An Engineering Firm with a Design Sensibility
We live in a man-made (or woman-made) world. Everything not sprung by nature was created by a human and has been designed. Whether it was well designed or poorly designed makes a difference, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. As humans, we know — we feel — when something has been well designed. We interact differently with something that has been well designed. We’re intrigued — we want more. When something is not well designed, it has the opposite effect. We grow frustrated, we…
April 21, 2017
Secrets to Project Happiness Using Git
I have worked with dozens of projects over my career, on platforms ranging from Drupal to Yii to Django to AngularJS to ASP.NET. Most of them have had a good, solid strategy for how to manage their Git repositories. A few notable ones have not.
Here are a few things I've learned for how to manage your repository to ensure a successful project.
April 11, 2017
How Much Does a Website Cost? Maintenance (Part 3 of 3)
At the start of this three-part series on website costs, I answered the questions of how much a website costs, and then called out migration and missing features as additional expense areas that are often overlooked.
A good framework for most people to help understand these costs is to look at buying a website like buying a house. After you've bought it you still have to move into it (website migration costs) and maintain the house over time.
April 11, 2017
How Much Does a Website Cost? Rebuilding (Part 2 of 3)
In my last article, I addressed the age old question "how much does a website cost?" from the standpoint of initial purchase. Like purchasing a house, prices are all over the map, and perhaps more importantly the initial purchase price of a website does not include the cost of content migration from the old website or the cost of ongoing maintenance. This is a lot like buying a new house: buying the house doesn't include moving costs or home maintenance.
April 6, 2017
How Much Does a Website Cost? Initial Purchase (Part 1 of 3)
"How much does a website cost?" These are six words — when spoken in sequence — that most web developers dread. There is reason for this anguish; asking how much a website costs is like asking "how much does a house cost?" With this amount of information, you can't just use the median sale price of a home, but have to include tents, tiny houses, and ridiculous mega-mansions in an estimate to truly get this comparison right (so the answer to this question could range anywhere from free to…
April 5, 2017
Metal Tudse in Denmark
In February a few Toads got to travel to Denmark to begin discovery on a new internet of things (IoT) project with a large wind turbine manufacturer. This is Metal Toads first foray into the European market and we couldn't be more excited to be working with a great client and new partner, Danish Aviation Systems. Earlier this week we announced the opening of our Los Angeles office, could a European location be next? You'll have to wait and see!
March 24, 2017
Metal Toad office in Los Angeles
We are excited to announce that coming in June 2017, Metal Toad will be opening a permanent office in the Los Angeles metro. For years Metal Toad has...
March 20, 2017
How to become a programmer in 2017
Five years ago I wrote an article on how to get a job as a web developer, but the market has changed and it's now 2017. Code schools are now...
March 14, 2017
Employee Liberation and the Impact of Good Company Culture
You know what’s sad to me?
It’s sad that most people will never know how liberating it is to come to terms with your unhappiness, and to quit your sh*tty job because of it.
My moment of clarity came on a bus.
March 7, 2017
Tech is More Than an Industry
Some people see software and tech as an industry. Seen on it's own it is a whole category of employment including massive companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Yet as time marches on, tech is becoming more than an industry. Like...
March 7, 2017
