I just read a Human Resource article that was alerting managers to the fact that they might be bad interviewers. And the fact is, many of them are. I don’t mean to criticize, but good interviewing techniques don’t always come naturally - they are often the result of reading lots of good articles on how […]

In the article "Progressive Web Applications, Part 1," I laid out what a progressive web application is, and how it can enhance a web application to look and function like a real, native mobile application. I also covered what is and isn’t supported by today’s major platforms, Android and IOS. In this article I’ll be […]

Recently, I saw some interesting statistics about the hiring process. Studies have shown that 30% of hiring decisions are made within the first five minutes of an interview, and 5% are made within the first 60 seconds. That puts a fair amount of pressure on a person to make a good first impression. Obviously, you’ll […]

“Progressive Web Application” is a popular new terminology that encompasses an up and coming standard for web applications. This standard gives web apps the ability to be installed to a device and to function like a normal, lightweight device application. Devices can be mobile phones, tablets, or even more recently desktops. The app can be […]

Who knew that 80% of money transfers and 95% of ATM swipes are still powered by programs written in COBOL? This is very good news for retired COBOL programmers who want to keep doing a bit of work. It is also good news for younger developers who learned to program in COBOL to take some […]

Node Package Manager (NPM) is a great tool that brings order to the world of open source JavaScript software, and its CLI is an excellent extension to our software development toolset. However, as a software solution ages it can be difficult to keep NPM dependencies up to date and consistent across all development and build […]

Which of these descriptions best fits your software development team? (1) The team is highly integrated with the rest of the company and its customers. (2) The team is shoved off in a corner. If your circumstances more closely match the first scenario, well done you. By design or by accident, your structure is helping […]

This year I had the opportunity join my Stout Systems colleagues at CodeMash for the first time. If you’re not familiar with it, CodeMash is a software developers’ conference hosted in Sandusky, Ohio each January. Apparently, it’s a tradition that CodeMash’s opening or closing be marked by a blizzard, and this year did not disappoint! […]

Tech Stack Modernization Volumes 1 and 2 covered my thought process behind modernization and a review of Angular. Volume 4 will review my selected framework, (spoiler: it's Vue.JS), but before I get there I want to write a bit about Webpack and NPM. Both of these are tools that can be used with any tech […]

The DICE Tech Salary Survey was released late in March. I've been behind on my reading, so it wasn't until recently that I got a chance to dig into it. One of the most surprising data points in it was: "Overall technology salaries in the U.S. were essentially flat year-over-year (-1%), at $92,081 annually from […]