Silos in Tech
What is siloing?
In order to better discuss how engineers and teams become siloed, as well as the positive and negative effects it can have on a team, I should define what I mean when I refer to a siloed engineer and a siloed team. The best definition I have seen for siloing is the distinct separation between engineers and teams from the rest of the company. While siloing can take many forms, this particular definition includes having minimal interaction with other members of a team and…
October 29, 2018
When to Refactor: A Case for Quality
Software, like all things in life, decays, mutates, and grows old. Much like the barnacles that sprout across the belly of a ship, the slow creep of destructive rust on a tractor, the corrosion of metals in kinetic machinery, or the gradual degradation of your cells' ability to repair themselves — software gets old. In the world of software, we call this technical debt.
October 8, 2018
Three Lessons Learned from Working in IoT
Prior to coming to Metal Toad, I worked as a .NET engineer at an Internet of Things (IoT) startup. My job was to stabilize and expand an existing cloud-based infrastructure that served as a central hub for IoT communications. This hub allowed a variety of entities to connect to the cloud for key operations:
IoT devices reported status and checked for incoming commands
mobile devices checked on device status and issued commands
October 2, 2018
Missing a Development Tool? Make Your Own!
Do you ever wish you had a certain tool, but you don’t have the budget for it, or it doesn’t even exist? I’m here to tell you: you can build it!
And as I discovered, the build can give you more than that tool you want—it can also be a great way to strengthen your skills, add value for your teammates, and even have a bit of fun.
The problem
September 28, 2018
Angular API Calls with Django, Part 2: Building the Micro-Blog App
This is the second part of a two-part series exploring the use of the Angular 6 HttpClient to make API calls against a Django back-end using Django Rest Framework. In the first part, we learned how to authenticate against Django using the Django Rest Framework JWT package. This post demonstrates how to set up the Django models and views for the micro-blogging app, as well as the Angular Service and templates.
September 9, 2018
Devopsing a Legacy World
Devops has been picking up steam since around the year 2009. ( It could be argued it was around in other forms longer but for argument's sake let's go with 2009) Today it is mainstream and there are whole conferences built around devops. But not everyone is doing the devops thing.
September 7, 2018
Evaluating and Choosing A/B Testing Services
One of the first documented A/B tests was run by Google nearly 18 years ago as a spearpoint test into the world of web performance optimization. The test ultimately glitched due to slow load times. (Nice to know that even Google isn’t infallible!)
September 5, 2018
"Hack the Plants" — Five Lessons Learned from an IoT Adventure
Do a search on “IoT projects” and you’ll turn up endless pages of fantastic Internet of Things ideas and examples. Roll-your-own home security system! Track your cat’s movement! Build your own droid! With so many resources available, one might think all the problems are solved, all the answers just a few clicks away.
August 21, 2018
Hackathon 2018: Four Guys in a Garage. On Laptops. In a Minivan.
This year’s hackathon was all about the Internet of Things (IoT)—pulling data from the real world and sending it to the cloud, then finding ways to analyze and manipulate that data for insights.
August 21, 2018
Hacking Happiness: Team Mood Meter at Hackathon 2018
This year’s hackathon challenge was to explore the Internet of Things (IoT) using cloud technology. As a Scrum Master, I have a longstanding interest in supporting the emotional wellbeing of teams, because it’s an important element of productivity that often gets overlooked.
August 21, 2018