Let Your Developers Grow

I have had the privilege to have worked for some amazing companies through my years as a developer, especially while contracting. The spark that got me motivated was learning new languages that would help me build solutions even more rapidly and simply than the previous.

The reasons for this post is wanting to share my views on how businesses need to become more agile and adventurous when choosing a programming language or framework to build your next project.

Don’t just stick with one language or architecture, even if that’s all your developers know. Trust me that productivity in building solutions in another tool, framework or language will be very positive as developers love to learn new skills and not be stuck in a rut using just one.

I used to be a pure .net developer at one point in my carrier and it was just a motivational killer moving from one project to the next using the same framework and C#.

Later on I had the opportunity to work for a company that allowed the flexibility of choosing a platform that suited the project. For example we needed an in house solution developed quickly after the disaster with a software house. After some research and experience testing RAD tools, I finally decided on a platform developed by a French company PCSoft, called WinDev. It’s rich programming language and development tools allowed the solution to be built and released in only a month. With full integration to their accounting system.

The next project was developed with NodeJS and Mongo using MeteorJS. It was enlightening at the time to build a web app solution using only JavaScript and have the power of reactive data using Publish / Subscribe. To this day I still enjoy using Meteor and I learned a lot about JavaScript and asncy in that and subsequent projects.

I don’t use a language or framework in a business project until have have a very good understanding of its capabilities, structure and built a few mini projects. For example I have been intrigued with Elixer at the moment so I guess you could say like you have to “do the knowledge” to become a London black cab driver, I need to do the same to hit the road running with Elixer and the Phoenix Framework.

It’s so important a business that has developers, to embrace new and emerging technologies. Do not call into the trap of sticking to one language just because it’s safe and that’s all your decelooers know. Push your developers to learn other technologies, even if they are low code solutions as change will spark their interest. Listen to them and find out what languages they would love to learn. Maybe it’s flutter as they want to create a mobile version of one of your apps.

Embrace change and llowmot to grow within your developers.

Coding to Music

Have you ever noticed that your coding is affected by both your surroundings and how you are feeling on an emotional level. Music can play a very important role as a developer.

It’s important that you choose right music to listen while you are focusing.

Sing Along!

Singing along might sound fun but it will distract you from the job at hand. On the other hand playing classical music might make you do relaxed that it will send you to sleep.

A lot of developers will play chill out music, just have a watch on livecoding.tv and you will see what I mean. It will also give you an idea what sounds good to you. If you ask, the developer will usually let you know the Spotify or YouTube they are listening too. So don’t be shy to ask.

The Power Of Movies

Now I’m not saying watch a movie while you code. If you can do that then you have a much better multi tasking mind than I do.

What I am talking about is certain firm scores evoke energy and focus, especially if you know the movie. If you want an idea of what music I mean then try out my Spotify play list link below.

Quality Counts

OK so I’m a bit funny when it comes to the quality of music coming out of headphones or ear buds. I mean what’s the point in listening if it’s all muffled or just poor quality.

Your probably thinking that this means I must spend a small fortune on headphones. The answer is no I don’t. I have to admit I was in the apple store the other day and tried out some headphones which sounded amazing. Then I looked at the price. Omg £300, really.

The thing is you can buy a good pair of headphones for around £25-30 and Sony ear buds for £20 sound amazing. Just try them out and make sure they have a good range of high and low frequency.

You might also want to consider wireless headphones, which gives you the freedom to reach the coffee brewing away or just standing for a few minutes to move your body. Highly recommended, especially when your suck in one of those moments when a solution just won’t pop into your head.

Finally

There are moments your mind will crave silence, so don’t force it on yourself to listen. If you don’t feel at all motivated then your mind needs stimulation so try something upbeat. Your mind needs both exercise and rest but most of all fuel, so don’t forget to hydrate yourself while you code.

WebDev and Chome AutoComplete Issues

Sometimes I come across this very strange issue when I create a page in WebDev and the fields are autocompleted as if they are user name and password.

From my investigations into this issue, I believe it has something to do with the way that WebDev handles HTML element naming. Even though you have named an edit field something unique, this is not the ID/name used when it generates the HTML. Instead, it generates an Alias name, for example A10.

To overcome conflict with Chrome autocomplete, a neet trick I found is to do the following:

Set the control to read-only:

Finally, add code to the browser onfocus event to make the edit field active:

You will find now that Chrome will not autocomplete your field and all is well in the world of WebDev.

Please do share this tip with the world…

WinDev 23 – What’s New

It’s that time of year again when PC Soft releases their new versions of developer products with exciting new features. Here’s some of the new stuff that I am especially excited about.

Layout Control

A better UI experience now as hidden controls currently just create gaps, but with the layout control all other controls move to fill the space.

End User Image Editor

You can now give the user capabilities to edit their own images, which is great when they wish to annotate an image or making size aadjustments.

PDF Viewer within app

No need to open a seperate PDF reader as now you can view direct within your app. This is great for me as not only can our users view Word documents within the app, they can now do the same for PDF which means no switching between apps.

Excel XLSX loading

We can even go one step further now and load Excel worksheets into the spreadsheet control as well as there being lots more features in the control.

Word Processor Control HTML Text Edit Mode

Now you can use the Wordprocessor control for user email creation without the need for them to switch to Outlook etc. This is a great feature which will enhance our products even further.

Quickly Create Tasks from Requirements

There a cool new interface that will allow you, for a selected requirement, create tasks and include dependencies. I’m using project monitoring more and more lately as a productivty tool to manage requirements and implement the features.

Naming Planes

I make great use of planes in windows so that I can quickly switch views for a particular piece of functionality. Previously these planes were named 1 to X but now you can edit the name and make them more descriptive, which helps you and other developers understand the purpose of a particular plane.

SQL in Code

There a new declaration variableSQL Query you can use in code that will assist you in writing SQL directly in code, with syntax hightlighting, code completion and detecting errors. This is a big one for me as I like to have control over my SQL when there are complex queries. Previously I would use SQL Manager to build and test the query, then copy and paste the SQL code into a WLanguage string variable. I’m not sure if it goes so far as to be able to test the SQL in this release but if not then that would be a great future release feature.

RandomCrypto

This is a very handy little function that will generate a random number where the sequence cannot be reproduced.

Setting a Procedure/Classes as deprecated

In WLanguage they call it Zombie Procedures. These are procedures/Classes that roam the code but will be removed in future versions as there are new procedure that have been introduced to perform a piece of functionality better.

Interface

We can now develop systems with a more modern approach, building an interface that a class can then implement. Makes the code a lot cleaner and is a welcome addition.

There’s so much more to WinDev 23 but these are just a few enhancements that really stood out for me.

The Road to Salesforce

It’s very interesting life as a senior developer, as you get to see the world change around our technology in so many ways.

Although I have been an evangelist of Salesforce for some years, I have yet to step into that world fully. But this is about to change as I plan to fully transition from a .NET developer onto the Salesforce platform, utilizing my skills I have learned along the way.

I look at the current state of development and see that Salesforce have got it right. Back in the days when I first started developing you had no choice but to build a solution from scratch, from creating a server infrastructure though to coding the solution.

Today this should not be the case and is not with Salesforce. You have the core business functionality you need, which can be expanded using clicks not code. When your business process requires something bespoke the coding comes in play with some Apex / JavaScript / SOQL / Lightning and along with it the all important unit test. I especially like the quality of the Lightning Design System for consistency with their new UI.

Mobile is one of the most important mediums for delivering solutions to a business as people’s lives change, commuting more, working remotely and businesses become more of a social family than a 9 to 5 job #Ohana, which I love to see as people spend a large proportion of their lives at work, so it should be fun, exciting, challenging and rewarding both from a business and a social perspective. just look at the new Salesforce Trailblazer community page to see what I mean.

So where does this fit into my life. Well it fits in perfectly with my outlook on where I should be now and in the future. But I want to share my journey that other developers in my field might find interesting and also if your like me and passed the 50 age mark

TAGS:FUNCODER

<<< Thank you for your visit >>>

Hot Websites