Developer Community | Engineering at DEPT®

Platforms

Machine Learning: Explain it Like I’m Five [Shipit.io Podcast]

If you've heard a lot about AI and machine learning, but don't understand it, this month's episode is for you.

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Platforms

Getting Started with Parallel Processing in Rust

Rust helps mitigate concurrency hazards by design, but it's still up to the programmer to construct their program logic thoughtfully so they can take advantage of the power of concurrent and parallel processing.

react

Why You Should Use React Native For Your Next Mobile App

Many seem to think that the only proper way to create a phone app is by engineering it natively. In this post, I break down why React Native is a great way to build an app.

Process

Contentful Migrations

Migrations allow us to describe how to adjust the data model of an existing database. They make a scripted, surgical change to a database rather than replacing it entirely and blowing away any content changes.

People

The art of polite code reviews

Taking the time to write meaningful comments while providing feedback to your coworkers can go a long way. Yves shares some of the principles he follows to articulate positive criticism during code reviews.

Process

Introducing Web Blueprint - Our Practices for Web Development

This week we released a Github project called web-blueprint that documents our practices and opinions on web development. If you're a prospective client or hire, our hope is that you'll learn a little bit more about what web engineering at Rocket is all about.

Platforms

Evaluating Your Tech Stack: Content Management Systems

The core problem with making this very important choice is just that: there isn’t a one size fits all CMS. Sorry. That’s not what this article will tell you, but I can narrow it down to a few categories that will help you decide.

Process

Marketing Analytics with AWS and Power BI

We recently completed a project with one of the largest affiliate marketing consulting firms in the US which turned out to be a great success for everyone involved. We asked one of the lead consultants on the project, Jason Lombardo, to answer a few questions.

Process

A Journey Moving the Monolith to Microservices

2020 was a hell of a year: A global pandemic, a fraught US election, and ... Microservices! 😬

Platforms

From RxJava to LiveData (and back?)

Here are some things that might be useful for someone else who has experience with RX and starts using LiveData for the first time.

Platforms

Organizing AWS microservices with Python, Serverless, and namespace packages

Our project began with a small ask: build a small Python back-end using AWS Lambda and API Gateway (with just a handful of endpoints to support a few pages) and use Serverless [https://serverless.com/] to manage the Cloud Formation setup. Not very involved, not much code, not even much configuration for the deploy. Next came authentication. In pursuing the joint dreams of DRTW ("don't reinvent the wheel") and WALCAP ("write as little code as possible"), we selected AWS Cognito over other opti

Platforms

Deployments at Scale with AWS ECR and ECS

With DevOps at DEPT, one of our primary goals is to make the life of the developer easier. A specialty of ours is assisting in our customer's deployment process.

iOS

iOS Accessibility: Dynamic Type

Nowadays just about everyone, everywhere, regardless of age and ability, uses a smartphone. With that in mind, it’s more important than ever to consider all the different ways to make your app accessible to everyone to ensure an inclusive experience. In this series, we’ll be discussing different ways iOS developers can make their apps more accessible. First up, we’ll be talking about Dynamic Type. Dynamic Type is a feature on iOS that enables the app’s content to scale based on the user's

Platforms

Create a Rust web service, from zero to cloud

This tutorial will describe how to... install Rust, create a new project and manage dependencies, Set up a simple web server, and compile the app and deploy to a virtual server. I'll be working on Ubuntu 20.04 but most of the setup should be the same on macOS or a different flavor of Linux.

Process

File Uploads Directly to S3 From the Browser

Uploading files to S3 directly from the browser is a great way to increase performance by removing the need to process and then re-upload files from your own server.

Platforms

How to Build a full page calendar with React

Learn how to build a full-page calendar using React.

Platforms

Reusable Patterns in CloudFormation

At DEPT, we use a variety of tools to provision infrastructure in the cloud. In this post, we take a look at some of the reusable patterns we've developed using AWS CloudFormation.

People

GitOps with Terraform, Terragrunt and GitHub Workflows

In this post, we'll define GitOps, review a sample Terraform app module repo and an associated GitHub Workflow to lint and version the module repo, and review a sample Terragrunt live repo and a GitHub Workflow to apply infrastructure changes.

Platforms

CI/CD with CodeBuild and CodePipeline

Recently, we've used a few of AWS's services to create full integration and delivery solutions. In this post we'll look at how we've used AWS CodeBuild and CodePipeline to create a cost effective, performant and code driven end-to-end CI/CD solution.

Platforms

Securely Storing Data on iOS

Our mobile devices and the apps that run on them have a unique insight into our lives. We use them for communication, entertainment, shopping, photography, navigation, and myriad other purposes. Consequently, apps have access to a great deal of information about our preferences, our contacts, where we go, what we buy, and who we are. As app developers, we need to be cognizant of the information being handled by our apps and to safeguard it accordingly. The protection of sensitive information is

Platforms

Using Unity with Swift for AR

In this post, I’ll dive into some of the technical challenges of AR as well as our preferred solution, focusing on integrating Unity into an iOS project.

Platforms

Heroku Review Apps with Automated Custom Domains on Route 53

We were recently transitioning a client to use Heroku build pipelines for their Next.js project that handles most business logic through an external API, including authentication and cookie handling. This pipeline uses Heroku's review apps [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/github-integration-review-apps] as well as separate instances for staging and production environments. The client handled their domains through AWS's Route 53 [https://aws.amazon.com/route53/] DNS service. Pointing thei

Platforms

SQL 101 for Product Managers

The following presentation was transcribed from “SQL and Python for Product Managers” webinar, presented by Colorado Product Meetup and senior software engineer, Brian Schiller. It has been edited for clarity.

Compliance in Codebases - How to Use Clang LibASTMatchers for Compliance

The following article was created from a 2021 CppCon talk given by Jonah Jolley. One of our clients has a software product that must comply with federal regulations. For them, they must submit technical documents to a governing body. However, in their case, the codebase didn’t accurately reflect what was documented. This led to an unmitigated, unsafe condition. To solve this issue, we used Clang LibASTMatchers to check the codebase and ensure they were indeed compliant. Why Compliance in Cod

Platforms

FreeRTOS Tutorial: Getting Started with ESP32 on Linux

To help others as they make their way through this process, we decided to document and release our findings as a FreeRTOS tutorial for developers. Here is how to get started with ESP32 on Linux.

Platforms

FreeRTOS Tutorial: Create a Hello World Application with ESP32

To help others as they make their way through this process, we decided to document and release our findings as a FreeRTOS tutorial for developers. Here is how to create a Hello World application.

State of Swift WebSockets

Apple delivered several exciting and innovative new APIs for developers at WWDC this year. You might have heard or read about the SwiftUI and Combine revamp, but I want to address the new world of native WebSockets! The historically complicated connection protocol is now delivered as a first class citizen! Before we dive in on how awesome this is, it's important to have a basic understanding of Sockets and the road we've traveled to reach this point. What is a socket? By definition a socket is

AWS

Best Practices for Terraform AWS Tags

AWS tags are key-value labels you can assign to AWS resourcesthat give extra information about it.

Speeding Up Docker Development on the Mac

Docker is a helpful tool for both developers and ops. It can simplify both the development of an application as well as deployment and management of it. In this post we are going to explore a common pitfall related to developing an application in Docker on the Mac and see what we can do to mitigate the issue and work as productively as possible. Developing in Docker Developing in Docker has a number of advantages over developing directly on your Mac. Before we begin, let’s remind ourselves of a

Process

On Design Systems: Scope and Governance

The challenges discussed in this entry are specifically relevant to individuals that have roles in design leadership, product ownership, and user interface design.

Platforms

On Design Systems: Platforms and Implementation

The challenges discussed in this entry are specifically relevant to individuals that have roles in engineering leadership, user interface architecture, and design systems engineering.

Process

Deploying a WebSocket Application on Beanstalk

So, you are about to build a new app and you need at least part of it to update in real-time. Well, we live in a modern world so it’s pretty common to have at least a part of the app update without requiring a user interaction or a page (re)load.

rust

C++ v. Rust -Speed, Safety, & Community Comparison

In this post, we’ll be comparing C++ with Rust, sharing our thoughts on when you should use each language, and predicting the future of C++ vs Rust.

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