developer tools
Posted on General

Great Developer Tools To Be Thankful For

As I write this, it is a season of being thankful.  In this spirit, it is worth looking at developer tools for which we should be grateful.  The young amongst us may not know how much more productive development has become over the last fifty years.  Time to appreciate what we have. Integrated Development Environments Depending on your age, you may have heard about or even coded with card decks.  These decks are not an old version of Pokemon.  It was a process where holes were punched in cards to write code.  I don’t want to revisit that.  However, now we have systems and tools that write your code.  Code completion, easily save and test your code?  That never happened until... Read more

Posted on Podcast

An Introduction To the Developer Focused Episodes

We will start the tech track of episodes with an overview of what topics to expect.  This discussion also helps tie our past blog post articles into these upcoming podcast episodes.  We want to set a suitable destination as we embark on this journey.  Thus, this too looks at what we think makes for a better developer. Be A Better Developer We start from ground zero.  However, it will not hurt to try out our Launching an Internet Business series of tutorials.  The tutorials ask for only a few minutes a day and are a great tool for building a habit.  They also help you see where we are coming from.  All of this as well as some of the areas we... Read more

Posted on Become a Better Developer

Patterns of Software Design

Every challenge we face has solutions patterns. These are approaches to a problem that solves it consistently.  Some software patterns provide the fastest solution, some the cheapest, and others the most aesthetically pleasing. Popular and Useful Software Patterns Object-oriented design is more about the design than the objects.  We try to keep our focus on simple solutions that use objects instead of utilizing all that OOD offers us in building a solution.  Although OOD offers a lot of great ways to organize tight and efficient code, it can be overdone.  As part of the presentation, we look at finding a balance between reality and the academic side of OOD. This episode can be viewed as the next step in our building... Read more

Posted on Podcast

An Overview of the Develpreneur Podcast

The Podcast Overview This episode starts us on our journey to become a better developer.  We look at the planned release schedule and structure along with why this podcast came into being.  The episodes will cover three main topics that make up a great developer. These are technical skills, entrepreneurial drive, and life-hacking/life balance tips and tricks. We have a busy road ahead so this provides a high-level overview. The next three episodes will involve going more deeply into the topic areas that will be visited each week.   Read more

cloud search
Posted on AWS Tour

Cloud Search – Offer Your Visitors Custom Results

AWS Cloud Search provides a quick and easily scalable solution for your search needs.  One of the best features of the Internet is the ability to search for anything you want.  Thus, this is a service that is critical for your customers and the growth of your site. Why Not Rely on Other Sites? The first question one may ask is why search is needed.  Google, Bing, and other sites provide search features so why duplicate those functions?  In a case like Cloud Search, the results are focused and often more in-depth than a general search portal.  Better yet, public search portals rely on data they can see and index.  Your documents and white papers do not always cut.  Thus, a custom approach service... Read more

Posted on Become a Better Developer

Object-Oriented Design – Planning Your Implementation

Although we have not picked an implementation language or platform, an object-oriented design is useful.  This approach is easier to maintain and understand when done right.  This episode focuses on OOD principles and how to model a system using this method. Back To Basics The first step in this episode is to cover some object-oriented design basics.  We look at what makes a good design as well as some things to avoid.  The steps to take in building a model are then reviewed to help us get to a solid foundation. Considerations of Good Object-Oriented Design Our next steps are to build our design and determine our objects.  We use some of the same guidelines that were used to design... Read more