Michael Floyd
Michael is Chief Editor at InfoQ.com and facilitates editorial content including news, articles, books and video presentations for the English version of the site. Michael has a long history in technical publishing and software development. He served as the Executive Editor of Dr. Dobb's Journal and edited the magazine throughout '90's. He later launched Web Techniques Magazine for CMP Media and served as the publication's first Editor-in-Chief. Michael's career started as a programmer at NASA/Ames where he worked on the Cray, and later at Borland where he worked on language parsers and compiler design. He has published four books related to software development.
All of Michael Floyd's Content on InfoQ
Latest featured content by Michael Floyd

- Topics
- Neo4j,
- Neo,
- Cassandra,
- MongoDB,
- Riak,
- Distributed Document Oriented Database,
- Key-Value Store,
- Graph Database,
- Companies,
- BigTable,
- Big Data,
- NoSQL,
- Database Design,
- Database,
- Hadoop,
- Voldemort,
- Cloud Computing,
- Lucene,
- Dynamo DB
In this interview at QCon London, LinkedIn’s Sid Anand discusses the problems they face when serving high-traffic, high-volume data. Sid explains how they’re moving some use cases from Oracle to gain headroom, and lifts the hood on their open source search and data replication projects, including Kafka, Voldemort, Espresso and Databus.
News by Michael Floyd
- Topics
- JVM,
- Virtual Machines,
- Runtimes,
- Clojure,
- ClojureScript,
- NoSQL,
- Functional Programming,
- Compilers,
- LISP,
- JVM Languages,
- Languages,
- Database,
- Programming,
- Java
Rich Hickey spoke at the Clojure/West conference last weekend about his newest venture, Datomic, which he describes as “a distributed database designed to enable scalable, flexible and intelligent applications, running on cloud architectures.” Datomic sits on Amazon’s DynamoDB, and embeds Datalog, a subset of Prolog, to move queries into the application.
- Topics
- HTML5,
- HTML,
- Rich Internet Apps,
- Markup Languages,
- Web Development,
- Java,
- Big Data,
- NoSQL,
- .NET,
- Languages,
- Database Design,
- Database,
- Performance & Scalability,
- Programming,
- Agile,
- Cloud Computing,
- Architecture,
- Announcements,
- InfoQ
InfoQ is announcing a call for articles and is encouraging practitioners and domain experts to submit feature-length (2,000 to 3,000 word) papers that are timely, educational and practical. Topics of interest include cloud architecture and development, Java, Agile, NoSQL, big data analytics, HTML 5 and mobile development. Author guidelines are now also available.
- Topics
- Velocity,
- Java Web Frameworks,
- Adopting Agile,
- Continuous Delivery,
- Java,
- Agile Estimation,
- Agile in the Enterprise,
- Agile Techniques,
- Languages,
- Continuous Improvement,
- Value & Metrics,
- Agile,
- Programming,
- Productivity
Velocity, the measure of work completed by the team divided by the time taken to complete it, is increasingly being used to manage the productivity of a team and as a comparison between teams. Jim Highsmith, Mark Levison, and Scott Ambler discuss the misuse of velocity as a productivity measure.
- Topics
- Application Servers,
- Ruby,
- Dynamic Languages,
- Cloud Foundry,
- Java,
- Languages,
- PaaS,
- VMWare,
- Ruby on Rails,
- Cloud Computing,
- Programming,
- Architecture,
- Companies
VMware today released a free downloadable version of its Cloud Foundry software, called Micro Cloud Foundry, designed to run locally on a developer’s workstation in a single virtual machine. Mac and PC developers can run and build cloud applications locally without having to configure middleware, and scale and deploy to their applications wherever they want without modifying code.
- Topics
- Javascript,
- Java,
- Dynamic Languages,
- Web Development,
- REST,
- SOA,
- Languages,
- API,
- Google,
- Enterprise Architecture,
- Architecture,
- Porting,
- Programming,
- Google Wave,
- Google Code Search,
- Companies,
- Google Translate
When Google announced that several programmer interfaces have been deprecated from the API Directory, the development community reacted loudly and in force. While some APIs on the list will be deprecated with no shut down date announced, others like the Translate API will be shut down at the end of the year.
Articles by Michael Floyd

- Topics
- JVM,
- Virtual Machines,
- Runtimes,
- Scala,
- JVM Languages,
- Functional Programming,
- Java,
- Programming,
- Languages
In this interview with InfoQ's Editor in Chief, Michael Floyd, Martin Odersky draws the comparisons between F# and Scala, discusses the future of Scala, and addresses once and for all the question of breaking binary compatibility. He also discusses his current work on the implementation of the value class proposal, how Java might support functional programming and the new Typesafe Stack 2.0.
Interviews by Michael Floyd

- Topics
- Clusters,
- Big Data Infrastructure,
- Clustering & Caching,
- Cloud Computing,
- Performance & Scalability,
- Hadoop,
- Hive,
- Infrastructure
Hive co-creator Ashish Thusoo describes the Big Data challenges Facebook faced and presents solutions in 2 areas: Reduction in the data footprint and CPU utilization. Generating 300 to 400 terabytes per day, they store RC files as blocks, but store as columns within a block to get better compression. He also talks about the current Big Data ecosystem and trends for companies going forward.

- Topics
- Continuous Deployment,
- Application Lifecycle Management,
- Adopting Agile,
- Technical Debt,
- Coaching,
- Kanban,
- Continuous Delivery,
- Agile Techniques,
- Agile Alliance,
- Adaptive Leadership,
- Software Craftsmanship,
- Agile in the Enterprise,
- Coaching and Mentoring,
- ALM,
- Agile Manifesto,
- Lean,
- Agile2011,
- Agile,
- Agile Manifesto Anniversary,
- Enterprise Architecture,
- Leadership
Recorded at the 10th anniversary of the agile manifesto signing, Jim Highsmith discusses how he works with executive management teams to introduce and integrate agile techniques into enterprise organizations from both the business and IT sides. He defines adaptive leadership and discuses adaptive ALM, continuous delivery, lean and Kanban methods.

- Topics
- Team Collaboration,
- Distributed Team,
- Adopting Agile,
- QCon San Francisco 2011,
- Application Lifecycle Management,
- Collaboration,
- Coaching,
- Continuous Delivery,
- Kanban,
- ALM,
- Scrum,
- QCon,
- Agile in the Enterprise,
- Teamwork,
- Lean,
- Coaching and Mentoring,
- Agile Techniques,
- Value & Metrics,
- Enterprise Architecture,
- Conferences,
- Agile,
- Process
In this interview, Jesper Boeg, author of the new InfoQ book – Priming Kanban, discusses the keys to using Kanban effectively, and how to get started if you are currently using other approaches. Jesper also discusses the benefits of integrating elements of Kanaban into existing Scrum teams and what can be achieved from the team seeing the entire value chain and owning the whole process.

- Topics
- Big Data,
- QCon San Francisco 2011,
- Continuous Delivery,
- Database Design,
- NoSQL,
- Design Pattern,
- Data Access,
- Agile Techniques,
- QCon,
- Object Oriented Design,
- Database,
- Performance & Scalability,
- Data Warehouse,
- Patterns,
- Design,
- Data Warehousing,
- MapReduce,
- Agile,
- Design Patterns,
- Conferences,
- Data Storage
Ron Bodkin of Big Data Analytics discusses early adoption of Hadoop, NoSQL and big data technologies. He discusses common patterns and explains how developers can write low-level primitives to optimize MapReduce function. Other topics include Hive, Pig, multi tenancy, and security.