Ideas & Insights

August 21, 2020

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7 minute read

A Functional Approach to The Builder Pattern

Chase Hardin
Chase Hardin

As a coder, the builder pattern is my go-to. It makes data setup extremely easy – instantiate a class, chain some methods together, and finish by executing a build method. However, every time I write a builder class, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a more functional approach that completely removes state.

June 15, 2020

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5 minute read

A Case Against Cloud

Lean TECHniques

In today’s IT landscape, a lot of people see the quick wins of cloud offerings and miss what they’re giving up. Cloud platforms make it easy to stand up new workloads in particular configurations, but they are severely limited scope, lack of developer agency, and closed implementation leave much to be desired. While some applications run well this way, containers and Kubernetes are a competitive alternative for many mid and large sized organizations.

June 5, 2020

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3 minute read

Patterns Revisited Singleton

Lean TECHniques

Globals are bad. Data should be encapsulated and only available when needed. These are some of the first things you learn when you start to program. If there are multiple actors that can write to shared data, side affects can occur.

May 26, 2020

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2 minute read

Patterns Revisited Part 1

Lean TECHniques

During the 1990s object-oriented programming was beginning to take the software world by storm. C++ and Java were some of the most popular programming languages. Walking into a bookstore and browsing to the computer section you would find books of all sorts on object-oriented development and design.

April 24, 2020

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5 minute read

Necessity is the Mother of Invention – Agile2020

Brandon Carlson
Brandon Carlson

The latest COVID-19 casualty was announced this week as Agile2020, the world’s premier Agile conference was officially canceled in its physical form. This news, while disappointing, provides us with a new opportunity. An opportunity to completely rethink the conference experience as we take it virtual.

April 9, 2020

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5 minute read

Stop Thinking About Plumbing

Lean TECHniques

Plumbing is software is any code related to wiring things together. This could be code that listens to queue messages. The code that listens for queue messages is plumbing code that is often written over and over again in applications.