Tech
Cake (C# Make) is an awesome tool for writing scripts to build and test projects. This post details how the VsTest runner can be invoked using Cake.
Delivery
Being a scrum master from a technical background, resisting the appeal of being a more technical team member, can be tricky. In this article, I weight up the pros and cons of technical scrum masters, and some pitfalls to try and avoid
Tech
WebAssembly is a performance optimised virtual machine that was shipped in all four major browsers earlier this year. It is a nascent technology and the current version is very much an MVP. This blog post takes a look at the WebAssembly roadmap and the features it might gain in the near future.
Data Engineering
What started as one faulty gas reading in the summer of 2017, ended up as a series of wasted calls where my bill kept getting higher and higher until it reached £11k. How could this have been handled faster and left me without considering moving energy provider.
Testing
This blog takes a high level look at some of the challenges faced when conducting automated cross-browser testing and discusses potential solutions to tackle these challenges.
Testing
This blog is based on my experience as a tester and how it can be pressurising in certain situations. I have talked about the issues and how it can resolved and we can have a positive environment.
Data Engineering
Distributed stream processing engines have been on the rise in the last few years, first Hadoop became popular as a batch processing engine, then focus shifted towards stream processing engines. Stream processing engines can make the job of processing data that comes in via a stream easier than ever before.
UX Design
There are many directions a design can take when generating ideas for a project. Sketching can quickly get the ball rolling and help you look beyond perfection, ensuring you can continually iterate with minimal cost.
UX Design
Last week I attended the annual UX Scotland conference. In this post, I will share my experience of the event and some of the insights I gained.
UX Design
Protecting users’ privacy and security is often seen as a task for developers. However, UX designers can work alongside developers and play a role in that. In this post, I present a few ways in which designers can help users protect their data.
Tech
Code examples and definitions of the SOLID principles to show how easy it is to voilate them and how you can refactor code to adhere to them.
Delivery
An MVP is a product that has just enough features to add business value. Typically you quickly learn from it to improve on subsequent releases or inform business decisions. MVP is also a buzzword and many have tried to constrain its definition. However, when people talk about MVPs, they mean different things. In this post, I describe the 3 types of MVPs that I encountered.
Cloud
With AWS Lambda you pay for execution duration, which means that sleeping or waiting during execution has a direct impact on your bill! This blog post takes a look at how to make AWS Lambda functions sleep, without incurring costs, via AWS Step Functions.
Tech
Managing state in an application can be tricky, even more so with many moving parts like in typical forms. In this article I consider when it is appropriate to use Redux and Redux Form to manage the state of a form in a webapplication
Testing
During this post, I will offer you, the unfortunate reader, the unsolicited and equally unneeded, benefit of my advice as an "expert" (*cough*) veteran of 1 public speaking engagement. Look out for my top tips, they are sure to be about as much use as the 'open here' arrow on a miniature sachet of tomato sauce.
Tech
The F# language has many features which can lead to expressing complex domains in a terse and typesafe way. To show this we can codify the world of Dogshorts, the private school for young witches and wizards.
Tech
Nobody looks forward to conflicts when collaborating on code. There are things we can do however to minimise unwanted ones, promote useful ones, and make them easier to solve correctly.
Tech
The WebAssembly specification is evolving, with many new features on the way. This blog post makes one of these future features available today, multi value returns, using the Babel approach of transpiling.
People
The four most helpful tips for getting a job offer from a careers fair based on my successful experience at the SiliconMilkRoundabout event last year.
Delivery
Scaled Agile Frameworks can be used to upscale agile practices for multiple development teams. Here I consider when it can go right, when it can wrong and some pitfalls to watch out for.