U.S. Devs are Sleeping on Flutter
Do you know what Flutter is? If the developers in Denver i've spoken with are any indication, probably not. Out here, talking to developers about Flutter is sort of like talking to
TAG: tech STUFF
32 postsScaling to Millions of Users
Companies are like boats. The small ones are quick and agile. They move fast and pivot on a dime. But that agility comes at a cost: they are notoriously unstable. The rough
A/B Testing Features by Segmenting Users
"A/B test everything."
Those of us in the startup world hear it routinely. But it is a useless statement. Ask "how" and you will be met with
The Internet is Fundamentally Flawed
Why has the internet been so transformative in the last 20 years? I would argue any complete answer to that question would need to speak to 4 major points:
- Anonymity
- Interconnectivity
- Information
Choosing a Stack for Your Side Project
Selecting a stack is the first technology decision in a side project. Unfortunately, it is also one of the biggest factors in determining whether or not your project launches.
This is not
Hosting Multiple HTTPS Domains from the Same Server with Let's Encrypt and Nginx
This post is a continuation of my original, How to Set Up HTTPS with Let's Encrypt and Nginx. If you have not read that post, i suggest starting there.
HTTPS is increasingly
User.pronoun() is a Time Saver
Usability is all about the little things. Small changes in how your copy reads can have big effects in how your users react to things.
This is one reason why designers love
Programmatically Capturing Spam with Detextion.io
There is a [modified] adage about attracting users to web apps.
"Build it and spammers will come."
The fact is that if your users can enter text others will see,
Software Engineering Lessons Worth Learning Early
College didn't teach me what i needed to know. It taught me how to learn what i needed to know.
I read this quote on a pamphlet in RIT's Software Engineering office
Iterative Architectures
One of the common themes i see teams struggle with is their architecture. In the technology world, needs and opinions change over time. Because of this, no architecture is truly future-proof. They
Deep Image Analysis with Ruby and Google Cloud Vision
How would your app change if you could know the contents of your user's photos as they uploaded them? Would you sort products based on the activities in their photos? Match users
Use Generic Names for 3rd Party Services
One of the easiest traps for coders to fall into is naming 3rd party integrations too specifically. It comes naturally, of course. We train ourselves to adopt concise and explicit naming patterns.
Fix Rails Converting Backbone JSON Requests to text/html
During a recent project with BackboneJs and Rails, i noticed some very strange behavior. When my controller had an implicit render to Backbone's JSON requests, Rails was throwing an error.
ActionView::MissingTemplate
The Dangers of Transpiling
Transpiling. Taking code written in one language and translating it to another language of similar abstraction. Some of the most popular languages and libraries these days are transpiled. React, JSX, Scss are
Building a Rails Notification Queue 3: Queue Processing
This is the third and final piece on creating a notification queue in Rails. If you are just finding this post, i suggest starting with the first post on the database, as
Building a Rails Notification Queue 2: The Notification Class
As the title suggests, this is the second post in a series on building a flexible notification queue in Rails. I'd suggest starting with the first post: on the database table (it's
Building a Rails Notification Queue 1: The Database
Many apps live, or die, based on the success of their notifications. Because of this, many apps send notifications about as much as they can. This is not without code cost: notifications
Setting Up Rails Over HTTPS Using Nginx and Let's Encrypt
HTTPS can be a bit daunting to people who have never set it up before. Luckily, systems like Nginx and Let's Encrypt have lowered the barrier to entry quite a bit. Here
Making Privacy Consumable
As engineers we tend to be bad at simplifying topics for lay folks. Yes, we've talked about this before. But when it comes to the data security conversation, i think we have
Be The Better Rails Developer
Rails has been very prominent in web development the last 5-7 years, and for good reason. It is relatively easy to learn and its abstractions make it easy to build features quickly.
Brave Developers
Cautious developers keep the software world turning. They are careful, detail-oriented and inject fewer bugs than the others. This post is not about them.
This will be about the brave coders. They
Understanding Regular Expressions 4: Lookarounds
Lookarounds, like regular expressions in general, are too often avoided. Why? We avoid them because we don't understand them.
The time has come.
The Lookarounds
There are 4 types lookarounds. They are
Avoiding Phantom Code
Phantoms, ghouls, spectres; semi-transparent demons and star antagonists of your horror story du jour. So much of their frightfulness stems from their intangible nature. People see them and know they exist, but
Refrigerator Code
The late George Carlin once joked about the foolishness of human ingenuity. He said that, in the past, humans built houses to shield themselves from the cold. A warm enclosure inside of
Technology: Signal vs. Noise
Software is vast and growing. It seems like every week a new editor, library, framework, or language is released. I've written before about the value of learning things that are unnecessary, but