Latest Posts - Page 143 of 193

July 20, 2018July 15, 2018 Create a Small Product

Creating Our Test Scripts and Planning for Quality

Testing is an integral part of software development. It is critical for producing quality and an essential habit to develop early in your career. We will look at building test considerations into our product development process from the very beginning. This is an excellent way to keep the cost of fixing bugs down as we will catch them early in the process when they are easier to correct. Validating Data Garbage in, garbage out is something that rises to the level of a golden rule in software. Not only can bad data be useless on its own, but it can also corrupt and crash an entire system. Therefore, the payoff for doing proper validation of your data and testing those... Read more

July 18, 2018July 8, 2018 Get Started With Online Consulting

Building Your Service Offering and Resume

One of the first steps once we decide to do consulting as a side-hustle is to define our service offering. We have the option to be a general consultant and do at large coding or technical support. However, that is not an easy one to sell or even define. By its nature, a broad offering will limit your ability to speak directly to a customer’s needs. Pick A Path Or A Few Start your offering thoughts with a favorite or ideal project to work on. This may be something you can do with your eyes closed or what you love to do. You may find it hard to narrow your focus to a tightly defined project. That is ok. Find... Read more

July 17, 2018July 12, 2018 Become a Better Developer

Software Estimation: Improving Productivity, Quality, and Expectations

There is a saying that what gets measured gets improved. That goes for software development. Unfortunately, it is a task that is easier said than done. This presentation looks at some ways to make software estimation easier and help us get better at it as we go. Piecewise Software Estimation A software application is often a complex beast to create. There are a number of issues that can arise and unforeseen obstacles to encounter. These factors are likely why failure and overrun rates are so high with these projects. However, much like eating an elephant, you do not try to do it in one bite. Nibble away at the goal and it will be much more likely to be achieved. We... Read more

July 16, 2018July 9, 2018 Create a Small Product

Creating a product specification and defining your environment

We continue defining our product in this episode. Our prior episodes looked at the problem to solve, the solution, and general requirements. Now we can move on to the product specification and deciding on the environment we will use to create it. Design the application structure (core, data model, methods/functions, helpers, screens/output) Challenge: Create the specification from these decisions Choices, Choices, Choices The modern landscape provides a seemingly infinite combination of choices when we consider languages, data stores, platforms, delivery method, and the other variations available to a solution. There are several things to consider in making this decision. Languages you know (or want to learn) A Suitable platform for your customers The cost to you and thus customers Speed and... Read more

July 16, 2018July 16, 2018 AWS Tour

Amazon Elastic Container Service – Containers Made Easy

Containers are a big deal in development. This is an excellent tool for coding but can be a bit of a challenge once we get to deployment. Never fear, Amazon and their AWS offerings have thought about that and provided a solution. This is where the elastic container service comes into play. Instead of creating a virtual system that you can place containers on, this allows you to directly deliver your containers without all of the sizing issues. Pricing and Usage If I have a complaint about Amazon, it is that the pricing can be a bit tricky to figure out. Of course, you always have the option of running a service for days or weeks to get a good... Read more

July 13, 2018July 6, 2018 Create a Small Product

Creating Your Product Requirements

In this episode, we look at creating the product requirements for our side hustle software. Even though we have a lot of this information in our head, it is good practice to put it on paper. This exercise will help us think through our plan more thoroughly before we begin. It will also give us another experience in building out product requirements on our journey to become better developers. The Users It helps to think about the end users from the start. This is the audience for your product and the ultimate deciders whether this is a success or not. You can stay broad in your definition. However, the more specific you can make your ideal users the better your product will... Read more