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Navigating our Pair to Success
I’ve been pairing for over a decade. I’ve witnessed and tried all kinds of things shoulder-to-shoulder with all kinds of pairing partners. Through the years I’ve witnessed a single consistent misfire...
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7 Languages In 7 Days – Day 2: TypeScript
Getting Started About Latest Posts Cory Gideon Latest posts by Cory Gideon (see all) 7 Languages In 7 Days – Day 2: TypeScript - February 15, 2016 7 Languages in 7 Days: Day 1 – Java (1/7) - February...
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Coming Soon: #TechCamp2016
Source Allies is proud to be involved in many charitable endeavors such as dsmHack, Hyperstream and Tech Journey. Tech Journey is a 501c(3) non-profit founded in 2013 by my friend Tony Kioko and my...
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The Day-to-Day Proof of Concept
In the software world, there are often new technologies coming to market, new fields to explore, new techniques to use, etc. Filtering through these in itself can be a challenge. Deciding when to move...
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7 Ways To Go Beyond Your Agile Process
Now that Agile has become mainstream, teams are looking to go beyond their Agile process to find ways to improve. There has even been recent use of the term “Antifr-Agile”, where process is secondary...
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Build a RESTful Service with .NET Core
Build an API backend for your application using the newest version of .NET that can be developed anywhere and run everywhere. This tutorial walks through the process to build a production-ready service...
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Giving Back Through #dsmHack
This time of the year I get truly inspired by the Des Moines technology community. Blown away actually. Did you know that over the last 3 years more than 255 technology professionals donated over...
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Introduction to Pair Programming – Infographic
About Latest Posts Amy Lindberg Latest posts by Amy Lindberg (see all) Introduction to Pair Programming – Infographic - July 10, 2017 In our previous blog post, Pair Programming 101, we outlined the...
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What did you do this summer?
As I head back to school at Northwestern this fall, I am sure I will hear, “What did you do this summer?” 100 times. My response will be “Well, let me tell you about my experience as an apprentice at...
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Can you use Agile techniques with non-software projects?
As an Agile coach, I am always reflecting on my experiences and looking for ways to help others improve. Recently I hired a contractor to complete a home improvement project. It didn’t go very well....
View ArticleNUnit Addins That Work With Resharper
If you’ve tried to create an NUnitAddin that works with Resharper you quickly found that it simply doesn’t work. In fact, it’s been confirmed that Resharper does not currently support NUnit...
View ArticleAgile Manifesto – Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
By: Cecil Williams & David Kessler Do you ever wish that companies would trust their employees and business partners instead of insulating themselves with contracts and policies? For many...
View ArticleAcceptance Testing presentation at Iowa Code Camp
I had the opportunity to present at the eleventh Iowa Code Camp on June 8, 2013. The title of my presentation was “Easy Acceptance Testing.” The purpose of the presentation was to discuss an...
View ArticleMy Top 4 Takeaways from NFJS 2013
**Android Development** Google is working on Android Studio, which is built on the community edition of Intellij IDEA. You can learn more and download the early access preview at...
View ArticleAgile Manifesto – Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
Is it really possible that intense planning and the ability to respond to change can co-exist within the same development process? If you are wondering this, then you are not alone. Clients regularly...
View ArticleWhat you missed at Agile 2013
I was able to attend the Agile 2013 conference in Nashville, TN earlier this month. I had previously attended Agile 2006 in Minneapolis, MN. There was a significant difference. At this year’s...
View ArticlePragmatic Application of Principles
I was reminded of a profound truth as I was re-reading Robert C. Martin’s book “Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices”, in C# this time. It is not wise to apply (a) principle...
View ArticleGetting Started with Camel: Error Handling
Error handling is tricky. Not because it’s especially hard to do, but because everyone (operations, the business team, fellow programmers) seems to have a different idea of how a particular situation...
View ArticleAgile Iowa No Estimates Puzzle Experiment
I facilitated my own rendition of the #NoEstimates Puzzle Experiment for the September 2013 Agile Iowa user group meeting. This experiment was created by Chris Chapman to generate critical thinking and...
View ArticlePain Driven Learning
I find that in software development, and also in life, people learn best within the context of painful experiences. I’m not suggesting that software development mentors go out of their way to create...
View ArticlePizza & Beer: Learning with Atlassian
As a new employee here at Source Allies and a new user to our suite of Atlassian products, I was fortunate, and a little intimidated, to attend Atlassian’s 2013 Summit. Despite my initial trepidation,...
View ArticleSphinxSearch | Full Text Searching
This article explains how to use SphinxSE, Sphinx real time indexing, and set up Sphinx in order to improve search query performance. First some background about issues surrounding full-text search....
View ArticleA Better Analogy For Agile Software Development?
For years, like many of you, I have been comparing software development to construction. But ever since adopting the agile methodology a decade ago, I have been looking for a better analogy to help me...
View ArticleHow to implement the splitter and aggregator patterns with Apache Camel
I have found that Apache Camel is a good way to load data from log files into a database. Read on to see how I did this using the splitter and aggregator patterns with Apache Camel. Problem We have...
View ArticleCustomizing CSRF Protection In Spring Security
Starting in Spring Security 3.2, developers gained an easy solution to their Cross-Site Request Forgery problems with Spring’s implementation of the Synchronizer Token Pattern. Spring’s documentation...
View ArticleUpdated TDD Mantra
If you have ever practiced test driven development (TDD), then you are probably familiar with the TDD mantra – red, green, refactor. I’m a big proponent of TDD, but I think the TDD mantra is missing a...
View ArticleAutomated Plant Watering System
Taking care of indoor plants can be work, especially if you have many of them. As you know water plays a major role in the health of plants, so lets automate it! Automation of watering plants can be...
View ArticleTest Driven Groovy: StubFor
After years of being immersed in Java development, I must admit that I got spoiled by its strong and mature ecosystem. Hence, whenever I want to pick up a new technology or programming language the...
View ArticlePut the grunt work behind you
Gulp is quickly becoming the the leading task runner over grunt. If you are currently using Grunt or even worse, an ant task, then I highly recommend this topic for you. In this write up, we will...
View ArticleActiveMQ Memory Tuning
ActiveMQ is a great messaging broker. However, using the default configuration is not recommended. This article will explain how I determined the appropriate ActiveMQ memory settings for one of our...
View ArticleDry up your CSS
As we start to build websites with mobile first in mind, our stylesheets can get messy really quick. In this article, we’ll talk about making your stylesheets more functional and easier to read at the...
View ArticleThe Danger of Carrier Objects
In the everyday world, it’s usually a good thing to have what you need ahead of time, even if there’s a possibility of never using it: I’m going to school, better pack my books; I’m taking a flight...
View Article7 Languages in 7 Days: Intro
Why should any developer learn more than one programming language? This is an interesting question. Let’s think of it this way: Does a carpenter only use one type of saw? Does a mechanic only have one...
View ArticleUnlearning jQuery
Now that you have already learned jQuery, let’s unlearn it and get back to the basics. In this article, we will quickly go over the most common things that jQuery is currently used for and convert them...
View ArticleHow we improved our productivity 500% for $800
I convinced a client to upgrade the computers we were using for software development. Maybe this article will help you convince your manager to do the same! Old Computers When I started at the client,...
View ArticleSimple SVG Graphing
Graphing is a great way to visualize a bunch of data. In this article we will talk about a simple way to make graphs for modern web browsers. We will be using dimple.js that is powered by D3. Here I...
View ArticleNeatly clean up your CSS layout
Recently I started to use a more minimally-responsive CSS framework called Neat, since I was unhappy with the total offerings of so many others. This article will explain how to start using the basics...
View ArticleFeedback
One of the tenets of the agile methodology is feedback. To provide value to your customer, you need to know that what you are delivering is correct. But as an agile coach, I often struggle with teams...
View Article7 Languages in 7 Days: Day 1 – Java (1/7)
Intro Getting Started Let’s start with the 800lb gorilla in the room, Java. Why Java? Well, let’s start off with the fact that it’s got a ton of community support and documentation everywhere. If you...
View Article6 Concerns Before Using an Open Source Library
During my career, I’ve worked at various organizations that had different stances toward open source frameworks and tools. Some of these organizations absolutely did not want anything open source near...
View ArticleHard Drive Sustainability
Your hard drive with very important family pictures has just failed, and now all data is lost forever. Could you have prevented this from happening? This article is a quick walk though of how to detect...
View Article4 Ways to Launch Docker Containers
Introduction Amazon just announced general availability of their Elastic Container Service providing a platform for launching Docker images in the cloud. Let’s say your team is developing software on...
View ArticleSAU ARRIVES!!!
Source Allies is a technical consultancy proudly working with clients in Des Moines. We focus on application development, and trend towards newer technologies. Our strength lies in our people:...
View ArticleRecap: SAU TDD Workshop
About a month ago, I facilitated the first event as part of the Source Allies external mentoring program known as Source Allies University (SAU). It was an interactive forum and...
View ArticleJava 8: Parallel vs Sequential Stream Comparison
Motivated by the introduction of Lambdas in Java 8, I wrote a couple of examples to see how difficult it would be to follow a functional programming paradigm in real production code. I will demonstrate...
View ArticleMicroservices in Practice: The Positive
A recent topic grabbing the stage in the software community is the use of Microservice Architectures. Microservice architectures are often sold as a great way to enhance a project’s agility over a...
View ArticleLessons from DevOps Experience
What I want to cover in this post is the experience that I had transitioning from a traditional development role to DevOps and what I learned to be useful in that transition. One of the nice things...
View ArticleMicroservices in Practice: Challenges
Authored by: Trevor Richardson & Todd Brunia In a previous article we discussed some of the positive characteristics of microservices that we’ve found while implementing them in a production...
View ArticleKey Components of DevOps
In a previous post, I mentioned that in order to have a successful DevOps experience, there were some key components and principles that need to be implemented. In this post, I’ll cover those...
View Article10 Tips to Prepare for an Interview
In nearly a decade of experience in recruitment, I’ve been fortunate to work with several adept hiring managers and skilled technical people. Working with these people has provided me the opportunity...
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