Chariot TechCast: Recent Episodes
Chariot Solutions
The Chariot TechCast is an interview show that covers emerging and important tends in the world of software development.
We talk to our own Drew Rogers about some of the nuanced aspects of SRE and DevOps within the rapidly evolving domain of sports betting.
Producer note: This episode took place on August 15th, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #66: The DevOps of Sports Betting with Drew Rogers appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
In this week’s TechChat, we welcome Keith Gregory, our Cloud & Data Engineering Practice Lead here at Chariot. Keith is a prolific writer both on the Chariot blog as well as on his own, and is a wealth of knowledge on all things AWS. We touch on Redshift execution plans, how to appropriately size Redshift ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #65: Redshift Execution Plans with Keith Gregory appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Michael Hulet is an iOS expert here at Chariot, and we talk candidly about some of the major announcements that came out of WWDC 2023.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #64: SwiftUI, SwiftData, and iOS 17 with Michael Hulet appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Avdi Grimm is the founder of Graceful.Dev, where he helps developers grow their programming practice. We talk with him about feedback loops.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #63: Feedback Loops with Avdi Grimm appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
We welcome the effervescent DaShaun Carter, and talk Spring Boot 3.1.0, scaling to zero, and cloud native buildpacks.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #62: Spring Boot 3.1.0 with DaShaun Carter appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today we welcome two speakers from our upcoming Philly Emerging Tech conference: Yehuda Katz and Russ Danner! Yehuda Katz is the founder of creator of the Starbeam.js and EmberJS framework, among many others. He is also a Philly ETE veteran, having spoken at many of our conferences in the past. Russ Danner is the VP of Product at CrafterCMS, an enterprise-grade headless CMS. He’ll be speaking about how to build and deploy omni-channel solutions, and how to deal with the “tyranny of more.”
Host Notes* Philly Emerging Tech is back for 2023! We’re back in-person, with a livestream ticket option as well. In-person seating is limited, so take advantage of our early bird pricing now. Check out the website for lineup, tickets, and more details. * We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. In fact, here’s the latest from our Director of Training & Mentoring, Ken Rimple: Enabling RDS Migrations with Flyway in CodeBuild.
Show Notes: Yehuda Katz* Yehuda’s upcoming talk at Philly ETE 2023 — Starbeam: Universal Reactivity and What It Means For You
* Learn more about Starbeam.js, “a new kind of reactive library that makes reactive programming simple and fun, and works with your existing JavaScript framework”
* More about Ember.js, a JavaScript framework for building modern web applications that Yehuda co-created
* The Extensible Web Manifesto, a manifesto that advocates a change to the approach that web standards committees use to create and prioritize new features. Yehuda co-signed this along with others
* Some of Yehuda’s talks from past Philly Emerging Tech conferences:
2017 – Ember and the state of Web Frameworks
2016 – Stability Without Stagnation: Lessons Learned Shipping Ember.js
2015 – What is Rust?
Show Notes: Russ Danner* Russ’ upcoming talk at Philly ETE 2023 — Conquering the Challenges of Building and Deploying Omni-channel Digital Experiences at Scale * CrafterCMS, an open source headless CMS (written in Java/Spring) for enterprise-grade websites and other content-driven digital experiences, especially those that are high-performance, large-scale, and ultra-secure
Producer note: This episode took place on March 27th, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #61: Yehuda Katz & Russ Danner appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today we welcome Michael Hulet to the show, an iOS expert here at Chariot. We cover accessibility in the context of iOS development to help you build more accessible, easy-to-maintain solutions leaning on available tools and frameworks.
Host Notes* Philly Emerging Tech is back for 2023! We’re back in-person, with a livestream ticket option as well. In-person seating is limited, so take advantage of our early bird pricing now. Check out the website for lineup, tickets, and more details. * We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. In fact, here’s the latest from our AWS Practice Lead, Keith Gregory: Analyzing Glue Jobs with AWS X-Ray.
Show Notes* Current Web Content Accessibility Guides (WCAG). Note: these are only a starting point, not a be-all-end-all. A great accessibility experience is one that’s tailored to each individual app – but the guidelines do a good job of describing what kinds of things great accessibility experiences think about. * WCAG Levels: A, AA, AAA – what do they mean? What’s the difference? * How to test for accessibility on OS X * Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines – best practices that can help you design a great experience for any Apple platform * Some reading: iOS Access for All
Producer note: This episode took place on March 8th, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #60: Accessibility on iOS with Michael Hulet appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Hosts Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia riff on the latest in the dev sphere with a look inside Valhalla, Sandpack 2.0, findings from the latest JS survey, and developing cross-platform apps.
Host Notes* Philly Emerging Tech is back for 2023! We’re back in-person, with a livestream ticket option as well. In-person seating is limited, so take advantage of our early bird pricing now. Check out the website for lineup, tickets, and more details. * We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more.
Show Notes* Modern microcontrollers have become inexpensive and reliable. But after finding online tutorials to be cumbersome, Chariot consultant Al Iacovella wrote his own guide – complete with a bootstrap repo – for devs getting started with AWS’ IoT Core. * A look inside Project Valhalla, Java’s epic refactor. We also highlight three blog posts by Brian Goetz: the Road to Valhalla, the Language Model, and the JVM Model. * The new React docs website is in beta. * Introducing Sandpack 2.0 (Node.js on the browser?) * Results are in from the annual State of Javascript survey. * We love Google Lighthouse, an open-source, automated tool for improving the performance, quality, and correctness of your web apps… * And caniuse.com, an up-to-date browser support tables for support of front-end web technologies on desktop and mobile web browsers
Producer note: This episode took place on February 21st, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #59: Project Valhalla, Sandpack 2.0, and Developing Cross-Platform Apps appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Host Ken Rimple welcomes Chariot consultant and resident front-end expert Drew DeCarme to the show. The two talk TypeScript 5.0, specifying Javascript with the TC39, Qwik, and more.
Host Notes Philly Emerging Tech is back for 2023! We’re back in-person, with a livestream ticket option as well. In-person seating is limited, so take advantage of our early bird pricing now. Check out the website for lineup, tickets, and more details. * In fact, our guest Drew DeCarme is speaking at Philly ETE 2023. Get more info about his talk, Your Browser is Pooped: A Real-World Application of Using Web Workers to Create a 100% Browser-Based Barcode Scanner* * We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more.
Show Notes* Avro offers compact storage and a schema in every file that tells you what data it holds. But how do you create these files in your data lake? Our AWS Practice Lead shares three ways * Also by Keith: learn how to keep JSON from polluting your data lakes in his post * You want modules, not microservices * Announcing TypeScript 5.0, now in beta * The TC39, responsible for specifying Javascript * The TC39 Process, and the committee responsible for evolving the ECMAScript programming language and authoring the specification * Our podcast interview with the head of the TC-39 committee in 2015, Dr. Allen Wirfs-Brock * Qwik, a new kind of web framework that can deliver instant loading web applications at any size or complexity * Our podcast interview from 2014 with the founder of Qwik, Misko Hevery, of Angular fame * Our podcast interview with Mike Hartington from Ionic a year later
Producer note: This episode took place on January 31, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #58: A “Qwik” Front-End Episode with Drew DeCarme appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today we welcome Keith Gregory to the show! Keith is our AWS Practice Lead here at Chariot, and is a prolific writer both on the Chariot blog, as well as on his own blog. We cover some announcements from AWS re:Invent, and do a deep dive into CodeCatalyst, OpenSearch Serverless, Lambda Snapstart, Redshift streaming ingestion from Kafka/Kinesis, and EventBridge Pipes.
Host Notes* Philly Emerging Tech is back for 2023! We’re back in-person, with a livestream ticket option as well. In-person seating is limited, so take advantage of our early bird pricing now. Check out the website for lineup, tickets, and more details. * We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. * We’re hiring! If you’re a senior software engineer that’s interested in content like this, consider becoming a consultant for Chariot. Work with bright, curious colleagues who love to share what they learn, and enjoy a culture that places a high value on work-life balance and flexibility. Open positions, benefits, and interview process can be found here.
Show Notes Keith’s latest post on the Chariot blog, Friends don’t let friends use JSON (in their data lakes)* * Master list of all 69 announcements from AWS re:Invent * CodeCatalyst, which combines development environments, source repositories, and CI/CD pipelines * OpenSearch Serverless, an on-demand auto scaling configuration for Amazon OpenSearch Service (and what serverless means in this context) * Lambda SnapStart, which attempts to reduce cold-start times by preserving an image of an initialized Lambda’s memory * Keith’s blog post on cold-start times * Redshift streaming ingestion from Kafka/Kinesis, which uses a materialized view to reference Kinesis/Kafka streams * And last, a background on EventBridge Pipes
Producer note: This episode took place on January 17, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #57: AWS Re:Invent Announcements with Keith Gregory, AWS Practice Lead appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
The first TechChat of 2023! Hosts Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia are back with plenty of fresh links. Join them for a special ‘get off my lawn, kid’ episode where they talk about the cloudy layers of modern programming, the dangers of context switching, scaling Mastodon, and the latest tech releases.
Host Notes* Philly Emerging Tech is back for 2023! We’re back in-person, with a livestream ticket option as well. In-person seating is limited, so take advantage of our early bird pricing now. Check out the website for lineup, tickets, and more details. * We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. * And a reminder that you can watch full playlists of videos from all of our events, including Philly Emerging Tech 2022, on our YouTube channel. You know the drill: like and subscribe!
Show Notes Here’s one by our own Keith Gregory, Using EventBridge Pipes to route CloudWatch Logs to Kinesis* * An excellent article by Vicki Boykis examining the cloudy layers of modern-day programming * The real cost of context switching is much higher than we realize * Dev environments in the cloud: a half-baked solution? * Vite 4.0 is out, as is SWR 2.0 * Blue/Green deployments on RDS * Is scaling Mastodon impossible?
Producer note: This episode took place on January 3, 2023. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with all our new tech content.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #56: The ‘cloudy layers’ of modern programming, context switching, and scaling Mastodon appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Host Notes We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. We’re hiring! If you’re a senior software engineer interested in working with bright, curious colleagues who love to share what they learn, consider joining our team. Open positions, benefits, ... Read More
The post Chariot TechChat #55: Right to repair, BYO password manager, and Next.js 13 appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
From the Chariot Blog We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. We’re hiring! If you’re a senior software engineer interested in working with bright, curious colleagues who love to share what they learn, consider joining our team. Open ... Read More
The post Chariot TechChat #54: Virtual threads in Java, Steve Yegge, and the forgotten OS keeping NYC’s subway alive appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
From the Chariot Blog We’ve always got great content on the Chariot blog, written by our developers: it’s got over 20 years of tech reviews, tutorials, and more. We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary here at Chariot. Check out this post written by our fearless leader and CEO, Mike Rappaport, on how Chariot’s unique approach has ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #53: Boycotting Wayland, and banishing the leap second appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
The boys are back in town! Host Ken Rimple and Chariot consultants Chris Birster and Drew DeCarme discuss their takeaways from the recent Remix Conf, which took place in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #52: Remix Conf Recap appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
We share an exclusive conversation with Ashley Williams, member of the Rust Core Team, and founder of the Rust Foundation.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #51: Ashley Williams, Rust Core Team Member & Founder of the Rust Foundation appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
It’s our 50th episode! We welcome an extraordinary guest, Elizabeth Adams! Elizabeth Adams was one of our keynote speakers at Philly ETE 2022 this year. She is the Global Chief AI Culture & Ethics Officer of Women in AI, and a Forbes “15 AI Ethics Leaders Showing The World The Way Of The Future.” Host ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #50: ETE 2022 Keynote, Elizabeth Adams appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
This week on the TechChat we feature our interview with the incomparable Linda Rising, ETE speaker, and co-author of books including “Fearless Change” and “More Fearless Change”. She lives in Nashville as a lecturer and independent consultant, and is credited as having played a major role in having “moved the pattern approach from design into ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #49: An Interview with Linda Rising appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
The Philly Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise conference (Philly ETE) is less than a month away, and in this episode, we’ve got an exclusive interview with one of our speakers: Carson Gross. Carson Gross runs Big Sky Software, which finds hot, new trends and then does the opposite of that. Big Sky Software has produced ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #48: Carson Gross and HTMX appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
This week, Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia drop in for some brief coverage of the last few weeks’ dev news! They also discuss helpful sites for developers, and the latest Apple event. Host Notes ETE is back for 2022! We’re virtual again this year, but don’t miss another great roster of speakers and content. Early ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #47: Dev News Ultra appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
This week, Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia cover various stories from the world of Dev News – before dedicating the rest of the show to a deep dive on Kotlin. They also answer a few questions from viewers! Host Notes ETE is back for 2022! We’re virtual again this year, but don’t miss another great ... Read More
The post TechChat Tuesdays #46: Dev News and Kotlin Deep Dive appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
As developers and engineers, how do we learn new things? On today's livestream, hosts Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia delve into some of their personal processes around learning new tech, and offer techniques and tools for staying curious and relevant.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #45: How do we learn new things? appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia are back for another TechChat Tuesday! This week’s episode includes topics like Tesla UX, Wordle, and why you may not want to upgrade to OS X 12.2 just yet.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #44 – Dev News Grab Bag appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Hosts Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia are back with dev news and an interview with Kent C. Dodds, the Director of Developer Experience at Remix.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #43: Dev News, SPA Patterns, and an Exclusive Interview with Kent C. Dodds appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Rarely seen miscalculations now cropping up frequently at cloud hyperscale, and 'React 18: A Summary in 12 Tweets."
The post TechChat Tuesdays #42: Unreliability at Scale, Windows 11, and React 18 appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Social engineering lives on, Terraform turns 1.0, and more. Hosts Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia discuss this week's dev news.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #41: Tetris in ClojureScript, Terraform 1.0, and Slack hackers appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Intel says chip shortages could last for years, SolarWinds hackers are at it again, and a Google I/O 2021 recap.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #40: Chip Shortages, SolarWinds Hackers, and a Google I/O Recap appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Scala 3 is out, how to turn off Amazon's Sidewalk mesh network, and why the M1 Macs are so fast. Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia discuss.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #39: Scala 3, Pair Programming, and a Rekindled Windows/Apple Rivalry appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia cover Apple's 'Spring Loaded' Event from April 20th, and chat about other dev news.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #38: Apple’s ‘Spring Loaded’ Recap, and more! appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Sujan Kapadia and Ken Rimple talk Rust news, AWS' OpenSearch, HTTP SEARCH, and using console.log() like a pro.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #37: OpenSearch, Rust News, and the “Rails of React” appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
While we're down a co-conspirator this week (see you next week, Ken!), Sujan Kapadia and Becca Refford step up to share some of this week's DevNews.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #36: Django 3.2, TP Robots, and New Jersey? appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia bring a serious smorgasbord of topics to the livestream this week: spanning from machine learning doodles, data viz with Nivo, the OSI model, and more.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #35: Nivo, DALL-E and NPM Vulnerabilities appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Sujan Kapadia takes the reins as host this week and covers NFTs, pattern matching in JDK 16, and some excellent drone footage. Thanks, Sujan!
The post TechChat Tuesdays #34: JDK, NFTs, and ERC-721 appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia are joined by our newest colleague, Jason Stelzer, to talk Rust, Rust-based utilities, and security.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #33: Rust, Rust-based Utilities, and Security with Jason Stelzer appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken and Sujan talk Git for data, geek out about Microsoft Mesh, and Ken does a live tutorial on using ASCIIDoctor for painless documentation.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #32: Git for Data, and ASCIIDoctor Tooling with Ken appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Python turns 30, Chrome 90 is on the horizon, and tech takes on its racist naming conventions. Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia discuss.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #31: Python Turns 30, and Chrome 90 is on the horizon… appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia cover the Mars landing, software laws everyone loves to ignore, and powering your home by mining cryptocurrency.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #30: The Mars Landing, and more appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Host Ken Rimple and Co-Host Sujan Kapadia bring this weeks' dev news to the table: Rust, Radical Candor, virtual jam sessions, and more.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #29: Rust, Radical Candor, and more appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today Sujan takes the reins as host, and welcomes long-time Charioteer, Rich Freedman! Sujan and Rich cover dev news, then delve into machine learning, TensorFlow and TensorFlow Lite, and some Arduino work Rich has been doing recently.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #28: TensorFlow with Rich Freedman appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Time for another DevNews with Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia! This week's news items include machine learning with K, Lambdas for Excel, NodeJS race conditions, and some controversy bubbling around certain Chromium features.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #27: This Week in Dev News appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
In this episode, Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia talk to one of Chariot's Android developers, Joe Berger, about his recent writing and learning.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #26: Android Development with Joe Berger appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
We made it to 2021! Ken Rimple and Becca (stepping in for Sujan) bring a slew of dev news to the table this week: some serious, some silly.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #25: This Week in Dev News appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple, Sujan Kapadia, and Keith Gregory talk AWS Lambda, Ruby 3.0, M1 discussions, Apple store closures, and a little bit of LISP.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #24: This Week in Dev News appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia bring this week's dev news to the table: spatial indexing with CockroachDB, TinyML, the Maven daemon, and more.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #23: This Week in Dev News appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple and Sujan Kapadia discuss all the news, tools, and announcements coming out of AWS' 3-week event series, re:Invent.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #22: AWS re:Invent Happenings appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken Rimple, Sujan Kapadia, and Keith Gregory talk root causes of last week's AWS outage, post-mortems, and what AWS architects can do to protect themselves against unexpected downtime.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #21: Post-Mortem Review of the AWS Outage with Keith Gregory, AWS Practice Lead appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
We've come a long way. From Zilog to Motorola to Intel to AMD, to systems with their own chipsets like the Apple M1. This week, we discuss how innovation looked 30 years ago, and how it looks now.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #20: From There To Here appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today we welcome Eric Snyder to the show, software architect here at Chariot, and Dev News veteran from days past. Eric, Ken and Sujan bring a whole slew of dev topics to the livestream today - from the youtube-dl controversy, to new features in Vue - and Eric talks about his recent projects using Go.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #19: Special Guest, Eric Snyder appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today we welcome Sujan Kapadia to the show, Director of Consulting here at Chariot Solutions, and Dev News veteran from days past. He and Ken bring a whole slew of dev topics to the livestream today.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #18: Dev News with Sujan Kapadia appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Murder hornets, McDonald's, markdown, and more. Ken Rimple and Becca deliver you another grab bag of dev news. Enjoy!
The post TechChat Tuesdays #17: Dev News Grab Bag appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
We do a lot of deep tech dives on this show, but today, we're swinging it around to design! Ken hosts Michael Geise, Senior UX/Product Design Consultant here at Chariot, to cover design news, processes, patterns, and more.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #16: UX, Developers, and Designers with Michael Geise appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today, we highlight some passion projects with a special guest! Jack Lazorchak, a consultant here at Chariot Solutions, talks with Ken about his journey into the niche hobby of building mechanical keyboards.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #15: Building Mechanical Keyboards with Jack Lazorchak appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken talks to Dan Boykis, a consultant here at Chariot, about mentoring others remotely, building a JVM from scratch, Clojure, and temporal databases.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #14: Remote Mentorship, Clojure, and more with Dan Boykis appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
You get what you get and you don't get upset! Today, Ken and Becca bring a veritable smorgasbord of tech links to the table.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #13: Dev News Grab Bag appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today we welcome Don Coleman, our CIO, to talk with Ken about iOS 14: major announcements, updates, hardware, and personal takes.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #12: iOS 14 Review with Don Coleman appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Drew DeCarme and Ken deep dive on static site generation and server-side rendering, specifically using Gatsby and Next.js.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #11: Next.js and Gatsby with Drew DeCarme appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
In this episode, Ken and his guest Martin Snyder riff on dev news, and the concept of 'free' when it comes to software and maintaining open source projects.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #10: The “Free” in Software with Martin Snyder appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
This week Ken will talks to prior guests and frequent Chariot contributors Matt Gilbride and Keith Gregory about using the AWS CDK for configuration (as opposed to CloudFormation), and RDS database connections from Spring Boot in AWS, respectively.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #9: All AWS with Keith Gregory & Matt Gilbride appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
In this TechChat, Ken and Becca talk about big changes at Mozilla, the laws of UX, Python for microcontrollers, and the tech that brings them joy.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #8: The Joy of Tech appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken and Becca talk to Alex Hillman about the launch of his new book, The Tiny MBA: 100 Very Short Lessons about the Long Game of Business.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #7: Special Guest Alex Hillman on his new book, The Tiny MBA appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken and Becca riff on some recent dev/tech news: Grant Imahara, of Mythbuster fame, and his passing (RIP), tech solutions for beauty companies impacted by Coronavirus, SQL tricks, podcasts we're really into, and a short rant from Ken on serverless.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #6: July 28, 2020 appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Our special guest, Keith Gregory, AWS Practice Lead here at Chariot, joins us to talk about Elastic Search and implementing it on AWS.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #5: Running Elastic Search on AWS with special guest Keith Gregory appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Today Ken covers ReactJS Concurrent, gets excited about Angular 10, and talks about the way people share and learn from post mortem reports.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #4: Outages, breaches, and post-mortems appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Ken discusses some of the virtual tooling he’s used or come across in developing software, including web IDEs, VMs, Docker, and more.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #3: Virtualized IDEs and Development Tools appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Now Java can rent a car! This week we discuss Java turning 25 years old, and Oracle's 25 greatest Java apps ever written. Listen to the end for Ken's little guitar ditty about Java: worth it.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #2: Java is 25 years old! appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
This livestream took place on June 23rd, 2020, at noon. This is a recording. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of our next livestream – or bookmark this link and tune in every Tuesday at noon EST to hang out with Ken.
Ken Rimple is joined on this broadcast by experts and leaders of Chariot Solutions – Steve Smith, Mobile Practice Lead, and Don Coleman, Chief Innovation Officer. We’ll talk about some of the innovations announced at WWDC this year. And other things could come up as well.
The post TechChat Tuesdays #1.00001: Wherein we talk WWDC, and other things appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
In TechCast #117, Ken Rimple, Chariot’s Director of Training and Mentoring, talks to Drew DeCarme and Matt Gilbride. Drew and Matt are software engineers and consultants here at Chariot.
Together they reflect on the technologies and techniques they used to stand up a Docker-based web application on AWS. The project was organized using a Lerna-based monorepo to share code across multiple React front-ends and the Node Express backend. Part of the discussion involves how the team used React and Styled Components to handle re-usable, responsive design elements.
Additional Resources * Matt and Drew’s talk from ETE (as mentioned in the podcast) can be found here. * Watch a video of this conversation here. * Check out the rest of Chariot’s 15 Minutes With video series on this YouTube playlist. * More TechCasts available at chariotsolutions.com/techcast, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
The post TechCast #117 – Drew DeCarme & Matt Gilbride appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Talk Tech to Me is a series that explores the inside track of cutting-edge tech.
Cloud computing is now a standard part of digital workflows. If you watch Netflix, or visit LinkedIn, you’re using Amazon’s AWS. So it’s quite likely a good choice for your business. But here’s the thing – cloud computing has hidden challenges. It really does take an expert to guide you through the cloud journey. That’s why we have Keith Gregory here – he’s the AWS Practice Lead at Chariot Solutions. He has a dozen years of experience working with AWS services.
Coming up in this conversation, Keith reveals what he’s learned to keep all those cloud functions running smoothly. Cloud computing is revolutionary, but it’s not exactly user-friendly. There are a lot of AWS services to choose from, and you need to know which ones are right – otherwise you might rack up a major bill. Another thing you need to know is that cloud services are not ‘set it and forget it.’ More in the show. Thanks again to Keith for interviewing with us.
Host: Sue Spolan
Producer: Becca Refford
About Chariot Solutions To learn more about Chariot’s work on the cloud, check out our AWS page, or consider starting your project with us.
Chariot handles just about any computing challenge you’ve got. With so many other things to worry about these days, know that you have access to seasoned professionals who can join your team immediately. Whether you need help with server side solutions, front end development, data pipelining, mobile development for iOS, Android, and hybrid, UX/UI design, cloud deployment or to level up your team with training, we partner with you for just a little while or for as long as it takes. Whatever it takes. Send an email to learn more.
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Talk Tech to Me is a series that explores the inside track of cutting-edge tech.
The smart home industry is growing quickly. Right now, 1/3 of homes in the US have devices to help control lighting, security, climate, entertainment, and even your garage door. By 2024, over half of American homes will be connected.
On today’s podcast, we’ll talk about a really interesting smart home project. Steve Smith joins us – he leads Chariot’s mobile project team. Legrand North American manufactures electronic switches and outlets. Their smart home products used to run on radio frequency, controlled through a home automation hub. They wanted to switch to wifi controlled by a mobile app.
But then something happened – something pretty challenging. The company that supplied Legrand with cloud services announced it wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Chariot helped Legrand migrate its smart home product line to a new internal cloud. We’ll hear all about how it went down, and we’ll also find out what the popcorning effect is and how to prevent it.
To learn more about Chariot’s work on the cloud, check out our AWS page, or consider starting your project with us.
Host: Sue Spolan
Producer: Becca Refford
The post TechCast #115 – Talk Tech To Me: Steve Smith on Legrand appeared first on Chariot Solutions.
Intro Talk Tech to Me is a series that explores the inside track of cutting-edge tech.
As consumers, we interact with software many times a day. It might be a mobile app, like Instagram, or a web app, like Gmail. And we don’t think a whole lot about the design, but design is an essential part of getting the user experience right. It’s the secret to a successful software solution.
Our guest is Peter Fleming – he’s the head of User Experience at Chariot Solutions. Today, Pete’s going to talk about user-centered software design. He aims to truly understand the user before developers write the first line of code. It’s how Chariot is able to unite business goals with user experience.
We’ll also find out how Pete helped a startup address a challenge that had a hybrid software/hardware solution using design principles.
Host: Sue Spolan
Producer: Becca Refford
Transcription Sue Spolan: Hi, this is Talk Tech to Me. I’m Sue Spolan. As consumers we interact with software many times a day. It might be a mobile app like Instagram, or a web app like Gmail, and we don’t think a whole lot about the design, but design is an essential part of getting the user experience right. It’s the secret to a successful software solution.
My guest is Peter Fleming. He’s the head of user experience at Chariot Solutions. Today Pete’s going to talk about user centered software design. He aims to truly understand the user before developers, write the first line of code. It’s how Chariot is able to unite business goals with customer experience. We’ll also find out how Pete addressed a challenge for a startup that had a hybrid software/hardware solution using design principles.
Peter Fleming: I head up the discipline here at Chariot that deals with all things user experience. So, working with our clients to help them take a little bit more of a holistic approach to their projects. Whether that’s working with them early on to learn about their customers and how we can better serve them, through the phase of when our consultants are actually developing the software for our clients, I will work with them to sort of support them in what they need from a design standpoint.
Sue Spolan: So why is design so important to software development?
Peter Fleming: I mean, so the big thing is that the barrier to entry for creating software these days is much lower than it used to be. That is, anybody in their basement can spin up a piece of software, whereas it used to take tons and tons of people with tons and tons of expertise a really long time and a lot of money to develop something, whereas it’s a lot quicker and easier now, which means that the barrier to entry is lower. It means you get a lot more potential competition out there. So it’s becoming more and more important to make sure that the thing you build is the best thing for the user the first time out.
Sue Spolan: How does design play a role in software development?
Peter Fleming: Design is threaded throughout the entire project. It’s not research that you do at the beginning. It’s not the pretty sticker that you put on at the end. It’s not the wireframes that you build in the middle. It’s all of that and it’s working hand in hand with the product side of it, the business, and making sure that we’re keeping the business goals and objectives in mind as we’re doing our design. But it’s also working hand in hand with the developers, not just to give them what they need but also to draw them in to make sure that they have a voice in the product design overall. So it’s really about finding a way to weave all those disciplines together to throughout the process.
Sue Spolan: That weaving. That feels to me like an evolution of the practice. Would you agree with that?
Peter Fleming: A lot of organizations out there still think of design as, you know, even if they’ve matured past [thinking] design is just pretty pixels and they think a little bit deeper into interaction design and how the buttons work and even how to users flow from page to page. Think of it like a hierarchy of understanding and they’re getting layers and layers deeper, but haven’t really come to understand that the disciplines really need to work together throughout the entire thing.
Sue Spolan: And that would give a sort of the whole is greater than its parts results.
Peter Fleming: Absolutely. 100%.
Sue Spolan: Tell me about the company that you recently did a project for.
Peter Fleming: Yeah, so a startup recently came to us. They’re a young startup. They just secured some funding through a crowdfunding platform. They are a hardware as a service [business], so they have hardware out there, but then they have a platform that supports that hardware and allows their clients a window into this service. They had built an MVP, a minimum viable product, piece of software, to this end. And it was, it was good for what they needed at the time. It helped them sell this idea. But then they found that it wasn’t really, it wasn’t something that was gonna work going forward for the future. It wasn’t scalable and it wasn’t as customer friendly as they had hoped it would be. They had tried bringing in or working with another consultancy that was pretty much primarily a design consultancy that came in and they helped them figure out a little bit of the look and feel, but they weren’t really getting to the nuts and bolts of the wireframing and the interaction and the guts of it. And really doing the listening to the customer to see what they were looking for. So that was their sort of genesis that led them to shopping around a little bit more and ultimately finding Chariot.
Sue Spolan: So they came to Chariot?
Peter Fleming: Yes.
Sue Spolan: And what did they come with?
Peter Fleming: So they showed up with the MVP that they had developed to give us an idea of the types of things that we’re going for. Of course, we did a discovery session in the beginning so we could learn about their product and how it would work and we came with some pretty high level general objectives, business objectives about what they wanted to accomplish with their business as a whole. But specifically with this software, that we were meant to help build.
Sue Spolan: Walk me through how you worked with them. What was the initial step that you took with them?
Peter Fleming: Sure. The initial step with them, as with most of our clients, is to do a deep dive. I will sit with the client and, you know, whatever stakeholders are relevant for the project and we’ll just learn as much as we can and we’ll soak up as much as we can. And then we’ll typically develop a further discovery plan. In this case with this client, it meant doing interviews with their clients. They had a couple of pilot clients that have their hardware and this platform in place and that they’re using it. And they also have a very large pipeline of clients that are interested in it. So our first job was to talk to them and try to extract out what it was that they found valuable about this and what they wanted in this interface. In this piece of software.
Sue Spolan: Do you actually talk to the clients, and is that something that the previous company had done?
Peter Fleming: No, they hadn’t had any, I mean, the, of course this is a young startup, so they’re very scrappy and the CEO of course, and the other members of the executive team, are always talking to their clients, but not in a structured “discovery” type way. They’re trying to sell and they’re trying to figure out what matters to them, but it’s not really a structured, deliberate interview process and observation process that will help us tease out the things that we need to make sure we’re aware of as we’re designing.
Sue Spolan: So once you did the initial discovery, what did you glean from that process?
Peter Fleming: Yeah, so it was a great process. And you know, I’ll just throw in the note there too, that not only did we do the discovery, but we made sure to include our client, the stakeholders along the way in the process. They were in the interviews with us. They helped us parse the interviews into notes. We ran a very big affinity diagramming session where we had all the notes up on the wall and we were walking the wall and discussing it and teasing out themes and then teasing ideas from them. So we made sure that they were a part of the sausage making so that they understood the real value of anything that comes out of that. And we did glean some pretty big insights out of that and a lot of good ideas. And it really helped take us, you know, the initial hypothesis that we had about what the software should be. We wireframe that up and we did a lot of interviewing and discovery on having potential customers or real customers interact with the prototype. And then what we learned from that prototype we got a lot of things right and we got a few things wrong. And a few things that we hadn’t even thought about. So now we’re in a place where we’re much better equipped to do the next version of the designs, prototypes and visual designs that will really answer the user needs much better. So in a short period of time we were able to really glean a lot and make sure we’re on the right footing moving forward.
Sue Spolan: Did you wind up solving the problem that you were hired for?
Peter Fleming: Yes. I mean, the objective that we were really hired for. The project is ongoing, so the development of it, the building of the software obviously is a big piece of it. But as far as from a design point of view for that first phase, the discovery phase, it was very successful. We really heard, we really listened to the clients, we really gleaned some insights. We developed a really good roadmap or design plan to move forward to make sure that we’re, you know, we identified the desired outcomes for those users and the opportunities for how we can get there. And then all the tactical, ground level ideas, the features and functionalities that can be included to make sure we’re hitting all those objectives for the business.
Sue Spolan: So you did prototyping for this? Right?
Peter Fleming: Right.
Sue Spolan: Okay. so tell me some of the things that you automatically thought, ah, we gotta we gotta add this into the prototype.
Peter Fleming: So when we prototype, typically we’ll start with this process. We’ll start with, I like the Jobs To Be Done framework, which basically means that each screen of the prototype that you’re going to build or each feature in the screen, depending on what, how big of a prototype you’re building. First you decide, what’s the “job” of this? What does the user, when the user opens this application, what did they need it to do? Did they need it to give them awareness of the system? Do they need it to allow them to configure something? What is it that they needed to do? And then we designed the prototype. We come up with our own assumptions, our own hypothesis. In order for the user to do that job, we need to add this feature or this functionality or whatever. So that’s what goes into the prototype. We build that. And then when we test the prototype, we’re learning two things. Is thias really what the customer wanted or did we miss the mark and they actually want something else? And then for the ones that we did get right, if it is something they wanted is the way that we designed it intuitive for them. Did they figure out how to do X or do Y?
Sue Spolan: And then back. So it’s iterative. It goes back and forth and back and forth.
Peter Fleming: Right? So if we learned that we missed the mark on the job to be done, hopefully in the interview we learned what the job was, and then we can design something new. If we learned that we got the job right, but that the way that we designed it was unintuitive and they couldn’t figure it out, we confused them. Then we have to design a new, better way to do that.
Sue Spolan: I think, with a startup, you’ve got a whole different set of problems than you would have with an established company.
Peter Fleming: With a startup, especially if they’re early on in the process they’re worried about whether they’re even solving a problem that needs solving. Whereas in an established business, there is this problem and we are solving it. Now we just want to figure out how to solve it a little bit better. But with a startup, a lot of times you’re figuring out, well, is this really something that needs to be solved? Is this really something that can be monetized? Some people would find it daunting or intimidating. But I think startup world is exciting because there are so many unknowns because there are a million assumptions. So it’s about prioritizing those. What’s the biggest, meatiest core assumption that, if we’re wrong, this whole business doesn’t work, and let’s validate that as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And then we’ll move on to the next assumption.
Sue Spolan: We’ve been speaking with Peter Fleming, he’s the head of user experience at Chariot Solutions. He believes that design is threaded throughout the software development process. Stay tuned for the next episode of talk tech to me. Thanks for listening. I’m Sue Spolan. Take care.
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Episode 1: Eric Snyder, Chariot Solutions Talk Tech to Me is a series that explores the inside track of cutting-edge tech.
Our first guest is Eric Snyder. He’s a software architect at Chariot Solutions. He and his team were hired by a global media and technology company that’s based in Philadelphia. They serve tens of millions of customers. To create a personalized experience, the telecom giant processes billions of streams of real-time data, twenty-four hours a day. It’s almost unimaginable.
Recommendation engines, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are all powered by algorithms. A lot of it is now happening in the cloud, and that’s where Eric and Chariot Solutions enter the picture.
They were hired by the media company to help move and process all that data. They’re migrating it to the Amazon Web Services cloud. The data went from relatively inflexible servers to an elastic environment that scales up or down as needed. In this episode, we head behind the scenes with Eric to unpack the technology that’s invisible to consumers. He’ll tell us why this decision makes really good business sense.
To learn more about Chariot’s work on the cloud, check out our AWS page, or consider starting your project with us.
Host: Sue Spolan
Producer: Becca Refford
The post TechCast #113 – Talk Tech To Me: Eric Snyder appeared first on Chariot Solutions.