Latest Posts - Page 143 of 200

September 28, 2018September 23, 2018 Free and Low Cost Tools

Web Tracking and Visitor Recording Tools

A few years ago I stumbled across the ideas of heatmaps and recording for websites. This is one of the most potent user experience improvement tools available. The ability for visitor recording alone brings the task of watching a room full of users to your fingertips. Visitor Recording If you have not experienced this sort of tool, it is a game-changer. The way visitor recording works with these tools is that you place a javascript snippet on your web page. That is it. The code is typically only a line or two, and it sends information back to the tool for you to see what users do. You can see where they come from, what browser they use, and even where... Read more

September 26, 2018September 17, 2018 Patterns of Software Design

Software Patterns – Factory Method

We continue our exploration of the creation patterns with a look at the Factory Method. This is a pattern where we see that instantiation is sometimes better when deferred. We do not always know all we need to at instantiation time. Thus, we need a pattern to address holding off on that step until we have the required information. The Factory Method Defined It helps to start with the “Gang of Four” definition and then we will dig into that. Define an interface for creating an object, but let subclasses decide which class to instantiate. The Factory method lets a class defer instantiation it uses to subclasses. This pattern allows us to roughly replace the constructor for a class with retrieving an instance... Read more

September 25, 2018February 16, 2019 General

Launching a Side-Hustle

When we think about a side-hustle it does not seem like the concept of the launch comes to mind. This is underestimating the work that should go into such an effort. A side-hustle is not just more work. Effort alone does not get you there. Instead, you are building something through your sweat-equity. A Starting Point One of the essential steps in a side-hustle is creating a starting line. You are planning on putting effort into this enterprise so you should determine when that effort is going to begin. Otherwise, you will find yourself floundering and competing activities stealing time from the side work. It is like a runner in a race. They do not trot up to the starting line and then start... Read more

September 24, 2018September 25, 2018 Become a Better Developer

Keeping Up With Technological Advances

We all know that technology moves fast. That makes it a full-time job just to keep up with the latest technological advances. Fortunately, there are many ways for us to make keeping up a part of the normal routine. These avenues are easy to utilize and are an excellent way to save yourself time. Trade Magazines and Blog Sites I have mentioned these before. However, you can get a wealth of information by perusing magazines, blogs, and podcasts. The best part about these sources of information is that you can skim or pay partial attention to them while still getting a benefit. This happens to be a reason why articles that are in list form (top three this, never do... Read more

September 24, 2018September 17, 2018 A Summary Of Amazon Services

The Amazon Migration Services

In this episode, we look at the migration group of services. We have already discussed a few of these and will focus on the ones that are new to us. These services are the Migration Hub, Application Discovery, and the Application Migration Service. We looked at the database migration service and the “snow” family of services in prior episodes. These make it easy to move a database to the cloud or large amounts of data. The “snow” (ball, edge, mobile) services make it easy to move data without using all your network pipe for hours, days, or weeks. Migration Hub – Your Dashboard The number of us that will need to migrate a large number of servers out to the cloud... Read more

September 21, 2018September 13, 2018 Free and Low Cost Tools

Code Review and Analysis Tools (Free and Low-Cost)

There have been a lot of excellent free and low-cost reviewed already. However, this week we continue our “shopping” with a look at code review and analysis applications. This used to be an area where all of the solutions were pricey. Fortunately, SAAS options, improved automation, and well-defined best practices (with a touch of open source) have made these affordable. Yes, even the individual developer can find affordable options. Keep It Cheap There are a lot of great tools available in this area that also have a high price tag. We will skip those this time as we want to focus on options for small teams down to individuals. I have found these useful even in little applications like the one created in Season... Read more