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 […]
The term DevOps is moving into our vocabularies in much the same way the word cloud did—creeping in slowly and quietly until suddenly it surrounds you. So what is DevOps, really? Unlike a new programming language or a new framework, DevOps is as much a concept as it is a thing. There is consensus that […]
As much as the business world has shifted toward a paperless environment, business applications still frequently need to produce paper documents. This often presents a challenge, as printing documents directly from a Web browser cedes control regarding the layout and output to the end users and their preferred browsers. PDF generation libraries are available, but […]
Go to any technical user group meeting and you are likely to find many announcements of jobs—but few developers who are looking for work. Something has definitely shifted in the supply and demand equation, and it's developers who are in the driver's seat now. They are able to change jobs more easily than at any […]