Smart contracts are often described as a transformative new technology that borders on magic, able to remove third-parties and monetary risk alike from business deals using the power of the blockchain. The autonomous execution and enforcement of an agreement may sound like something out of a Harry Potter novel, but the maturation of blockchain-based programming

It’s been a year since I last talked about my development environment. Many things remain the same: I’m using neovim, zsh, and tmux. However, I have made a few changes to improve usability and make my day-to-day work feel faster. I’m using a new terminal application, my vim environment has changed dramatically (at least behind

What is Software Architecture? Software architecture is the analysis, thought and design considerations that form the foundational scaffolding for a successful software system. If you write software for work or as a hobby, whether you know it or not, you’re already dealing with software architecture and the processes of making architectural decisions within your applications.

TypeScript has become a mainstay of modern web development libraries. Consuming functions and widgets written by a third party can be error-prone without some type of guidance. Introducing static typing to the interfaces doesn’t just reduce misuse, it has added benefits including intelligent code completion. Dojo Toolkit is one of the earliest libraries to facilitate

In an olympic sprint relay, four runners operate as a team to sprint a total of four hundred meters. In order to compete at a record-setting level, an athlete needs to be capable of running one hundred meters in less than ten seconds. The training and dedication it takes to get to this level of

“What problem are we trying to solve?” As a career business analyst, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve asked this question. More often than not, stakeholders are ready to discuss solutions before dissecting the problem itself. The result? A half-baked “solution” that may or may not address the key problem, and likely

This is part 3 of the Disciplined Engineering series.  It is for teams that have an established engineering process with confidence around the quality of their application. This article will help improve your engineering game by identifying the common patterns that will further improve your team’s focus on quality. If you don’t  have an established

This is part 2 of the Disciplined Engineering series. It focuses on improving the confidence of the code produced by your team. If you haven’t already, we recommend reading Part 1: Building an Engineering Process as a prerequisite for these practices. You can also check out Part 3: Refining Your Engineering Process. Creating Code Confidence Ensuring the quality

This is part 1 of the Disciplined Engineering series.  It is for teams that want to establish a culture of engineering excellence for their organization. For teams that already have an established process, we recommend reading Part 2: Creating Code Confidence. If you’re looking to further improve upon your process, please check out Part 3: Refining Your

Snapshot testing has become very popular for front end-development over the last few years. The term has almost become synonymous with Jest and React, but it can be used to test more than just components. This article provides a brief overview of what snapshot testing is, what it isn’t, and how it might be helpful

The recent TypeScript 3.9 release primarily focuses on performance and stability, but it does include some language updates that are worth a closer look. Expansion of uncalled function checks Continuing its quest to save you from yourself, TypeScript 3.9 expands on the uncalled function checks that were introduced in version 3.7. These checks report when

There’s an old adage in the software industry – premature optimization is the root of all evil. A corollary to this should be – no optimization is just as bad as premature optimization. It is often true that effort spent optimizing a system before features are properly implemented, correct and stable is effort wasted, but