Modern JavaScript TypeScript How far we’ve come! Back in the day, JavaScript was the nightmare language that no one wanted to use—partly due to its quirks and mostly due to terrible competing browser ecosystems. It got better with JQuery, which fixed the latter problem by making it easier to access the browser's DOM in a […]

In Part 1 of this series, the topic of merge bugs was introduced. Merge bugs are the result of changes in multiple branches that don't result in conflicts, but when the two changes are merged together the result is not consistent with the intent of either modification. In Part 1, the following process was suggested […]

You’ve heard of merge conflicts, but what about merge bugs? Like conflicts, these are caused when multiple developers work on the same code and then merge changes. Conflicts (when the same line is changed by more than one developer) are easy to detect, but bugs outside of those conflicts are much more complex. They won’t […]

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 […]

“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 […]

Is Custom Software Right for your Business? I know, I know… Not another buy-versus-build article. But wait. What if the buy-versus-build decision could be boiled down to a few simple yes/no questions? Well, it can! Question 1: Is there a software package, Web site or mobile application that comes close to delivering what you need? […]

When "Pull" is Insufficient Software developers live in a pull first world. Even modern single page applications (SPAs), while highly interactive and responsive, only respond to change when the client initiates it. A user sees a list of work orders, and the list doesn't update unless that person requests an update, either by refreshing the […]

This isn't a primer on Docker, containers, virtual machines, system resources, or anything like that. All of that has been written about extensively elsewhere. This is about getting local development environments up and running, fast. When I stumbled upon Docker, at first I thought it was something like Composer or NPM because I could "install […]