Category: Software Engineering
Getting Started with Azure Cosmos DB, Part 1 – CRUD
Cosmos – κόσμος – the world, universe – John Jeffrey Dodson Lexicon (public domain) Cosmos means the entire world, so I wonder if Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s view of the entire world for data stores going forward. Sure, blob storage will have some particular advantages and SQL server will have some advantages too. But…
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Building an App for Good: Intern Experiences with NativeScript and Firebase
Note: This post was co-authored by Noah Costello and Allie Rauner. As three Don’t Panic summer interns, our project was to create the MyLNK app. The goal of this app is to provide an easy-to-navigate interface that allows people to find all of the services provided by Lincoln’s nonprofits and organizations. It should be available…
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From Educator to Software Engineer, Part 1 – Interest in Software, Teaching Myself, and Getting a Foot in the Door
I am a 30-year-old developer finishing my first year as a software engineer. I didn’t get where I am by any traditional means, but I’ve learned some things along the way that might encourage someone to follow their interest in finding a place in the world of software development. Here’s my story: I understand that…
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PHP Through the Eyes of a .NET Engineer
We are a software design and development shop. So when asked which tech stack we prefer we’ll always give some answer around our the preference for the Microsoft stack. We tend to use C# / .NET for most code writing, SQL Server for databases, and Azure for cloud storage. However, we recently undertook a PHP…
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Useful Textbooks from a Computer Science Degree
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Cassey’s Thoughts, her personal blog. In my time as an undergraduate studying Computer Science, I came across several textbooks that were really useful. (This may be a surprise to you; it was to me when I finally started finding them.) I share them here for others who…
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Falling Short on Training Software Developers
I worry daily about the software we rely on in our daily lives. One need only look at the problems our airlines have had and the disruptions they have caused in our lives. I feel like there is significant risk that we will be crushed under the weight of technical debt in this software. As…
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Tools are Just Part of the Story
We consider ourselves a .NET shop. Our tools are usually Visual Studio, C#, MSSQL Server, IIS/Azure, ASP.NET MVC, EntityFramework, etc. We have an incredible amount of institutional knowledge of these technologies. We’ve found the pain points. We’ve developed work arounds. We have best-practices. We have thousands of lines of code to use as examples. We…
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A Look Back at ng-conf 2017
It is hard to believe that it was already two weeks ago that Andrew Tarr and I were in Salt Lake City attending ng-conf 2017. I have to say that it was a great conference and I learned even more than I had anticipated in the three days we were there. The format of the…
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Automated UI Testing Using TestStack.White and Continuous Integration with TeamCity
One of the things that our development approach at DPL allows us to do is to have a very low ratio of QA testers per software engineer. Our architecture designs and patterns provide for very isolatable and testable components, allowing us to reach high coverage numbers in most areas of our code. However, one area…
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Two Months of Mobile UX: Just Don’t
I’ve been on the road for about a month and a half now traveling Europe. My 15-inch MacBook is many things, but light is not one of them. It remained at home and I’m on the road with an Android phone and an older model iPad. Traveling this way has helped me see with maddening…
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