Insights & Innovations

May 23, 2024

AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven compute service commonly used in microservice architectures, offering developers greater flexibility in application development.

November 10, 2020

The .NET ecosystem is thriving, and Microsoft is going in the right direction by focusing on developers (developers! developers!). But wait! This was not the case before. Microsoft has a long history of being hated by hippie programmers in California and the reason is obvious: Programmers Hate Proprietary Stuff! “Microsoft has historically abused their market dominance to sell mediocre (and sometimes genuinely worse) clones of open-source software which was originally built by a hippie community of developers with a genuine passion to share their great code for free.” The Mistake: Basically, after Microsoft battled open source and Linux for ages “at the height of its desktop domination”, the company finally admitted that they were wrong. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft’s Former CEO) called Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches” back in 2001. The Nadella Effect? In recent years, Microsoft has been adopting open-source (PowerShell, Visual Studio Code, and even Microsoft Edge’s original JavaScript engine). In order to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10, Microsoft had to partner with Canonical. Moreover, it had to obtain Xamarin to aid mobile app development and GitHub to keep popular code repositories for programmers. Microsoft president Brad Smith recently admitted: “The good news is that, if life is long enough, you can learn … that you need to change”. Microsoft changed its attitude towards open source after naming Linux “a cancer”. The company is now considered to be one of the largest contributors to the open-source kingdom, competing with Facebook, Google, Apache, etc. Michael Cusumano states that Satya Nadella was able to bring in a new culture, new enthusiasm, and made Microsoft an exciting place to work again. To cut a long story short, we can expect to see a lot more open-source efforts in Windows in the future. The New Ecosystem: New Microsoft Ecosystem is focused on programmers and enterprise customers. Microsoft has created a strong ecosystem with cloud infrastructure and services. “With Microsoft enterprise products and cloud services being so tightly integrated, it provides strong incentives for business.” And if you are a developer, look what Microsoft has got for you: November 2020 is promised to change this big game. Microsoft announced a huge .NET 5 launch that will make .NET family different and will eventually create one unified platform. Microsoft’s team mentioned that .NET 5 will be used to target Windows, Linux, macOS, IOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS, WebAssembly, and even more. Microsoft tends to produce a single .NET runtime environment and framework that can be used anywhere and has uniform runtime behaviors and software developer experiences. The Future: Microsoft states that, “We see a bright future ahead in which you can use the same .NET APIs and languages to target a broad range of application types, operating systems, and chip architectures. It will be easy to make changes to your build configuration to build your applications differently, in Visual Studio, Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, or at the command line”. I certainly tend to agree with this statement. Rajat Vig Resources: 5 .NET Blogs for C# Developers to Follow in 2019 — DZone Web Dev, 2019 Microsoft: We Were Wrong About Open Source — The Verge, 2020 Bloomberg — Are You A Robot? — Bloomberg.com, 2019 Satya Nadella brought Microsoft back from the brink of irrelevance — Los Angeles Times, 2019 Understanding the Microsoft Ecosystem and Its Advantages — Arbela Technologies, 2019 Microsoft .NET 5 launches as unified framework for c# development — Ayoka — Made in USA Enterprise Application Services, 2020

July 24, 2020

During these times we find a huge amount of people starting to work from home. Despite the fact that software development is more adapted to this change than most other careers, it’s still a huge change for individuals who used to work from the office. As one of the many office workers, I was also impacted by this shift and I would like to share my experience. Communication with colleagues Software development in itself usually requires minimal social interaction in comparison with other careers. Even if you are in the office you find yourself working on your own ticket most of the time. But when you are working from home it becomes even more lonely. There is no occasional conversation with colleagues or some discussion during lunch. Most of the workday socializing is limited to daily scrum. Additionally, if you have some issues you want to discuss or need advice for resolving some bug, it seems much easier to come up to a colleague at the office rather than pester them on Slack. However, after several times you’re getting used to sharing screen via Google Meet or Slack, it doesn’t differ too much from regular communication. Time spent getting to work On average Canadians spend around 25 minutes commuting to work. I was on the longer side of this scale with 45 minutes for commute, which sums up to 7.5 hours a week. Some of that time can be spent productively (reading articles, listening to audiobooks, etc.). However, when I started to work from home in the end I found a substantial amount of additional time each week which can be spent on other activities. Physical activity Time spent working from home emphasized to me how much software development is a physically inactive job. When I went to the office I still had to spend some time outside catching a bus. But now, when I am working from home and especially with pandemic outside I found myself leaving home only once a week to stock up on groceries. And after several weeks I found myself craving this bit of physical activity I had before. In the end, I found a substitute in the form of playing table tennis several times a week. Time management When you are working from home, you seem to have a more flexible schedule. You can start working later than you usually do or take longer lunch breaks. At first glance, it definitely seems like a big advantage, however after a week of taking longer lunch breaks it seemed to me that I was spending more time working, although, in summary, I was working the same hours as I was in the office. This part more than any other depends on your preferences, but for myself I found that it’s better to start with sticking with a schedule you built up at the office, making changes only if necessary. This allows for a much smoother transition to working from home. Work/Personal life separation Work is an essential part of our day to day life, but it’s also important to find some separation between it and other activities. At first, I found it a bit daunting working in the same room where I spend most of my free time. It just seemed that line between work and leisure time getting blurred out. However, in some time this feeling disappeared on its own. Although I can imagine some physical separation could help as well, for example, if there is a possibility to arrange an equivalent of ‘home office’ and only use it for work that could help with the transition. In conclusion, shifting to work from home presents several challenges, such as finding your balance and finding what works specifically for you. However, it also presents many benefits and possibilities to learn something new, in the end becoming more efficient and flexible at what you do. Hennadii Husiev

November 13, 2020

Once upon a time, a developer joined a small company and was given a machine with which to unlock the mighty powers of coding and productivity… Known as “Mac,” this machine promised the world, with only one seeming obstacle…the terrifying beast known as “configuration”! There are several things I will always do when configuring a new machine. Caps Lock is the first to go, a perfectly useless function that is infinitely better as an extra Escape key. Thankfully Apple makes this extremely easy, with a dedicated path to follow to painlessly remap the keys. This is followed shortly by installing Vim and its keybindings everywhere that supports them (VSCode, iTerm, etc), as I have really grown to appreciate the productivity boost this brings. The final and most dreaded step is selecting and configuring a terminal, as something always seems to go haywire around this point. Replacing Caps Lock with Escape is a must! Think about how often you use both…now go ahead and disable Caps Lock! The adventure begins My terminal of choice has always been iTerm2 (in a Mac environment), harkening back to my first days as a fledgling developer in an unfamiliar environment (read: copying everyone else’s setup). However, I soon adopted iTerm as my own, and have been enjoying the journey ever since! The only speedbump in the road is configuration; specifically, configuring oh-my-ZSH and the dreaded Powerline fonts. After installing iTerm2, the relatively bland interface reminds me why configuration is so vital. Installing oh-my-ZSH itself is quite painless (Installation Guide), and cleans up the terminal quite a bit…but we’re just getting started! With this behind us, we can jump immediately to “the beast”! Slaying the Beast of Configuration? Selecting a ZSH theme can be an onerous task, given the vast quanity of delectable options available. My first exposure to Vim plugins was through powerline configuration, so it is no surprise that I choose powerlevel10k. This spiritual successor of powerlevel9k has supremely revamped the configuration process, enabling a much smoother setup experience! After installing powerlevel10k and adding the theme to my ~/.zshrc (ie.ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k ), configuration is a breeze! Simply source ~/.zshrc and the configuration editor will appear! It is important to allow powerlevel10k to install the recommended Meslo fonts! Refusing will negate all the hard work so far, as the pretty colors/icons/whatever will simply not work (well/at all). After the fonts have been installed, it may wish to restart. Upon reopening, it will either pick up again or can be started with p10k configure. Any configuration from here is subjective, but I have included my configuration steps. After answering several questions to ensure the fonts loaded correctly, I launched into the remaining options: Prompt style: Rainbox (easier to theme, etc) Character set: Unicode (enables pretty decorations) Show current time: No Prompt separators: Angled Prompt heads: Sharp Prompt tails: Flat Prompt height: 2 lines Prompt connection: Dotted Prompt frame: None Connection color: Darkest Prompt spacing: Sparse Icons: Many icons Prompt flow: Concise Enable transient prompt: Yes (cleanly removes prompts from previous lines) Instant prompt mode: Verbose Overwrite file: Yes And just like that, the terminal has been drastically improved (still more to go though) The resulting configuration (~/.p10k.zsh) can still be completely customized, with a relatively easy-to-follow format. Just how much easier this is than previous iterations of the tool cannot be stressed enough! Basking in the glow of victory As it turns out, the bulk of the work was actually done by the amazing devs behind powerlevel10k! The rest of the configuration battle was melodramatic… I downloaded the (patched) Solarized color scheme, enabled the vi-mode plugin mode, installed ZSH autosuggestions and syntax highlighting, modified my .vimrc, and then rode off into the sunset! A great Gist by kevin-smets that goes through some of these! Kendall Roth

July 24, 2020

If you’ve been there, you know how this goes. At first it’s kind of fun. You got into this profession because you like solving difficult problems. You start throwing down console.info(thing, "<<<<<<"); everywhere because breakpoints are for actual bugs and this is just a minor inconvenience. Surely it will just take a few passes through the logic before you’re back on track. The first sign of trouble comes when you notice your coffee is stone cold and your laptop is at 48% battery. You’ve started on the initial orbit of your development bug death spiral. You realize you’ve been tweaking parentheses placements in your query for 45 minutes instead of looking up the postgres error code, so you decide maybe it’s time for a brain break. You walk around your apartment until the sql-y haze starts to lift and you stop thinking it’s funny that you can’t GROUP BY the contents of your fridge. Once you’ve collected yourself, you start the real process of investigation: opening, skimming, and rejecting stack overflow threads until you find one with a code block that looks similar enough to what you’re working on. postgres 42803. check_ungrouped_columns_walker. filter query by join aggregate results without removing aggregate results. use alias in WHERE clause. how does sql look like. WHERE am I? This is the second trip around the spiral. It can last anywhere from half an hour to an entire afternoon depending on how specific your problem is, but it ends when every result for every search term you can think of is purple. Every. Damn. Link. DuckDuckGo and Google. You’re on your own, sliding out of control into your third orbit around what you thought was going to be an easy fix. You start to question your sanity. Or at least your competence. You start reading w3schools posts on how to write a WHERE clause, because you clearly don’t even understand how basic sql queries work. You move on to psql docs, fighting to keep your eyes from glazing over after 8 pedantic paragraphs of detailed caveats to using DISTINCT in joins. After slogging through every possibly relevant page of the docs, you even consider reading threads in the postgres community support forum. The fourth orbit starts when you realize you should have moved on to something else hours ago. You’ve lost sight of the original problem and your back hurts. The little, wise human part of your brain is telling you to have dinner and come back to it tomorrow. The little frantic code monkey in your head is telling you that you have to figure this out before you can unplug. You keep sliding around the spiral, attempting one last solution you found on some Azeri guy’s blog from 2013. It doesn’t work, obviously, and the fifth spiral begins. This time around, there is no code. No research, no reading. Just you and the problem. You try to let it go, but it haunts you all night. Dreams come formatted by json_agg and you stare into the circadian void trying to find the answer to why sql syntax errors are so useless. The sixth orbit is the tightest orbit. It begins the next day when you open your editor and figure out the solution immediately. You put your aggregation in a WITH clause, filter the results with the same WHERE clauses you had written before this all started, and commit. 30 minutes, start to finish. Including tests. It should be a valuable lesson. A fresh mind is always better than a mind pickled in frustration and coffee. You try to recall everything you learned about aggregation and subqueries and translating psql docs to English. Maybe, someday, that latent knowledge will find its way into your code. But for now the best your frazzled mind can do is write a blog post about the process and hope you remember to read it the next time a query fails and you think “that’s weird… it should be working.” Clark Teeple

November 13, 2020

My first co-op term is almost over and I wanted to share useful lessons that I learned as a UI/UX Design intern at Weavik, Waterloo Canada. First of all, I would like to begin this blog post by telling you a story of me looking for my internship. I started looking for my summer co-op placement in January. There were about 150 positions available on my school portal and only 6–10 positions for UI/UX Design. That’s when this tough journey started. Thousands of applications, several job fairs, dozens of unanswered emails, and me not being able to get an answer for such a simple question: “What is wrong with me?”. I was so tired of getting denial emails without any explanation (best case scenario). But you know what? I was not ready to give up. I kept applying, kept looking for any opportunities across Canada. Still nothing. Then, COVID-19 decided to change this world’s plans. I’ve read so many LinkedIn posts about interns being laid off because of a global pandemic. It was pretty much reasonable: “Nobody cares about interns, people need to save their businesses from bankruptcy”. I was truly devastated, but I still had the feeling that it was not the end and I will have an opportunity to win this long fight. One day (one week after my official co-op start date), I saw a new posting on my school portal for “UI/UX Designer Intern” at Weavik. After making a small research, I felt like it was finally it. I applied without any hesitation. The next day, I got an email from Brian Haacke (COO) of Weavik, inviting me for a phone interview. To be honest, I had always been scared of phone interviews, I would have definitely preferred in-person ones, but it was impossible due to COVID-19. For some reason, I decided not to prepare for the interview. And you know what? I had never had such an amazing interview before. I felt like it was a friendly conversation with someone, I knew. After a 30-minute talk, Dave Shak (CTO) said: “I have 2 news for you: one — bad and one — good. The bad news is that we won’t have another interview with you. The good news is that we’d like you to start with us as soon as possible”. The next day, I signed the contract and started my co-op term as a UI/UX designer Intern at Weavik. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from this internship. It was my first co-op term and I had never had a chance to work in a real industry environment. New team, new projects, new life. Virtual one, of course. I couldn’t be more grateful for becoming a part of such an amazing and supportive team. Even though I still haven’t met some of my team members in-person, I feel like having a virtual internship wasn’t that bad and I was still able to improve both my personal and professional skills. This work term came to an end very quickly and I really wanted to share some valuable lessons that I learned while working here at Weavik. Show initiative Are you passionate about what you’re doing? Show it to your employer! Ask him/her about additional tasks or any help from your side. Share your opinion and suggest new ways of solving problems. Remember, IT’S YOUR CHANCE TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW. Be open to any opportunities. “People who show initiative demonstrate they can think for themselves and take action when necessary. It means using your head, and having the drive to achieve”. Continue self-learning You should never stop learning! Take any chance and don’t waste your time. Do you have a spare minute after your working day is over? Listen to some podcasts, read new books, watch YouTube videos, or chat with some professionals in your field. Co-op is a perfect time to learn and explore this world. Don’t wait for someone teaching you about something, do it yourself! Co-op is considered to be a part of the learning process, so don’t waste this opportunity. Don’t be afraid to ask questions Oh, yeah. You’ll probably have tons of questions, don’t be afraid to ask them! Don’t be afraid to look stupid! Nobody expects you to know everything and be an industry professional. It’s okay not to know everything, you’re just a student, please, remember it! I was so lucky to have a patient supervisor (Brian Haacke, COO of Weavik), who answered all of my questions and helped me to adapt to the new environment quickly. Take some rest “Push too hard, you burn out quickly”. I know, you probably want to work as much as possible. I totally get it! I was so excited to work, sometimes I just couldn’t stop myself. Is it 9 pm already? Am I still working? Let’s stop, honey, go get some rest. One day, I realized that I’ve lost my work-life balance. I put too much attention on my work and completely forgot about my basic lifestyle, which wasn’t cool. Try to enjoy your life besides your work, it’s important. Share your feelings Do you feel uncomfortable doing something? Is it too much pressure for you? Are you overwhelmed with your tasks? Speak out. Believe me, all employers and supervisors were in the same shoes. Nobody will make you do something, you don’t want to (I hope so). I’m sure your employers will be ready to provide additional help to you if you need it. You aren’t alone on this battlefield. Ask for feedback I know your school will probably do it for you, but I would say that it’s crucial to ask for feedback by yourself. I would recommend doing an anonymous survey and let your employers and colleagues rate your skills and general experience working with you. It’s important to know your weak spots and work on them. Remember: “We never stop learning and improving our skills!” That’s it! I guess these tips and tricks would be helpful for every intern/co-op student who is looking for new co-op opportunities or have just started their co-op term. I hope all of you will become successful professionals in your fields and make this world a better place! Good luck! To sum up, I want to truly thank Weavik for this amazing work term, I hope, there is much more to come! Bohdana Tyshchenko

November 23, 2020

Let’s get real. We all know what happens when a business doesn’t keep pace with technology. From taxi companies to bookstores, you’ve watched with your own eyes how innumerable companies ‒ sometimes entire industries ‒ have gone the way of the Blockbuster. If you don’t innovate, somebody else will…and they’ll quickly pull the rug right out from under you. But innovation isn’t easy. ‘Embracing’ technology, as it were, takes more than an attitude change. It requires technology that works for your specific business, and that’s not always something you can get off the shelf. Sure, you might get lucky and find a secure, affordable solution that happens to work perfectly for your business out-of-the-box. But if your business is dynamic and ever-changing, it would be rare to find a good fit. What’s more likely is this: There’s a solution on the market that almost does what you need it to do…but it’s not quite there in a way that’s holding your business back. OR… You’ve found an app that works okay for your business, but you know that it could be executed so much better (after all, you know your business better than anyone.) It’s also possible you’re envisioning a digital product that’s nothing like anything else out there right…even though you know there’s a market for it. In any case, you need something more than what the current market has on offer. And you have some idea of what ‘more’ should be. The next step? Well, it’s obvious: put up some money, find some developers, start spinning that idea into your company’s killer app. …At least that’s how most people would think. Here’s the truth… Developing a custom software application can be a minefield of financial risk, stress, and management nightmares. So many founders who set out to develop their own app entirely in-house have lived to regret it. Most of the businesses involved in those ventures don’t make it out alive. But wait: I’m not saying you should rip up your plans and abandon your idea right here. Quite the opposite. I want to help you do that idea justice. You might be surprised to hear this, but very few companies actually build all their own software exclusively in-house. In fact, not even the biggest tech titans ‒ Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, even Google ‒ take all of their development into their own hands (even though they could if they wanted to…) All of them, at various points, have strategically leveraged developers from outside of the company. Why Innovative Companies Don’t Always Build In-House With the right development partner, any forward-thinking business ‒ from startups to enterprises and everything in between ‒ can leverage outside development talent to bring their software vision into reality. But to be clear, I’m not saying that you should offload all of your work onto a third-party developer. Once your solution is live, it pays to have skilled workers permanently on staff to roll out day-to-day updates and bug fixes, troubleshoot, and so on. That’s one of the beauties of partnering with an industry leader like Weavik. Your in-house development team, through the course of working with an outside agency, can gain tons of invaluable skills and experience in a very short window of time. By the end, you and the rest of your internal staff can walk away with a crash-course in all things relating to your product and then some. Circling back to the big question ‒ why, exactly, do so many companies with in-house resources still outsource all or part of their dev work to agencies? Well, it really comes down to two key points. Leveraging outside development talent provides key skills and expertise at a fraction of the cost of hiring that talent in-house. Partnering with a development agency is the fastest and most cost-effective way to scale your team and accelerate time-to-market. Let’s break that down. 1. An Effective Partnership Is Money In The Bank. The Silicon Valley Big 5 have access to the best development talent in the world. But that talent doesn’t come cheap. There’s still a huge gap in the supply and demand for tech talent. By some estimates, there’s one qualified software developer available for every five jobs (keep in mind that not all developers have remotely the same skillset.) Talent is a limited resource, and it’s priced accordingly. What’s more, not all the skills you’ll need to get your ideas off the ground are things you’ll need on hand post-launch. You’ll want a software architect to lay the groundwork to ensure your product can scale, for example, but you probably won’t need them post-launch. You’ll need a firmware dev to get your IoT device to market, but probably not for day-to-day maintenance. That’s a lot of time, money, and effort spent recruiting, onboarding, and managing a temporary role. But here’s the good news. You don’t actually need to hire for these roles to get the quality software product your business needs right now. You can leverage an entire team of talent ‒ including the specific skills and expertise your project needs ‒ for a fraction of the cost of hiring for those roles even temporarily. In most cases, this cost difference is the biggest reason why startups like [company] and enterprises like [company] outsource parts of their development to industry experts like Weavik. But as you’ll see, cost isn’t the only reason innovative companies love working with us. It’s also about results. 2. Partnerships Get Your Product to Market Faster. At this day and age, time-to-market can literally make or break your business. When you’re not in the business of building software, developing in-house is often a slow, arduous process – especially when you’re doing it with a team you just put together from scratch. And even if you are in the software business, time is still a limited resource. There’s only so much that one team can do. A more hands-on deck could help speed things up on the development side, but that also means more heads to manage…not to mention more people on payroll. That’s where developers like Weavik come in. Weavik isn’t just a tech partner. We’re an extension of your internal team. When you’re under pressure to get your product to market, our experts can step in to help you push it out the door on time and on budget. But you don’t have to wait until it’s crunch time to leverage our talent. We’ll also help you validate, design, and develop your idea from concept to launch, guiding you throughout the entire product lifecycle. It’s a win, win, win. So, Who Can You Trust? For many companies, outsourcing all or part of development is, bar none, the fastest and most cost-effective way to bring a software idea to life. It’s how many of the world’s most dominant tech companies continually produce cutting-edge digital products at such incredible speed and quality. And for companies that aren’t big players – but who are committed to solving a problem by embracing technology – it can be the decisive advantage that helps them un-stick internal processes, upgrade customer experiences, and push groundbreaking products to market. Still, outsourcing is not without risks. There are literally thousands of developers around the globe. Needless to say, not all of them pull their weight equally. Not even close. You need a development partner with a proven, demonstrable track record of success helping companies like yours with projects like yours. LinkedIn profiles and canned testimonials won’t work here. You’ll have to go deeper. You want to accelerate time-to-market? Ask the dev how they helped someone beat out a competitor, and by what margin. Trying to bring your process into the 21st century? Find out exactly how they did that before…and whether their solution actually ‘stuck.’ Working on a minimum viable product? Ask about the last founder who went to them and see how it turned out. That’s the kind of transparency you should expect if you’re going to trust somebody with your tech. Put it this way: at Weavik, we don’t even lay a finger on our clients’ ideas until we’ve gone through a thorough Discovery process to make absolutely sure we’re the right fit. We provide full transparency to our partners. Right now, I know you have an incredible software idea. A game-changer for your business. Ideas like that deserve a team that can do it justice. My team and I love meeting entrepreneurs who are passionate leaders who are committed to solving a problem by embracing technology. I can’t say if Weavik is right for you. But I can promise you this: if you reach out to us now, you’ll walk away from the conversation with a crystal-clear vision of the next steps you should take on your software journey. Contact Us!

November 13, 2020

In the midst of a hectic work life, many developers find a simple benefit in working on personal projects: risk-free learning. “Wait…you code for fun too? Why would you do more ‘work’ at home?” ~ Everyone (maybe not) I have heard this question (or some form thereof) more than I can remember. I have often simply answered with “why not, it’s fun”! This is typically accompanied by a moment of silence as they determine whether I am indeed serious, closely followed by expressions I call the “eyebrows of doubt” or the “stare of incredulity”. Is it only for fun? Strange as this answer may seem to the non-developer, it is nevertheless true…it is fun! There is something strangely intriguing about taking a concept from nothingness and shaping it into something you can view with pride. A sense of ownership, a feeling of accomplishment, and just the knowledge that this “thing” used to be “nothing.” Even though the project may never again see the light of day (many will not), this sense of completion will remain. In fact, many projects may never see completion, abandoned in pursuit of another grand idea! There is also an obligatory sense of relief that the myriad of challenges along the way have been vanquished (…or may be ignored). Many personal projects are eventually abandoned before completion, but this should not be considered a “waste of time”! Yet I believe there is more to it than it simply being “fun.” If it were merely “fun,” eventually the sheer amount of challenges experienced and unfinished projects would overwhelm a developer. When this happens, it is often difficult to reignite the passion for “extracurricular” development that may have burned so brightly before. So what is it actually? So what is it then, that inspires developers to seemingly dive right back into their “work” in their spare time? As mentioned previously, the answer will often be risk-free learning. Risk-free learning is one of the largest benefits of personal side projects! The ability to learn and experiment outside a work environment cannot be overstated. It allows a developer to approach a problem in a way they would not be able to during their standard “work.” Whether removing the constraints of time, pressure, or entrenched practices, this approach often illuminates new avenues of resolving the challenge. In this environment, experimentation is encouraged and promoted, even though there may be no tangible outcome! And if the approach doesn’t work, there is still the positive outcome of knowledge gained…risk-free! In return, the knowledge gained through this experience can be translated back into the “work” environment. However, the risks involved have already been mitigated through the process of personal experimentation in the (mostly) stress-free zone of personal development! Most problems faced in software development are actually not “new” problems, but have been solved before (in some manner). Developers can gain substantial amounts of new knowledge in this manner, without paying the necessary time cost “at work.” Obviously, this is only practical if the developer is still “having fun” while managing their personal project. The moment the personal project becomes driven by the need to solve a “work” problem (without allowing for experimentation), what was once a personal project morphs into an extension of the “work” environment. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can soon allow “work stress” and the associated time crunch to creep into personal time. However, a proper balance between experimenting with new technologies, ideas, and concepts in personal projects will almost always translate into a more productive “work” life! Risk-free learning is one of the largest benefits of personal side projects! Kendall Roth

March 31, 2021

Time is money. That’s why you use tools like Karmak Fusion to streamline critical operations like sales, maintenance, accounting, and inventory. But what happens when Fusion doesn’t automatically sync with all the other apps you need to run your transport business? Believe it or not, there’s a way to get useful data into and out of Karmak Fusion without tedious manual data entry: Fusion integrations. Weavik’s Fusion integrations seamlessly bridge the gap between Fusion and the other software tools you need to run your business. And the best part, it doesn’t require you to change your current workflow or train your staff on any new, expensive software tools. Never enter the same data twice. Integrate Karmak Fusion with your entire data management system so everyone’s always on the same page. Quit looking at binders and spreadsheets. Turn Fusion into a centralized dashboard that displays and analyzes your data in real-time. Improve inventory management. Analyze part details, quantities, vendors, and more to cut costs and make smarter purchases. Auto-convert to VMRS. Have a customer or supplier using non-standard codes? Let Fusion convert everything into VMRS automatically. Start doing predictive maintenance. Use historical and real-time data from work orders, telematics, and more to stop breakdowns before they happen. Leveraging Karmak’s Unity API, Weavik’s integrations let Fusion to “talk” to your CRM, predictive maintenance algorithms, business intelligence, and even your vehicle telematics. Weavik is the only Karmak-certified and supported software integrator in the world to do this. Weavik’s integrations are helping commercial transportation businesses to: Prevent breakdowns with predictive maintenance to reduce maintenance costs. Keep everyone on the same page with seamless data management across your business. End tedious data entry by converting non-standard codes into VMRS automatically. Improve efficiency and productivity using data and business analytics. Make smarter purchase decisions with better insight on part performance details, quantities, vendors, and more. It’s easy. Just reach out to Weavik’s Fusion integrations experts to get started. Fusion Integrations: 3 Ways to Go Beyond Karmak & Automate Your Business A Look at How Weavik Has Helped Three Commercial Transport Businesses Solve Problems with Fusion Integrations 1. Job Code Standardization What happens when your biggest customer insists you use their non-standard job codes instead of VMRS? Since Fusion only speaks VMRS, you’ll have to translate and enter the non-standard codes manually. Manual entry leads to errors, of course. One of the companies we’ve worked with nearly lost its biggest contract over this exact issue. This client, a repair shop, serviced a supermarket chain that used proprietary job codes instead of VMRS. After months of challenges, our client got an ultimatum: get Karmak Fusion working with the non-standard codes or get out. So, they called Weavik. Solution: Automatic VMRS Integration for Karmak Fusion Weavik’s Fusion team built a custom integration that syncs the supermarket’s non-standard job codes with Karmak’s VMRS system. Now, Fusion accepts the non-standard job codes without any problems. It has allowed the shop to keep their best customer and extend the contract for another year. In fact, the supermarket customer was so happy with the results they sent their other suppliers to Weavik as well! Stop entering data manually. Talk to a Weavik integrations expert now. 2. Predictive Maintenance Let’s look at another Weavik client: a semi-trailer rental company drowning in maintenance costs. They needed to keep as much of the fleet on the road as possible while keeping repair costs low. Any change in price or performance can make a huge difference across an entire fleet. So, Weavik helped the client connect Fusion to the client’s maintenance intelligence system, allowing data to flow between the two systems. Data on work orders, maintenance records, and parts inventory were compiled into an easy-to-read dashboard that updated in real-time. It enabled their team to predict breakdowns, production interruptions, and extra costs in advance, so they could repair units and buy parts ahead of time. Solution: Predictive Maintenance Integration for Karmak Fusion Fleet maintenance costs dropped almost immediately after this solution was put in place. The team was able to predict breakdowns before they occurred, and they were well prepared to repair the equipment in a timely manner. Today, it’s amazing how much more profit they’re seeing just by reducing downtime and keeping trucks on the road. The rental fleet is more reliable, which makes their customers happier, too. More and more of their business comes from referrals. Reduce maintenance costs by reducing breakdowns with predictive maintenance. Talk to a Weavik integrations expert now. 3. Parts and Yard Inventory Don’t you hate it when OEMs don’t use VMRS on their packaging? You have to dig through VMRS databases to find the right number, then plug it into Fusion by hand. Mistakes happen, and next thing you know, someone’s pulling the wrong part off the shelf for a repair. If you manage a fleet, you know how important it is to maximize every maintenance dollar spent. Without good data, it’s impossible to assess the performance of specific parts and components at scale. This is another case where Weavik’s Fusion integrations make a huge difference. Solution: Parts and Yard Inventory Management Weavik recently developed an integration for another commercial transportation customer to help with parts and inventory management. This integration aggregates data from Fusion and other databases for the purpose of providing performance statistics about specific parts in the client’s inventory. Using this information, the client is making informed decisions about what components and parts to buy, reducing expenditures on fleet components, and improving fleet performance. Plus, when Fusion integrates seamlessly with inventory management software, tracking parts and yard stock is easy. No more incorrect parts pulled from shelves. Get better insight on parts details, quantities, vendors, and more. Talk to a Weavik integrations expert now. You Can Trust Weavik with Your Fusion Integrations Karmak Fusion integrations are not a one-size-fits-all solution. They’re custom applications that must be built to fit your data management ecosystem, accounting for the software you use and the problem you’re trying to solve. Weavik is the only custom Fusion integration developer that is actually certified and supported by Karmak Inc. Karmak picked Weavik for a reason: Weavik gets projects done on time and on budget, with integrations that are seamless and simple to use. Our clients are companies like yours with similar challenges and goals. We know your industry and the challenges you’re facing. Get started by scheduling a quick call with one of our Fusion integration experts.

July 23, 2020

Have you ever struggled with a misunderstanding between designers and developers? Let’s be honest, almost everyone has. “Why are these developers asking so many questions? Can they just build the website as I have designed? Why are the fonts not the size I wanted?” “Does anyone really care about the font size? It’s impossible to implement your design. Is there any difference between those 2 colors?” It appears that developers and designers often see the world from nonidentical perspectives and speak different languages. Have you ever realized that you have no idea, what developers are talking about? Do you still feel scared of words like API, polymorphism, pull requests, etc? As for the developers, listening to designers’ discussion of empathy maps, wireframes and perfect shade of blue is definitely driving them crazy. Let’s just accept that, okay? However, we’re still playing on the same team, aren’t we? Both designers and developers have the same important goal in mind: “Deliver a great result to the end client”. So, how to achieve this goal most effectively together and avoid getting stressed? Here are 6 crucial tips for designers that will help to optimize and accelerate designer-developer collaboration: Communication This point is the most important one. Talk, discuss, ask and answer questions during the whole design process! Be patient and offer as much help as it is possible. Don’t forget, that both designers and developers are on the same team. Communication is a key factor when it comes to collaboration with other team members. Before starting designing any product or software, make sure you’re on the same page with developers and understand all technical restrictions. Make regular check-ins with the dev team to be sure that everything is moving smoothly according to the plan. Check out more useful tips on how to arrange designer-developer communication productively here: “Working Together: How Designers And Developers Can Communicate To Create Better Projects” Now, let’s move to some practical tips: Component-driven Design I hope everyone uses components nowadays. If you for some reason don’t use them, check out the following article and START USING COMPONENTS! “Why component-driven design drives great software products” Using components, in general, is a great starting point, but I want to take you further. Have you ever heard about the component design system/UI kit? I’m sure, you have. It’s basically a collection of components, you’re using within your design. Component design systems provide better collaboration between design and development, allowing your design language to evolve. It’s crucially important to “document” your design with the help of components to reduce misunderstanding with the dev team. Typography Define a type system for your project. Sometimes designers use too many font sizes and styles, which slows down the developer’s workflow. It’s your choice how to define the scale(using linear, modular, or hand-crafted methods), but it’s definitely the right thing to do. If you don’t know, how to define your text scale correctly, here are some references for you: “The type system” “Defining a Modular Type Scale for Web UI” “Type Scale Generator” After defining your type scale and style, make sure you visualize it (by making a table, for example). Don’t forget to make a similar scale for the mobile world! Then, make sure you have applied those styles to your design. Create a collection of text styles in your design file and use them! Check out references on how to add those styles to your design file: “Create Styles for Colors, Text, Effects and Layout Grids” — Figma “How to Create a Text Style” — Sketch The type system will speed up your designing process, make your design more flexible and clear for developers in the future. Color Styles “You can’t build anything with five hex codes. To build something real, you need a much more comprehensive set of colors to choose from” (Refactoring UI, A. Wathan & S.Schoger). “Essential color theory for UI design” We all know how many colors and shades are usually used even in the simplest designs. Don’t you feel lost sometimes? I do. Just imagine how developers feel, when they open your design with 30 shades of grey. Frustrated? Annoyed? Angry? How to avoid it? Easy! Thoughtfully define your color palette and then create color styles in your design file. “Create Styles for Colors, Text, Effects and Layout Grids” — Figma “How to Create a Sketch Style Guide, Library, and UI Kit” — Sketch Layout Grid Grids can be really confusing and feel restrictive, but in reality, they are incredibly powerful and liberating design tool. Setting up a grid layout in most design programs is pretty straightforward and your general grid sizing should be based on the most prevalent screen size for your desired platform. Cool article about layout grids here: “Building Better UI Designs With Layout Grids” Make sure you always create layout grid styles in collaboration with your developers. Layout grids are often used by programmers(CSS grid for example). That’s why, it’s important to ensure that grids are discussed, documented, and appropriately used in your designs. Pitch Your Design Are you done with your project and ready to pass it to the dev team? Design system is defined and well-documented, what’s next? Make a short pitch in order to share the design system, the goals of the project, research findings, etc. If you want to learn more about presenting your design, check out this link: “11 tips for presenting your UI/UX designs” Conclusion I hope this article would be somehow helpful for both designers and developers. It is based on my personal experience as a UX/UI Designer Intern at Weavik. All of those tips helped our team to improve designer-developer collaboration and build high-quality software faster. Thanks for reading this article! I wish everyone to find common ground with your dev team and create stunning projects together! Cheers. Bohdana Tyshchenko

July 24, 2020

We often hear about the importance of continuous education in today’s job market. This rings especially true for software developers. They learn something every day, as they create and troubleshoot software. However, the pace of innovation in software development is so high, a working professional can still find his or her skills outdated if one is not mindful. When talking about up-to-date skills, we’re not talking about using the latest and trendiest frameworks, libraries, and other software development tools. It is perfectly fine if one’s core competencies only include mature and unexciting tools. Our skills are not outdated as long as we are effective and competitive. Are we able to execute an idea, and deliver it in a timely fashion? Using ECMAScript 5, jQuery, or Python 2 (dare I say) is perfectly fine, as long as we remain competitive (as an employee or company). Going back to the question of keeping our skills up to date, how do we achieve it? Simply put, there is no other way than doing the work of learning. The only question is where do we do this work, and how deeply do we study these new technologies. In the best-case scenario, a software developer is able to grow his or her skills at the place of full-time employment. We often hear the message that companies prosper when they give their employees opportunities to learn; and there are certainly employers who offer such a work environment. However, there is a natural tension between finishing a current project and making employees more productive in future ones. Also, it will always be difficult to get permission to develop skills in an area that is distant from our current responsibilities — where the medium- and long-term benefits are less clear to the employer. In general, a software developer cannot avoid sacrificing his or her personal time in order to pick up new skills. Fortunately, programming is fun (or should be) for all programmers, so finding the required discipline doesn’t have to be hard. There are a few things to keep in mind when deciding on those side projects: The first rule of side projects is to make them fun. So, focus on an itch you’ve had; do something you would never get to do at work, and don’t put any business considerations into your choice of a project — it is enough to know that learning in itself pays off. The second rule of side projects is that they should be small. Don’t be ambitious about how impactful your app is going to be, and don’t plan on becoming an expert or advanced user of the new technology. Keep projects small, so you can actually complete them. You will have many great reasons to desert a project. As with all long-term efforts, maintaining momentum is critical. Use the satisfaction and confidence we get from executing an idea to maintain this momentum. Smaller but more numerous projects also lend themselves more easily to trying out different technologies. Your learning should be more about exploration, rather than gaining expertise. Use these projects to discern what effect these new tools would have on your daily work. You might become advanced with technology if you use it often enough in your side projects. To become proficient, though, you typically do need to use it in daily work. The good news is that with the experience of the side projects on your side, you will find it much easier to get buy-in from your employer or team. What do you do when your employer is resistant to these types of suggestions from developers? Then it’s time to evaluate the long-term benefits of you working there. As soon as we stop learning, we stop growing, and the clock starts to work against us. Sometimes, a difficult decision has to be made. On the other hand, developers need to appreciate employers who are open to new technologies. The opportunity to learn should be included in our evaluation of the compensation package that an employer offers us. If you do get to the point where your skills are outdated and you leave the company (whether voluntarily or not), the good news is that you should be able to catch up quickly, as long as you have strong fundamentals in programming and a desire to learn. Without ties to the technology choices made by you or your employer years ago, you will re-emerge with the latest skills, and still have years of hard-won lessons to leverage. Not surprisingly, as long as you keep learning, you win. Lukasz Antos