Thought Works Technology Radar 2023, Insomnia
Thought Works Technology Radar 2023
The Thought Works Technology Radar is an opinionated guide to the current technology landscape, based on the practical experiences of employees of ThoughtWorks around the world. The Radar covers four categories: techniques, tools, platforms, and languages and frameworks. Each topic is placed in one of four rings that indicate its adoption stage: adopt, trial, assess, or hold. The Radar also highlights the themes and trends that emerge from the analysis.
The latest edition of the Radar includes many topics from AI-assisted software development, which refers to using AI to assist in various aspects of software development, such as coding, testing, debugging, documentation, and design. The Radar discusses several tools and techniques that leverage AI to improve the developer experience and productivity, such as GitHub Copilot, Tabnine, Codeium, and LLMs for coding. However, the Radar also warns about the potential risks and challenges of using AI-assisted software development tools, such as security, quality, licensing and more.
There are many more topics covered in the technology radar, some of those I have already covered in depth in past editions of the newsletter. Below a list of the topics covered so far:
Update on Postman Alternative: Heated discussion about Insomnia
I was surprised by the Insomnia changes introduced with version 8 after my vacation. I think the whole topic needs some exploration of the different options. Here only a first summary of the situation, more will come in one of the next newsletters:
If you were using Insomnia and cannot use it anymore due to an upgrade to version 8, since using the tool is not compliant with your company policy. A short term solution is to downgrade to the old version and deactivate automatic updates
After the Insomnia changes with version 8, there was a very heated discussion in the Insomnia community.
Discussion and Issue
Independent of Insomnia Scratchpad (which does not require an account) they plan to strengthen local development again with 8.3, but this will also require an account.
Fork Insomnium: There is also a fork of the old version of Insomnia, but is unclear how well it will be maintained. The fork has already a huge community, but not sure how well it will be maintained in the future.
In general, it shows again that it is important to not rely on Insomnia, Postman or similar tools for API test automation to avoid creating a strong lock-in. And only use those tools for exploratory API testing.
I would be very interested in your learning and conclusions about Insomnia and the alternatives. Please share as comment in the blog.
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