DEV Community: Justin Castilla

Lots of great stuff brewing at Redis University!

Justin Castilla — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 23:18:38 +0000

Hello! We've been busy the last few weeks at Redis University! Today is the release of our explainer video covering RedisJSON, a Redis module that makes storing and manipulating JSON objects a breeze.

RedisJSON allows us to skip the serialization/deserialization cycle of JSON-to-String conversion and allows us to simply GET and SET values without worry. I personally love this module due to its ease of use. Also I just love JSON for some reason.

We've also launched two new Redis University classes! They both start October 6th, so make sure to check them out!

RU330: Redis Security - (4 weeks, instructor-led)

Learn everything you need to know about Redis Security. The course focuses on access-control, data encryption, and secure deployment practices. This is my first time helping to produce a course, so I'm excited to hear your feedback!

RU102PY: Redis for Python Developers - (5 weeks, instructor-led)

In our latest language course, you'll learn how to create a complete Python application with the Flask framework, using Redis as a data store.

Keep learning!

Bitmaps! Bitmaps everywhere!

Justin Castilla — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 17:05:18 +0000

One of my favorite things about learning is the feeling of everything turning into a nail once you've acquired a new hammer. When I bought an Instant Pot smart pressure-cooker I cooked EVERYTHING in there - with mostly good results. When you're excited about a new concept or technology, you see the potential applications everywhere!

This giddiness hit me hard when I learned about Bitmaps. Bitmaps store information in a very compact and efficient way: with 1s and 0s. We can use these two states to represent the presence or absence of whatever we like.

In our Redis University Youtube Explainer series we use Bitmaps to store and retrieve partially-explored maps for an old-school RPG game called Mages & Minotaurs. I love how we are able to store seemingly large maps in a simple string of binary.

What's even more exciting is the potential for more information storage with Bitfields, Bitmap's big sibling. Bitfields are able to store values larger than binary (think octal and hex) and this gives us multiple flag options per position. The sky's the limit!

Hello, World! It's Justin!

Justin Castilla — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 19:38:17 +0000

Hello, Dev.to peeps! Super excited to start on this platform!

The education team at Redis Labs has been busy creating helpful, efficient, and relevant content covering the fundamental data structures used to store data in a Redis instance; I'd like to share our video on Hashes, our first dive!

Instead of storing records in tables and rows with a rigid SQL structure, Redis allows us to store information in memory using traditional data structures to allow us to maximize speed and flexibility. Hashes are a great start as they mimic the traditional SQL row closely with fields and values assigned to a single key.

Take a look at this quick explanation on Hashes used to store data for an old school RPG pixel dungeon-crawler, Mages & Minotaurs! I've been working on this game's theoretical data structures so much that I might just have to whip up a real playable version!