Author: Chad Michel
Question Mark
Questions are an essential part of any development process. Developing software is a continual process. We are always writing the next piece of software. New tasks are kind of like the mail for mailmen, the mail just keeps coming. The tasks just keep coming. It is very easy to get heads down and stop asking…
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Top 10 Things Overheard in a Development Shop
#10 – “It’s not really the best, but…” This is often heard when developers don’t come up with the best solution and have to compromise to something that isn’t quite wonderful. #9 – “What do the logs say?” When problems occur, the first place to look is usually the logs. This actually might be…
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Mobile Technology Choices – Executive Summary
Delivering applications for mobile devices is essential for many business applications. For much of the business software we write at Don’t Panic Labs, some sort of mobile experience is necessary and can be done in many ways. This post will walk through many of the options available today. There really isn’t an “always do it…
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Top Ten Software Villains
This afternoon, Doug Durham presented the afternoon keynote at the 2018 Heartland Developers Conference. In his presentation, entitled “Be the Hero – Stop Being the Development Villain”, talks about the ways we as developers can sometimes be the villain and contribute to why software often breaks. But there are other villains in this story, ones…
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Blog Posts for a Year
I have officially written one blog post per week for one year! I started this endeavor on August 1, 2017 with the post, PHP Through the Eyes of a .NET Engineer. During that time, I have written many blog posts in a single week, then sometimes take a week or two off. I have also…
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Quick Look – .NET Core 2.1 Angular Template
With .NET Core 2.1 there is a new Angular template. That, in combination with the new UseSpa configuration, makes using Angular with .NET Core feel a lot better than .NET Core 2. Let’s take a quick look at this new feature. Create a new ASP.NET Core Web Application. Select Angular as the project template. Now…
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Design – Executive Summary
The pull to start writing code is strong when building a new system. It feels urgent, but it isn’t the most important thing you should be doing… When people think of software development they often think of a programmer typing 0s and 1s into a green screen all alone in a room drinking Mountain Dew….
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Using Razor Templates without MVC (RazorLight)
Formatting text is a common part of software development. Many web pages are just that, some sort of template that is converted into HTML. In the .NET world, we often use ASP.NET MVC for generating those HTML pages. We often also have a view that is rendered with a model to create an HTML page….
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Creating a Barcode Scanner App with Ionic
Scanning a barcode or a QR code is a pretty common business request. Luckily, almost all users walk around with devices capable of scanning barcodes: their phones. In this blog post, we are going to step through creating a mobile scanner application using Ionic, Xcode, and an iPhone. Create a blank app called “IonicCamera”: ionic…
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How NOT to Choose a JS Framework
There are a ton of articles out there on how to choose a JavaScript framework. This article is not one of them. Instead, I’ve written this article to provide some guidance that should help you NOT choose a particular JS framework. Often, the correct choice is no JS framework at all. If you are just…
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