Exceptions Happen; Handle Them Well

Nothing can be said to be certain except for death and taxes — and that includes working software. Even the most bug-free software will experience exceptions. Work you’re doing could conflict with other work in the system. You could run out of space to write files. The cloud service you depend on could be out […]

Names and Identities Change – You Should Design for That

A person’s name is not just a convenient way to refer to them. It’s part of the core of their identity. So when a person changes their name — for a marriage, a gender transition, or any other reason — our systems need to be responsive. You may even be aware of this, but you’d […]

How TOTP Systems Like Google Authenticator Work

Over a decade ago, my employer issued me an RSA SecurID token to protect their VPN. This little device had a six-digit LCD display that would roll over to a new random-looking number every minute. I had to add whatever it showed at the moment to my password in order to successfully authenticate. Today, a […]

Why Multiple SSH Keys Don’t Work with Git, and How to Make Them

Good security hygiene includes keeping your credentials separate. You should have separate identities for work and personal tasks. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy with SSH and Git. If you generate multiple SSH keys and try to clone a GitHub repository, you may find that you don’t have access — even though you have the correct […]

You Need a Computer Backup Strategy; Here’s Mine

The cloud was supposed to make it so that you wouldn’t have to keep copies of your stuff, but that’s not a fulfilled promise. The day your computer stops working, is stolen, or just needs to go away for awhile, you’ll appreciate having a good, local, fast backup in your hands. The day you’ve really […]

Your Coworker Just Came Out. Now What?

Maybe they told you over lunch or on a coffee walk. Perhaps they asked everyone to hang on a second just after your team standup. Or you just read the company-wide email they sent. Regardless of how you heard, the fact is that your coworker, whom you may have known with a different name and/or […]

You Need More than REST for API Success

On the surface, REST API design looks to be quite simple. You just need to follow some conventions for your URL paths and return an appropriate HTTP status code. But the reality of the networked world and the needs of your API consumers often go beyond what standing up a REST API can offer you. […]

Your Mocks Should Be Blowing Up

It happened again the other day: A team member was using a mocking library for unit testing and setting up the mocked members they knew they needed. The test didn’t fail, exactly, but it was behaving in a very strange way. When they asked me for help, I had a feeling about what might be […]

Keep Your Product Owner in the Loop with Intermediate Deliverables

It’s ideal to write stories that can deliver a feature, end-to-end, all at once. But sometimes–especially when integrating with new systems, dealing with complex data processing, or working with a complex story dependency graph—it makes more sense to break up the work so you can deliver each story as its own link in a long […]

Three Ways to “Own It” on a Large, Distributed Team

When I came to Atomic nearly five years ago, I joined the largest development team I had ever known. We had four developers from Atomic and two from the client working directly with us, as well as the client’s QA staff, an operations engineer assigned to our team, and the client’s software architect checking in.

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Mattie Behrens

Author: Mattie Behrens