Christos Sotiriou

My name is Christos Sotiriou. I am a Software Engineer & Team Lead. I build cool stuff.

software engineering Featured

Beyond Docker: Emulation, Orchestration, and Virtualization in Apple Silicon

Explore containerization on Apple Silicon with insights into containerd, Docker, Kubernetes, and Apple's virtualization. Dive into tools like Minikube, microk8s, Podman, LimaCTL, and Colima, showcasing modern development and emulation on Apple platforms.

kubernetes Featured

Unlocking the Power of Kubernetes Operators

In this article, I will explain the characteristics of Kubernetes operators and clarify any confusion about how they are used and why. We will also build our own Kubernetes Controller.

software engineering

Bug hunting: Chance or Chore?

I am very fond of bug-hunting and fixing. Most people I know consider it one of the tedious aspects of the software engineering cycle. But not me.

career

You Are an Engineering Manager. Should You Code?

It surprises me when some choose not to

career

7 Pieces Of Advice I Wish I Knew In My Early career.

The following is an (undoubtedly non-exhaustive, and in no particular order) list of professional advice that I wish someone had given me before I began my professional journey.

Mechanical keyboards: an expensive but addictive hobby

My new obsession is eating up my wallet fast - but I like it.

Using Popular 3D Engines and Frameworks

A trip through popular 3D frameworks for creative purposes. If you are like me, nothing is giving you more thrills than to write or design software. The sheer amount of joy I take when coding something has led me to develop projects spanned across many software domains. One of those

javascript Featured

React and MobX-state-tree

Building a simple app with this excellent alternative to Redux For the past 6 years, React has been my go-to solution for developing web interfaces. Its concepts are simple to grasp, and I also love how it allows me to build my own stack around it to build the frontend

javascript

How to write your own strapi upload provider

One of the features that strapi comes out of the box with, is static file uploading. Strapi comes prepackaged with a module to allow file uploading to the local disk. If you are deploying in the cloud, however, you will most probably need to upload your static files.

gaming

Remembering the original Doom game

The original Doom game, some of the most popular source ports, and its legacy.

web development

Using Streams efficiently in NodeJS

How to download and parse a file containing a few millions of entries (around 500Mbytes) and then perform operations based on the content. How to perform efficient backpressuring by leveraging NodeJS streams

web development

Digital Experience Layer (Vodafone Greece)

The Digital eXperience Layer (DXL) is a Kubernetes middleware aimed at becoming the backbone of Vodafone Greece's digital services.

web development

Fault Tolerance for Microservices

What is it, why you should care, and how to apply it using Quarkus.

career

Tips for developers during the Coronavirus quarantine

If you are used to working on-premises, you may find that adapting to working from home may have left you a bit disoriented.

devops Featured

Your Private CI/CD using self-hosted GitLab and Docker

Leverage Gitlab and Docker and use them as a CI/CD infrastructure It's very often that I need a deployment environment while developing personal projects. I have tried many alternatives to test, package, and deploy my solutions when developing. If you don't yet have a CI/CD environment, you should

web development Featured

Using three of the top NodeJS Web REST API Frameworks

Javascript is full of options. And over the years, I have found myself running through the same problems over and over again and solving them each time using a slightly improved method over the last one. In this post, I am sharing my experience with a set of the most popular NodeJS frameworks.

microservices

Microservices: Have you thought this through?

Regardless of the traction that microservices architectures have, there are technical areas and essential matters that you should take into consideration before developing in a microservices structure.

Blog

Goodbye iOS... Hello Web development

The last year has been one hell of a year for me. After eight years of full-time iOS development and 11 years of developing for Apple devices, I decided to move on to something new that I have wanted for longer than I was willing to admit. A quick recap

mobile-development

Proto Thema Mobile App

Proto Thema is one of the most popular and visited news websites in Greece. The mobile app was written for both iOS and Android.

iOS

Instayacht iOS App

Airbnb meets yachts!

software engineering

Speed up NodeJS server-side development with Webpack 4 + HMR.

When webpack 4.0 came out, I decided to migrate my codebase implementing webpack for the frontend to webpack 4.0. One thing I hadn’t invested time to do however, is to enable HMR in my backend code. I have a project that takes approx 30 seconds to start

mobile-development

8 months with Texture (a.k.a. AsyncDisplayKit)

I have to admit that I love React & React Native. I began using React in 2014, and React Native in 2016. I loved RN not because of its cross-platform mechanics, but for its pragmatic approach when designing user interfaces and its ability to componentize a screen. A component can have

Blog

Working for personal projects without burning out

There are some among us who just can’t sit tight, and feel the urge to create something on their own. Most of the time this ‘something’ will end up never seeing the light  of day. It has happened to me, I assume that this is the case for  everyone

Blog

DevLog: How I created my first AR NodeJS-backed web service

A few years ago, a client of mine had an idea about an application that would leverage augmented reality features to play videos on top of images that would be featured into pages of his Greek news magazine. Back then, NodeJS was in the mid 10.x (around 2014). There

Blog

On software dogmas

I love coding. I don’t care about the language I use, or the technology. I care about solving difficult problems, about creating something from nothing. I grew up believing that software is philosophy, knowledge, way of thinking. I still do. However, I have to admit that based on the