I have never done this in the past 11 years of blogging, this time it is going to be different. I am listing the 5 most viewed posts from this blog in 2018. All posts are not from 2018 but they have been viewed more than the others. I am using my Google Analytics stats to compile this list. So, here I present the most popular blog posts of 2018 on Geshan.com.np:

1. You Can Do It in SQL, Stop Writing Extra Code for That

This post was published just 10 days back but I garnered a lot of views. The post highlights:

Use SQL to do math like sum, average etc. Utilize it for grouping one to many relational values like getting categories of product. Leverage SQL for string manipulation like using CONCAT_WS for concating first name and last name. Exploit SQL to sort by a custom priority formula.

2. 4 Ways Docker Changed the Way Software Engineers Work in Past Half Decade

Another post from this December that got pretty popular in past weeks. This post is about how docker has changed software engineering in the past 5 years. The post can be summarized as:

With Docker, you ship the whole stack not only your code. Allocate minimum required resources to containers then scale them horizontally. With containers security generally already comes baked In. With Docker and Kubernetes you can get zero downtime and faster deployments leading to business profit.

3. How to Use Docker Compose With Virtual Hosts and Shared Services (Like Db) for Dev Environment

This is another post about Docker, it is from May 2017. This piece was also able to gather a good amount of views. The post advocates:

Use docker and docker-compose with external_links to reuse services like a database across multiple projects. Using Ngnix proxy with virtual hosts can simplify multi-project setup and operation.

4. 3 Simple Rules for Less or No Git Conflicts

This is a post about git from 2016. It also got many hits this year probably due to some search engine traffic. Mainly the post can be summarized at

Keep your changes small. Rebase your working branch with main branch often. And, review pull requests faster and merge them to main branch.

5. Don’t Code Your Microservice Like a Monolith, Keep It Maintainable Not Over-engineered

This is a post from Oct this year about Microservice and how to not code it like a Monolith. This post was also able to get some views from different sources. The post mainly advocates:

Microservices are small software systems. You can safely ditch MVC. Say no to ORM and also not take the design pattern baggage for microservices. Focus on code performance, readability, and maintainability not some old rules and patterns. Those patterns were made when people were not doing microservices.

Conclusion

Looks like docker has been a popular topic for this year. Probably I would blog more about it next year too. I have started cross-posting my posts to Dev.to and medium publications like FreeCodeCamp and HackerNoon. I hope these posts help more and more people.

Originally published at geshan.com.np.