Cloud
The popularity of Infrastructure as Code has skyrocketed in the last few years. Such tools allow the rapid and reliable provisioning of resources straight to the cloud, saving huge amounts of time and effort in the long run. One of the most prominent of these tools is Terraform, which this post will focus on, particularly with regards to AWS.
Delivery
The habit of setting a release date for a project is often an obstacle to the success of said project. Focusing on delivering quickly and often usually makes more sense from a commercial and from a technical perspectives.
Testing
It's been a busy year for the Scott Logic testing team since we last visited the Software Testing Conference North. This year offered the opportunity to catch up with other members of the testing community, and to hear how companies are tackling their testing challenges.
Tech
When it comes to creating complex bespoke charts, of all the JavaScript visualisation / charting frameworks, D3 is the clear winner. This blog post takes a step-by-step look at the process of of building an ‘advanced’ financial charting using D3, with additional components from d3fc.
Testing
Testers are called on to give advice as part of their role. How can do we do that in a way that is in the best interest of our team and product without our natural bias getting in the way? Leveraging the concept of the trusted adviser is one solution to this.
Tech
The TensorFlow team have developed a JavaScript library for performing machine learning tasks in the browser. We take a look at some of its uses and discuss some of the problems encountered while working with it.
People
Thinking of applying to be a Scott Logic intern? In this blog post I give a retrospective on the role, from the initial application, through to the prospective job offer.
People
When my off-spring were younger and needed me more, I struggled to find the time to learn, I struggled to work out what to learn and I struggled with how to break it down to make it manageable. This is the article I wish I had been able to find and read all those years ago for anyone going through that frustration today.
Tech
React and Redux are 2 tools that together make it simpler to create functional UIs. However there are many potential pitfalls when it comes to using them. In this blog I will walk you through some practices to keep in mind as you write your own code.
UX Design
Open Banking came into force in January 2018. It was introduced to shake-up the fundamentals of the UK financial sector by aiming to create competition and foster collaboration. This blog post will take a brief look at what Open Banking means for the user experience by reviewing some of the current Consent Models (permissioning flows) for adding a users’ bank account to the account aggregator Yolt.
Tech
Do you think Test Driven Development is simply writing the tests before you write the code? If you do, then this post is for you.
Testing
System Integration Testing can often be very complex. This article aims to explore some of the common pitfalls of SIT and aid in preventing or overcoming these.
Delivery
Sharing our experience of delivering a complex, technical project, and why we decided to switch to Agile (Scrum) mid-project to take control of the project delivery.
Tech
Cake (C# Make) is an awesome tool for writing scripts to build and test projects. This post details how the VsTest runner can be invoked using Cake.
Delivery
Being a scrum master from a technical background, resisting the appeal of being a more technical team member, can be tricky. In this article, I weight up the pros and cons of technical scrum masters, and some pitfalls to try and avoid
Tech
WebAssembly is a performance optimised virtual machine that was shipped in all four major browsers earlier this year. It is a nascent technology and the current version is very much an MVP. This blog post takes a look at the WebAssembly roadmap and the features it might gain in the near future.
Data Engineering
What started as one faulty gas reading in the summer of 2017, ended up as a series of wasted calls where my bill kept getting higher and higher until it reached £11k. How could this have been handled faster and left me without considering moving energy provider.
Testing
This blog takes a high level look at some of the challenges faced when conducting automated cross-browser testing and discusses potential solutions to tackle these challenges.
Testing
This blog is based on my experience as a tester and how it can be pressurising in certain situations. I have talked about the issues and how it can resolved and we can have a positive environment.
Data Engineering
Distributed stream processing engines have been on the rise in the last few years, first Hadoop became popular as a batch processing engine, then focus shifted towards stream processing engines. Stream processing engines can make the job of processing data that comes in via a stream easier than ever before.