You’ve just finished working on a big feature for a project you’re newly a part of. You’re proud of the work you’ve done and are confident that your solution belongs in a code museum of some sort. You create a pull request, ask other developers to look over your work, and then sit back and […]

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 […]

Software is complex and often doesn’t work exactly as intended. As software developers, we tend to spend as much time fixing bugs as we do creating new features. There are many strategies for limiting the number of bugs that a software system has, but no process is perfect. What steps should you take to ensure […]

As developers, we rarely, if ever, look back on a completed project with a sense that every aspect of the codebase was as good as we could possibly make it. We’re always battling time and budget constraints, competing priorities, and shifting goals as we work. So why do we ignore this reality when interacting with […]

How often do you think, “This code is unreadable!” while trying to understand code that someone else wrote? A lot of things can contribute to unreadable code. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of what you’re used to. Other times, code can be made more readable just by rearranging its structure. Tools Ever been involved in […]

Single-page web apps are an ideal environment for close designer/developer collaboration. Developers often lack the intricate knowledge of CSS and HTML layouts they need to implement a designer’s work as first imagined. Fortunately, many designers have experience with front-end web development. Cooperation between these two “teams” yields faster implementation of designs that represent the designer’s […]

As developers, we commonly get asked to review codebases for existing software applications. The common thinking is that a skilled developer can simply: “give a look” to the existing codebase, provide an expert opinion on their ability to extend the application, and provide some level of certainty around the costs associated with new functionality. This […]