Asking for Things in SQL: Postgres Conditional Expressions and Window Functions

Recently, I worked on a project with a lot of complex data relationships. To abstract away some of this complexity, my team defined database views that summarized the information that matters to us. When building up those views in PostgreSQL, I found a couple of patterns particularly useful. I used conditional expressions (CASE and COALESCE) […]

Recursion in the Real World – Using Recursive Algorithms in Web Dev

Recursion (solving smaller and smaller sub-problems until arriving at the base case) has always intrigued me. The first recursive function I ever wrote computed the factorial for n, and it looked like this: def recur_factorial(n): if n == 1: return n else: return n*recur_factorial(n-1)

Connecting a Raspberry Pi to a Laptop Display

After purchasing a Raspberry Pi and an SD card, you might not feel like going out and buying a display, mouse, and keyboard just to create a simple project. No worries! Together, a laptop and an internet connection are sufficient to get started on your Raspberry Pi. How?

Single Sign-On/Sign-Out With SAML 2.0

SAML 2.0 is an authentication protocol, an agreed-upon way to transfer authentication information between parties. It was approved as an OASIS standard in 2005, and there are SAML Protocol Documents with details about the protocol. The protocol is complex (the core document alone is 86 pages) and has a wide range of capabilities. In this post, I’ll scratch […]

Computer Science for Middle Schoolers – BOGO Sort, Insertion Sort, and Bubble Sort

Once every couple of months, I get an opportunity to teach middle schoolers/high schoolers about computer science. Computer science and software development are very broad disciplines, so I could cover anything from web styling to computer networks. Among all of those possible topics, I find that I like to work on sorting algorithms.

Git Merging vs. Rebasing: The Beginner’s Guide

Let’s say you’re creating a feature branch off a master for a new feature you are about to implement. You finish up your work on the feature branch while one of your colleagues is making some changes on the master branch. Before creating a pull request, you might want to make sure you have the most […]

Using Angular Content Projection to Draw Smiley Faces

When working in Angular, it’s pretty straightforward to create components and nest those components inside of other components. However, it is a bit more complicated to design customizable components that will display content based on the components passed to them (content projection).

Reactive Programming: A Timed Popup Component with RxJS

Reactive programming is all about streams. It involves combining streams, filtering streams, and transforming streams. In reactive programming, the application does not need to pull for data, but it is notified whenever a new event occurs. A few months ago, I wrote a post on reactive programming in WPF using ReactiveUI. Recently, we’ve been working on […]

IdentityServer Authentication with an MVC Client & Unauthorized Loops

I’ve learned a lot about authentication this past month. My team has been working on migrating an application from using Forms Auth to IdentityServer single sign-on. Our goal is to provide a centralized authentication for all parts of the system.

GOTO Chicago 2018 – Complexity, Boring Languages, and Not Throwing Null

Recently, our group of Atomic accelerators headed over to Chicago for the 2018 GOTO Chicago conference. It was a two-day conference with six different tracks each day, so there were always multiple good options to choose. The talks ranged from machine learning to office politics. Even though the conference did not have a specific focus, there were themes that came […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Lydia Cupery

Author: Lydia Cupery