A little while back, I arrived at my desk to a message no one likes to receive: the production instance of a client's primary app was down. What's more, the site had just gone live earlier that week, and thousands of users were trying to login.
If you want to eliminate your technical debt, communication HAS to be a critical component of your efforts. If you're struggling to break up your monolith and move to a microservices model, the first place to look is how your team is communicating. Command and control silos will result in monoliths. Self-organizing and autonomous teams give rise to microservices.
We frequently work on projects where it's best to start out with an older version of ruby. Getting these to install correctly feels like a dark art sometimes. Here's a quick series of steps that we had to follow to get Ruby 1.8.7 using RubyGems 1.8.30 installed via RVM.
From what I see, it's this relentless commitment to maintenance and modernization that enabled American entrepreneurs like Carnegie to outpace their British competitors, and it's a lesson that modern companies would do well to learn, lest their competition overtakes them.
In many ways the Ship of Theseus paradox is quite similar to software development. Is this app the same one it was five years ago? How about two? What about after the massive refactor we *just* finished? If it still serves the same business users in the same capacity, but we rewrote it, does it matter?
Your software isn't working the way you'd like. What should you do? Scrap everything and start over or slowly transform your application into something more in line with your vision. In this post, we explore the differences, strengths, and risks of each approach.
Software is one big party! The question is: When's the optimal time to pause the partying so that you can restock and clean up? Well, it depends on who you ask.
Yesterday, the CEO of Equifax resigned after 143 million Americans personal data was compromised in a security breach. Since I own a company that focuses on upgrading custom software, I'm getting lots of calls from concerned executives wondering if their systems are secure. After all, if Equifax could get hacked, that makes you think what would happen if your customer data was compromised, right?
This weekend, white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, Virginia and committed terrorist attacks against people protesting their intimidation. Three people died and many more were injured as a result. In light of these attacks, and the Google Memo last week complaining about hiring practices that promote racial and gender diversity while ignoring ideological diversity, I felt compelled to write an internal memo to my team to help them process these events and make clear Corgibytes' stance on diversity.
Many programming languages use what’s called zero-based indexing. Counting starts at zero, not one. When building your career in tech, know there are invisible forces at play that are obvious once you uncover them. If you navigate your career without understanding this hidden framework, you’ll usually come up with the wrong answer. Let's take a peek at some of these hidden habits that are likely holding you back.