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Dependency Management
With most software projects these days, including open source components is almost a given. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel and some components are so customized that it would take months to mimic the behavior. There are many ways to integrate these components into an application. One of my mantras when working on projects is that I just want to be able to checkout the project from a repository and build it; there shouldn't be several steps and I shouldn't have to worry about something outside of my control breaking the build.
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Working From Home, the final chapter?
Up until 5 months ago, I worked from home for 17 years. For a number of reasons, I took a job working in an office and tried to make the best of it. Going into an office everyday was quite tough for me; even though the commute was an easy 30 minute drive each way, that was still an hour out of my day. In order to avoid traffic, I had to wake up at 6 am and got to the office no later than 7:30. I hadn't used an alarm clock regularly in years, so waking up with an alarm was not pleasant. I've written about working from home and 8 years ago, I wrote that I couldn't work in an office full time!
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Being self-employed and working from home
Note: this is a long narrative that I've probably written before, but it helps me to get stuff off my mind by writing.
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Native vs Web App for IoT Devices
Recently I was chatting with a friend about a new WiFi router. I hadn't heard of it and he sent me a link to it. The first thing I noticed about it was that the configuration was done via an iOS or Android app. As an iOS developer, I know that a native app is going to generally provide a better user experience than a web app. However, as a consumer, I shy away from devices that only have a native app interface. If the app stops working, isn't updated quickly when an OS gets updated, or the company stops supporting the app, I'd be out of luck. In addition, I like being able to configure devices using my desktop machine and most devices don't have a Mac app for configuration.