Servers...yay or nay?
...On Serverless Infrastructure
The what
Recently the term "serverless" has been thrown a lot in reference to provisioned, on demand functions invoked by a cloud provider, as a service. Obviously we…
By Alex Banks, Senior Developer
November 3, 2017
Sum Algebraic Data Types in Haskell and Swift
"Grove Park Traincare Depot and sidings" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by train_photos
Engineers at Metal Toad participate in a variety of continuing education such as the Hackathon, dedicated time for professional…
By Phil Tseng, Software Engineer
November 2, 2017
Momento Mori
In April of 2017 I put a widget on my phone that reminds me that I’m going to die. This is how it improved my life.
A long time ago I learned about the concept of Momento Mori. It’s a simple phrase…
By Matt Thogerson, Product Manager
October 31, 2017
Push the publish button already
The most important measure of progress in building blogging expertise is not word count, it’s how many timers you hit the publish button. Every post is either a rock or a gem dropped into the water;…
By Joaquin Lippincott, CEO
October 31, 2017
Proxying MS SQL connections using PuTTY
Connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server database isn't too hard, most of the time. But, what if the database is in your office, and you want to access it remotely, but you don't have a VPN?
There is…
By Keith Dechant, Software Architect
October 28, 2017
The Art of Sprinting: It’s Not Just for Software Development
As a sequel to the article I wrote last month about the process and technology improvements I helped design/build firm Design Platform make earlier this year, I wanted to highlight another change…
By Hayli Hay, Director of Client Services
October 24, 2017
Leveraging Structs and Generics in the…
Swift Talk #1 and #8 introduces an approach (hereinafter alternative approach) to using structs and generics to build a networking layer in Foundation.
The original code was written in Swift 2.2.…
By Phil Tseng, Software Engineer
October 23, 2017
Q4 Hackathon Theme: Machine Learning & Data Science
I was dusting off my copy of Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines today, and found a fascinating chart (adapted below). The book was written in 1998; it's interesting to reflect nearly 20…
By Dylan Tack, Principal Engineer
October 21, 2017
Origin Protection with AWS WAF & Shield
Amazon has been steadily improving their CloudFront CDN offering with WAF (Web Application Firewall) capabilities. This is a great feature, however it's ineffective if origin servers can be attacked…
By Dylan Tack, Principal Engineer
October 12, 2017
Git: Push All Branches to a New Remote
Here's a scenario some of you might have encountered with your Git repositories. You have a working copy of a Git repo, say from an old server. But you only have the working copy, and the origin is…
By Keith Dechant, Software Architect
October 9, 2017
Drupal 8: Migrating data from JSON files
The beauty of Drupal 8's built-in Migrate module is its flexibility. Lots of people will likely use it to migrate their Drupal 6 or 7 sites, but that's not all it can do. In fact, it's capable of…
By Keith Dechant, Software Architect
October 9, 2017
Maximizing the Value of a Small Team by Maturing Processes…
One of the things that I do is help companies and business people implement a people, process, and technology golden triangle so that there is a solid foundation for growth, maturation and…
By Hayli Hay, Director of Client Services
September 28, 2017
BackstopJS Part Deux: Javascript Config and Makefile
I’ve written previously about my setup for BackstopJS (which I’m still excited to say is the creator-recommended tutorial for V2 of the package!). Since that article, I’ve switched from JSON to…
By Angela Riggs, QA Engineer
September 11, 2017
Open Source HR, because we need this.
Uber, Google, Yahoo, Amazon...it's hard to find a tech giant that hasn't been in the news for an employee relations crisis. HR has always been a challenging career, but lately, it's felt damn…
By Jenny Berkedal, Director of Operations
September 7, 2017
Comparing Drupal, Symfony, and Craft CMS Frameworks
With so many options available out there, it can be confusing to choose the right CMS for your business. When a client came to us with a recommendation from their design partner to build their…
By Hayli Hay, Director of Client Services
August 28, 2017