Latest Posts - Page 108 of 197

October 16, 2019October 7, 2019 Three Ways To Improve

Three Important AWS Services Developers Should Know

We spent an entire season going over Amazon AWS services at a high level. That shows how many options you have available in that world. However, there are some options that are more important AWS services to know. These are the core offerings upon which many other services are built. Thus, it provides a good foundation for growth. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) The first of our important AWS services is the Elastic Compute Cloud. The short name for this service is EC2. This service provides a virtual machine. While the size, power, and storage can all vary, at its core, EC2 is a virtual machine. There is a free tier option for this service that will allow you to create... Read more

October 14, 2019October 6, 2019 Three Ways To Improve

Three Important Development Languages For Your Career

In this episode of three things for improving your career, we look at important development languages. This is not a look at a primary language. There are a few good options, and the best will depend on your situation as well as where you live. These will provide you more tools for solving problems while enhancing your resume in crucial areas. Javascript Frameworks (React or Angular) Javascript has grown into a language that is used in a lot of development. There are even situations where a javascript framework can create an entire solution. There are several frameworks available. However, the good news is that once you learn one, the others will be comfortable to use as well. The popularity of... Read more

October 11, 2019October 1, 2019 Three Ways To Improve

3 Habits For Every Day and a Happier Life

We take a turn away from technology in this episode to focus on life. It is hard to be a better developer when your daily life is miserable. Therefore, it is vital for us to look at some steps for a happier life. These little habits are easy to start and can be a significant impact in positive ways. Daily Progress Makes for a Happier Life It may be my personality, but I think one of the worst things is being stuck in a rut. There is nothing like a rut to make every day seem like a repeat of the previous one. Thus steady progress is key to a happier life. Note that our progress does not have to... Read more

October 9, 2019October 1, 2019 Three Ways To Improve

Three Suggestions For Better Meetings

There are some activities that are part of any job. While not all of these are also a common concern, it does seem that one often bubbles to the top. That bad boy is the meeting. Whether we are talking about a team, organization, or planning version of these activities, we all have bad experiences with them. Thus, we can all improve our productivity by tackling ways to have better meetings. An Agenda Leads To Better Meetings The old cliche of a map is required to get to our destination holds in the case of an agenda. One of the quickest paths to better meetings is to create (and share) an agenda. This step provides a map for us, and... Read more

October 7, 2019September 29, 2019 Three Ways To Improve

3 Ways to Embrace and Improve Unit Testing

Quality Assurance is an art as well as a skill. We all can randomly break things. However, testing is not just about breaking things. It is also done with the goal of providing a sense of quality and stability. Thus, we need to be intentional with our plans. This process starts at the smallest level so let’s look at three ways to improve unit testing. Create and Test For Exceptions, Notifications, and Messages One piece of the user experience is messaging and notifications. These may appear to confirm a step, show success, or point to errors. When we build a unit of code, then we need to include ways to provide feedback for these messages. This functionality provides a way... Read more

October 4, 2019September 27, 2019 Three Ways To Improve

3 Quick Ways To Manage Email

It is impossible to provide modern productivity suggestions without including a way to manage email. This form of communication has done so much for us in shrinking the world. On the other hand, it is also a substantial use of our time. There are several important conversations we want to track. However, there is also an endless stream of spam. Here are some suggestions to help you with this modern struggle. Manage Email By Checking Less One of the most overlooked ways to reduce the time spent on email is to reduce how often you check. Many of the mail clients are configured by default to check every minute or so for our latest email. This approach makes it hard... Read more