Author: Chad Michel
Coding with AI: How to Get the Results You Actually Want
You can’t talk about software right now without talking about AI or, more accurately, LLMs. These are helping us write software faster. But can they help us be much faster? The common way they help us is by autocompleting code for us. I start writing a method called upsertUser, and then the AI will automatically…
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Core Use Cases
In this series, we are focusing on creating a software system. This has many steps. We created a mental model. Next, we got an overview of the project. Then, we gathered requirements and built an epic-level backlog. In this step, we are going to take those artifacts and break them down into core use cases…
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The 8 Cs of a Software Architect
How do you think about roles and how people fit into roles? This question often arises when evaluating how someone fits into a particular role. No one is perfect or a perfect fit for any role. But the right people will fit most of a given role. It is valuable to have consistent ways to…
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Build Your Backlog
In my previous post, we talked about gathering requirements. This post will discuss getting those requirements into an epic-level backlog. There are three things I think about when building a backlog. When we start this process, we must keep in mind the danger of incomplete pictures. The danger is real and often happens on many…
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Gathering Requirements
In our previous post in this series, we discussed getting an overview of a system. In it, I provided the following items that you should know as you assemble an overview: Now that we have an overview, it is time to start gathering requirements. Requirements are, in many ways, the most important part of the…
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Using an Access Control List to Block IP Addresses from Cognito
AWS Cognito is a very solid authentication service. We often use Cognito as an identity provider (IdP) for the applications we build. We redirect to Cognito, and then Cognito redirects back to us. Cognito gives us a code that we can use to get a JSON Web Token (JWT) to access our services. It’s a…
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Get an Overview
After we have a rough mental model of a software system, we often want to get an overview of the system. In this step, we are trying to peel back one more layer. Where a mental model is a rough understanding of the system, an overview is deeper and more complete. We often jump straight…
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How to Send GCM Messages Using C#
In my previous blog post, I mentioned how to send APNS messages using C#. In this post, I will do the same using GCM. Sending a GCM message is very similar, but in this case we will use a different NuGet package. You will need to install the FirebaseAdmin NuGet package. The first step of…
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Sending APNS Push Notifications Using C#
Over the years, we have built many mobile applications across numerous industries. One of the most common features of these mobile applications is sending push notifications. Most applications we have built have used third-party services to send these notifications. But how hard is it to send APNS notifications? It’s really not that hard. But why…
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Making a Mental Model
What does a year look like? This is a question you may have been asked before. And there is a variety of works out there discussing the differences in how people perceive a year. Ultimately, many people have some sort of circle for a year. When creating a software system, we should create a mental…
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