engineeringBig Integers in Rust
In preparation for our upcoming pilot bootcamp, I've been working on a few programming challenges. Since we're challenging our bootcamp participants to learn a new language as part of this effort, I thought I'd do the same and finally begin exploring Rust. One of the simple challenges we introduce in Week 1 is to write a program that calculates the factorial of a given number. A simple program. But we ask that participants consider some questions about when and why their program fails. The intention of this simple exercise is to get participants exploring the limitations and boundaries of a given language.
Josh Kaplan
FRI MAY 12 2023Agile Misconceptions
With the adoption of new techniques comes the inevitable and inadvertent introduction of bad habits. Agile transformation is no exception. The countless frameworks, certifications, and literature (including articles like this one) describe a wide landscape with varying practices and differing opinions. This lack of clarity makes it hard for teams without practical experience to adopt Agile methods effectively and easy to misinterpret best practices. In this article, I describe some of the most common Agile misconceptions, why they are harmful to teams, and what you can do to recognize and fix them.
Josh Kaplan
FRI DEC 30 2022Creating a Scrum Project in Jira
This post provides a step-by-step guide to creating a company-managed Scrum project in Jira. Jira supports multiple project types. I'll briefly discuss the differences between Scrum and Kanban and why you might select a particular project template.
Josh Kaplan
TUE MAY 31 2022On Microservices
The microservices architecture is a popular and growing trend in many technology organizations today. But its implementation is often met with unsurmountable challenges by unprepared teams. This article discusses some of the challenges of microservices and how to overcome them.
Josh Kaplan
SUN MAR 27 2022Plotting Data with Python
Regardless of discipline, many fields need to be able to process, manipulate, and visualize data. This article introduces the basics of plotting data with Python using Matplotlib.
Josh Kaplan
WED FEB 9 2022
devopsDevOps Configuration Management
How do we achieve traceability between deployed versions and source code? At some point or another, we will encounter an issue in production that doesn't seem to make sense given the code the engineering team has on hand. The goal, to know with certainty what version of the source code aligns with the deployed system is instrumental to enabling the team to solve the right problem.
Josh Kaplan
FRI JAN 14 2022
AnnouncementsAnnouncing Trivium Beta
We're excited to announce the launch of Trivium beta, a digital systems modeling solution. Trivium is a cloud-scale modeling solution built for teams designed to make modeling more accessible, more intuitive, and more useful to teams.
Josh Kaplan
WED AUG 11 2021
EngineeringJavascript Asynchronicity Patterns
Asynchronous code is when pieces of your code execute at different times and often with no guarantee of order of execution. This comes up in different forms in different languages with things like threading, subprocesses, and, yes, asynchronous functions. Javascript is asynchronous by default. In this article, we discuss asynchronicity in Javascript, its evolution over time, and some of the patterns for dealing with various asynchronous challenges.
Josh Kaplan
WED JUL 7 2021
engineeringA First Introduction to Asynchronous Javascript
In this article we'll build on some wed basics and introduce the concept of asynchronicity in Javascript and how to use it to build dynamic web applications.