This month’s most useful tools for developers > June 2018
Some are about new thinking or new techniques, some are about old or legacy technology and some are just useful resources for different languages or platforms. Some are just lolz. The brief is simple — if we think they’re useful, you might too.
Entity Framework Code First Migrations on VSTS
“I have been spending quite a bit of time getting my feet wet in VSTS, as far as I can tell, it is a very powerful tool and I am enjoying my exposure so far. Every time I have been hit with a requirement in release processes or build processes it has been easy enough to get to the solution. The Azure integration is pretty awesome too.”
A whole lotta Lottie
Lottie was developed by Airbnb and is an iOS, Android and React Native library that renders After Effects animations in real time.
This ‘how to’ guide will explain the process from start to finish, all in one place…
Looking for reliable data centre hard drives?
Since April 2013, Backblaze has recorded and saved daily hard drive statistics from the drives in their data centers. Each entry consists of the date, manufacturer, model, serial number, status (operational or failed), and all of the SMART attributes reported by that drive.
Currently there are about 97 million entries totaling 26 GB of data. You can download this data from their website, but for starters here’s what they found.
“Everybody should have the skill of thinking computationally.”
An interesting interview explaining her selection of five key books — with excellent justifications — from Ana Bell, lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT.
5 books on computer science and programming.
Automating Azure Deployments with ARM Templates
Our lead DevOps engineer, and all round nice guy Mark Vallins, shares his experience with Azure deployments using ARM templates, Powershell and Visual Studio Code. A great video walkthrough for anyone looking at automated deployments in the Microsoft cloud.
Office 365: all in on React
“Mobile versions for Android, iPad and iPhone devices will use React Native to build native applications for the device. Microsoft’s own UWP platform is a target for contemporary Windows devices, and a version for WIN32 APIs is built using the Electron framework.”
Microsoft Office rewrite in React.js nears completion
Pretty Polly
Polly.JS is a standalone, framework-agnostic JavaScript library that enables recording, replaying, and stubbing HTTP interactions.
Useful JS library for API replay testing and manipulation.
First there was React Native, then came… Vue Native!
Let the battle commence.
Looks like Vue Native has some catching up to do.
Nice selection of free development and design eBook links
(…for anyone that designs unicorns)
Obligatory silly bitcoin/blockchain article
“By putting your artwork on the “BitCoin Blockchain”, Verisart will ✨hand wavy magic✨ increase the trust in art dealers and reduce fraud.”
How I became Leonardo da Vinci on the Blockchain
GraphQL
“GraphQL introduces many powerful ideas, and because it was written in response to extensive real-world experience, it addresses API scaling problems that most would-be API designers wouldn’t think about until it was too late.”
An interesting introduction to GraphQL
For all of the Swift’icles out there:
Apple gave a quick overview of what’s new in Swift 4.2 and Swift 5. You can read my notes below.
Recap from WWDC 2018 — what’s new in Swift.
“Assume that you’ve already been compromised”
We sent our man (and AWS certified Solutions Architect) Steve to the
AWS Security Jam, and helpfully he did an excellent write-up of what it was and why it’s a good thing for anyone interested in infosec.
Stack Overflow for Teams
“…a private, secure home for your team’s questions and answers. No more digging through stale wikis and lost emails — give your team back the time it needs to build better products.”
Stack Overflow in a private, secure environment.
Angular six
This is a major release focused less on the underlying framework, and more on the toolchain and on making it easier to move quickly with Angular in the future.
Version 6 of Angular Now Available
New support for styling Xamarin.
Forms apps with CSS may be controversial, but Greg Shackles thinks CSS is a powerful (and frequently maligned) solution to the problem of styling native mobile applications. See what he means in this hands-on tutorial.
Styling Xamarin.Forms Apps with CSS
Flutter hits beta 3…
At Google I/O they announced the third beta release of Flutter, their mobile app SDK for creating high-quality, native user experiences on iOS and Android, along with showcasing new tooling partners, usage of Flutter by several high-profile customers, and announcing official support from the Material team.
Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3
Scope and the JavaScript Compiler — Kyle Simpson — Frontend Masters
Azure Security Centre
“Security Center leverages the scale of the cloud to identify attacks on App Service applications while focusing on emerging attacks, as attackers are on the reconnaissance phase, scanning to identify vulnerabilities across multiple websites, hosted on Azure.”
Ram Pliskin Senior Security PM, Azure Security Center
CellularGrowth
GPU-based cellular growth simulation in Unity.
AWS Amplify
A first look at how to build client side GraphQL applications using AWS Amplify.
BDD Treaties
Better cross-team coordination with collaborative governance and executable specifications Getting multiple teams to work together effectively on large projects can be tricky.
BDD Treaties — cross-team coordination with executable specifications
Just when you thought it was killed by fire…
Obligatory — but hopefully useful — GDPR Post
AB Testing and UX — a love story with numbers and people
“My boss wants me to make an AR thing, what should I make?
As our Head of Design pithily commented “incredibly impressive, but jeez what a waste of time.”
Pure Html & CSS ART, inspect the code if you don’t believe us…
Our job here is done…?
It’s an old argument, but I’m sure there are some business owners looking in this direction.
