterns.html Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Where we look at common React anti-patterns such as unnecessary use of useEffect, unnecessary state, premature memoisation, and large inline functions. complexity front-end react software testing https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-07-21-parallel-test-jobs.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-07-21-parallel-test-jobs.html Fri, 21 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Distributing your test suite over concurrent jobs in GitHub Actions isn't as straightforward as it first seems. actions cd ci devops github tests https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-07-20-gated-workflows.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-07-20-gated-workflows.html Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Waterfall and manual gates bad, agile good, as the industry wisdom goes. But is that always the case and are we glossing over some nuance? agile devops lean software systems workflow https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-05-18-important-logs.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-05-18-important-logs.html Thu, 18 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Explore a useful mnemonic for remembering the essential information to log in code for supporting debugging, without overcomplicating it. devops logs monitoring observability software https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-05-17-ship-the-thing.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-05-17-ship-the-thing.html Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 What's stopping us from shipping the thing? Are there friction points or waste getting in the way? devops lean stoicism systems waste https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-03-23-opentel-thoughts.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-03-23-opentel-thoughts.html Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 I share my personal thoughts and experience with OpenTelemetry in 2023 — the benefits, limitations, and impact on monitoring and observability by this game-changing, vendor-agnostic framework. aws container ecs fargate monitoring observability opentelemetry sidecar traces https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-02-09-vpc-flow-log-py.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2023-02-09-vpc-flow-log-py.html Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Where did the datas come from, where did they go? AWS VPC flow log analysis with Python, Pandas and Jupyter notebooks to understand AWS network costs. analysis aws data pandas python vpc https://letsbuild.cloud/2022-06-14-robo-sim-pipe-github-actions.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2022-06-14-robo-sim-pipe-github-actions.html Tue, 14 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Creating A Robotics Simulation Pipeline With GitHub Actions And ROS aws cd cdk ci cloudformation devops infrastructure-as-code https://letsbuild.cloud/2022-03-08-dont-lgtm-code-reviews.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2022-03-08-dont-lgtm-code-reviews.html Tue, 08 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Do you give a cursory review and slap the trusty "LGMT!" on pull requests? Read this to find out how you could bring more rigour to your team's code review practices and improve the software delivered. aws cd cdk ci cloudformation devops infrastructure-as-code https://letsbuild.cloud/2021-12-20-cdk-cr.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2021-12-20-cdk-cr.html Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 AWS CloudFormation support for services is patchy. Using Custom Resources to poll-fill them can be prone to error and messy. In this post I introduce a module that the AWS CDK provides to make creation of Custom Resources easier, safer and less messy. aws cd cdk ci cloudformation devops infrastructure-as-code https://letsbuild.cloud/2021-12-20-robo-devops.html https://letsbuild.cloud/2021-12-20-robo-devops.html Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 How can you accelerate your robotics development without compromising on quality and safety? DevOps gives us the DORA metrics, which can help serve as a guide for choosing tools to integrate into our delivery pipeline. aws cd ci devops greengrass robotics