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The Latest from Our Team
Don’t Design the Database First
Build bottom-up right? Start with the database schema, then models, then the UI, then ship it, right? Well, I think the majority of new projects would benefit from not focusing on the database until much later. Why not focus on the database from the start? Managing database changes in the early phases of a project…
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DPL Reading List – November 10, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week. Artificial Intelligence Beats CAPTCHA – “A CAPTCHA is considered broken if an algorithm can successfully solve it at least 1 percent of the time. Now San Francisco Bay Area startup Vicarious reveals its AI software can solve reCAPTCHAs at an accuracy…
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A Website Without Servers – Using Azure Functions: Part 7, Angular Service
If you haven’t been following along in this series, we are building an “Engineer Fashion App” using Azure Functions. I recommend looking back at Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 to see what we’ve done so far. Let’s assume we have an Azure Function that returns some JSON for our wardrobe and that…
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Agile Is Not A Silver Bullet, Part 1
Hopefully this headline got your attention. I considered trying to come up with a hashtag like #NoTDD or #NoEstimates that seem to be popular these days. I opted for a (hopefully) catchy title instead. The purpose of this post is not to bash agile methods or to somehow suggest that we should not be following…
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DPL Reading List – November 3, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week. The 10 Statistical Techniques Data Scientists Need to Master – “With technologies like Machine Learning becoming ever-more common place, and emerging fields like Deep Learning gaining significant traction amongst researchers and engineers — and the companies that hire them — Data Scientists continue to ride…
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What We Mean When We Say “Software Engineer”
It’s very easy to throw terms around in our (or any) industry. In our hurried culture, we latch onto words or phrases that may not fully encapsulate their original intent. I’m afraid that is what has happened to the label of “software engineer”. And it has not been without consequences. I believe the real, working…
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A Website Without Servers – Using Azure Functions: Part 6, Some Basic Plumbing
If you haven’t been following along in this series, we are building an “Engineer Fashion App” using Azure Functions. I recommend looking back at Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to see what we’ve done so far. At this point, we have an Angular site and we have a backend that can communicate with…
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DPL Reading List – October 27, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week. AI and the rise of the emotional economy – “As AI agents (whether software applications or physical robots) take on more of our non-emotional tasks, we will begin to value more the things that remain dominated by humans. The emergence of…
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A Website Without Servers – Using Azure Functions: Part 5, Pulling Wardrobe Data
Previously on Using Azure Functions, we set up a very simple Angular website. This week, we are going to set up an Azure Function that pulls some wardrobe data from an Azure Cosmos database. Why not just build the wardrobe into the app? Well I’m hoping to update the wardrobe by season, so having to…
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Validating Multiple Fields in ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET MVC has the ability to validate forms with minimal effort thanks to the attributes in `System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations` (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/mvc/overview/older-versions-1/models-data/validation-with-the-data-annotation-validators-cs#using-the-data-annotation-validator-attributes). You can simply slap an attribute such as `Required` on a property and get nice validation messages. But what if you want to validate multiple fields on a model? There are a couple ways you can solve…
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