Alvin Lin

I am a software engineer at Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) on IoT Platform team. I came to the United States from Taiwan in 2017 and graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science in 2021. My expertise includes building reliable and scalable IoT Platform for over 500K IoT devices in the cloud.

Pic taken in Bear Creek Redwoods on 2021/07/04

More about me...

📕 Blogs

[Golang] Context

[Rails] How to write a function that returns an Emerator

[gRPC] Authentication

[K8S] How add AWS permission to a K8S service

[Golang] Functional programming in Golang

[Golang] Fatal vs Panic

[Golang]What is defer in Golang?

[Golang] interface and struct

interface and struct

[Golang] ... in Golang

... is similar to * in Python to pack/unpack iterables

[Golang] Compile type assertion

[Golang] How to convert types in Golang

convert type and type assertion

[Golang] Error in Golang

error handling and custom error

[Golang] Control Flow in Golang

if, for, switch

[Golang] Function, closure, method

[Golang] variables, constants, and common types

[Golang] Conventions

Comment/naming/interface/var… conventions

[Golang] How to structure a Golang project

[Golang] Ecosystem

go run/build/mod/get…

[Rails] Rack + Puma

Basic web server and interface for Rails app, but still lots of stuffs I don’t know…

[Rails] ActiveAdmin - filter, sidebar, menu

[Rails] ActiveAdmin - belongs_to

[Rails] ActiveAdmin - arb

[Rails] ActiveAdmin - actions

ActiveAdmin - collection_action, member_action, action_item, …

[Rails] Backburner

A beanstalkd-powered job queue that can handle a very high volume of jobs, but the scalability to handle large throughput could be questioned.

An opinionated framework for creating REST-like APIs in Ruby and designed to run on Rack - a modular Ruby web server interface.

There are many different ways and libraries for testing in Rails. This article is a general one.

[Rails] Weird signs in Ruby (||=, <<, ?, *, :, !)

||=, <<, ?, *, :, !

[Rails] auto-load, reload, load, require, include, extend

auto-load, reload, load, require, include, extend

[Rails] Common CRUD methods

create/new/save/find_by/where/update/update_all/destroy

[Rails] Migration

Basic migration

Very basic Rails route concept

[Rails] Controller

Basic controller usage

Very basic Rails usage; erb

Model: scope, validation, callbacks

[Rails] class and self in Ruby

class and self in Ruby

[Rails] Ruby Method

instance method/class method/singleton method

[Rails] Exception + rescue/raise

Exception + rescue/raise

[Rails] Ruby Basics

Language syntax + block/module + require/include

[Rails] nil? vs empty? vs blank? vs present?

nil? vs empty? vs blank? vs present?

[Rails] How to show raw sql in Rails console

Show raw sql in Rails

[Rails] Read from Replica

Read from replica in Rails

[Rails] Some enumerable methods and Hash

pluck/select/Hash/map/to_h/index_by

[Rails] size vs count vs length

Always use size

Full time兩年回顧

Self Improvement

歷經兩次裁員。想更近一步升到L5。

[Rails] Different find methods

find vs find_by vs find_by_field

[Rails] Different update methods

update/update!/update_all/update_attributes/update_attribute/update_column(s)…

[Rails] each vs each_slice vs find_each vs find_in_batches vs in_batches

each vs each_slice vs find_each vs find_in_batches vs in_batches

Basics of Bazel

package/target and bazel run/build/test/query

N+1/eager load/preload/lazy load/over-eager load

[Rails] Associations between models

has_many/has_one/belongs_to/inverse_of/dependent

K8S Custom Resource

K8S Custom Resource

Custom resource is useful when you don’t want to use normal k8s resources

What is Argo?

Argo or mostly ArgoCD learning notes

Golang Basics

Some basic Golang concepts and usage. Some of the articles might be basics but something I used during work.

人生中第一次看到裁員

人生中第一次看到裁員

K8S Basics

Notes of k8s basics

AWS Lambda Beginner

AWS Lambda Beginner

Some basic notes of AWS Lambda

一年回顧

Self Improvement

這個月終於達成工作一年的里程碑，是時候回顧這一年學到了什麼，或者理悟了什麼。

Intro to Elasticsearch

Intro to Elasticsearch

Recently I watched a brownbag from my current company, and I figured it was time to groom some notes from my previous company and the current one. So this is a note of very basic Elasticsearch in case one day I will need it again.

Intro to Kafka

Kafka learning notes

半年回顧 —— 軟體工程師 6 Month Retro as a Software Engineer

半年回顧 —— 軟體工程師 6 Month Retro as a Software Engineer

Self Improvement

在KT打工6個月的自我省思...

AWS IoT Basics

AWS IoT by far is the easiest and most efficient development tool for IoT industries I have ever used. It provides a serverless message queue with predefined topics. It is convenient to use AWS IoT for device configuration, device jobs, device authentication/registration, and data streaming. Also, it is well integrated with other AWS services, such as Lambda, SQS, and S3.

MQTT

MQTT is a popular protocol in IoT industries

[Book Notes] Design Data-Intensive Application Ch1: Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Applications

[Book Notes] Design Data-Intensive Application Ch1: Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Applications

Distributed System

This chapter mainly describes the terminology: reliability, scalability, maintainability.

[Blog notes] Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer

[Blog notes] Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer

Haseeb Qureshi describes his ways of negotiating a job offer. Other than 10 rules, he also provides tips and examples of different scenarios.

[Blog Notes] It’s all about negotiate with yourself

[Blog Notes] It’s all about negotiate with yourself

By “鄰居可以不要都是 CEO 嗎 - The Suns in California”. 作者是個product manager，講述一些基本談薪水的mindset。

[Blog Notes] The Differences Between a Junior, Mid-Level, and Senior Developer

[Blog Notes] The Differences Between a Junior, Mid-Level, and Senior Developer

The main difference is the impact and the knowledge.

[Blog Notes] Tricks For Getting Unstuck During a Coding Interview

[Blog Notes] Tricks For Getting Unstuck During a Coding Interview

Oftentimes, we get stuck during interview, but there are some tricks we can take to “continue” the interview

AWS SQS - Send/Receive/Delete SQS messages

AWS SQS - Send/Receive/Delete SQS messages

An easy SQS client written in Golang to send, receive, and delete messages

2021 Software Engineer Intern in the US

2021 Software Engineer Intern in the US

My working experience as an software engineer intern at a pre-IPO company

2020 台灣 Software Engineer Intern

2020 台灣 Software Engineer Intern

1st time Software Engineer Intern at a Taiwan Startup

AWS SQS - How to monitor and debug SQS

AWS SQS - How to monitor and debug SQS

How do I know if a message is sent to SQS

AWS SQS - Message Life Cycle

AWS SQS - Message Life Cycle

Describe how a message is processed

AWS SQS - polling

AWS SQS - polling

Oftentime, use long polling for efficiency

AWS SQS - 3rd SQS queue - Dead Letter Queue

AWS SQS - 3rd SQS queue - Dead Letter Queue

Dead letter queue to process failed messages

AWS SQS - FIFO Queues

AWS SQS - FIFO Queues

Obviously First-in-first-out, but also exactly-once processing

AWS SQS - Standard Queues

AWS SQS - Standard Queues

Standard queues contain out-of-order messages

組電腦

Notes of assembling a computer for Machine Learning and Video Game

2021回顧

2021 Self-Retro

Intro to Event-driven Architecture

Intro to Event-driven Architecture

Introduction to event-driven architecture mostly seen in Microservice or Serverless architectures

AWS SQS - Basics

AWS SQS - Basics

Introduction to AWS Simple Queue Service

What I Learn from Working on 3 School Projects At the Same Time

What I Learn from Working on 3 School Projects At the Same Time

Taking database, computer network, web project classes at San Jose State University

2020 自我回顧

2020 自我回顧

2020 Self retro