KrokiKroki is a wonderful tool I discovered during the time I worked as DevRel: it’s a small open source containerized application (compatible with OpenShift off-the-box) written in JavaScript, that encapsulates as many textual diagram formats as possible under a single unified API, offering a convenient way for users to generate diagrams, without needing to install separate libraries everywhere.
On DocumentationIn my career I’ve seen lots of teams struggling, not only to get their software out of the door, but much more often (even if successful in the previous step) to have a decent level of documentation next to it.
Reusing Apps Between Teams and Environments Through ContainersThis was my speech for the WeAreDevelopers Container Day on February 3rd, 2021. The talk will feature a live demo showing how to build, optimize, and distribute containers to be reused in as many environments as possible, 100% based on the experience of the VSHN team.
Somebody Call an AsciidoctorMarkdown is a great thing; but nothing beats Asciidoc for complex documentation projects.
Refactoring iOS ProjectsPresentation given in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, on July 16th, 2016. In this session we are going to learn simple yet effective techniques to refactor large iOS codebases in order to make them more testable, to adapt them to be eventually rewritten in Swift, and to make them as “future proof” as possible.
Markdown FTWMarkdown is my new favorite tool. It all started while looking for alternatives to LaTeX to write documents and booklets, because since the release of the iPad last year, I wanted to publish in PDF and in EPUB format at the same time, and LaTeX does not offer that option off the box.
Objective-C Compiler WarningsA recent comment by Joe D’Andrea in a previous post reminded me about the importance of removing compiler warnings in Xcode projects. Most importantly, it reminded me of a conversation with a fellow developer a couple of weeks ago, in which he told me that he was surprised to see that my projects compiled all the time without warnings. Not a single one. Nada. And that I took the time to remove them before checking code into source control.
Adding ManpowerPublished in 1975, “The Mythical Man-Month” is considered an all-time classic in the software engineering field. The book author, Frederick P. Brooks Jr., used his experience as the project manager of the IBM System/360 and its software, the Operating System/360, to explain a common set of problem patterns, applicable to other software projects as well.
Factors of Software Project QualityI strongly consider that the following three items are of high relevance for software project quality:
Web Development is Software DevelopmentI have been developing web applications since 1996, and I still do a fairly large amount of web development nowadays. During these years I have seen some common misconceptions and myths about web development, that ultimately have a direct impact in the usability of the system. I will outline these in this article, providing at the end my opinion on how to achieve a proper QA process.
Offshoring QualityIT offshoring is a highly controversial topic nowadays; organizations from medium to large sizes choose to have their projects developed overseas, usually in countries where the cost of software development is lower than in Western Europe, Japan or North America.
Reducing Code EntropyThis is a rant: I am tired of seeing virtual methods implemented in child classes that, at some point or another, call the method of the same name in the base class. For me this is a sign of poor architecture. A bad, bad smell in code.