Articles by Joe
What Can a Product Development Team Do for You?
Whether you are building your first product or starting a new project, hiring a product development team might be a good choice for you. It can reduce hiring costs while also leveraging years of experience quickly. It's important to be aware of what a development team can and cannot do for you and your product. Setting your expectations correctly can help aid the development process and remove frustrations from both sides.
Joe Woodward
Understanding Elixir OTP Applications - Part 5, Building High Availability Systems
In this mini-series I'm going through the core principles behind the Erlang and Elixir languages piece by piece. In this article I will discuss how all of Elixir's features allow us to create high availability systems
Joe Woodward
Going Passwordless for a More Secure and Welcoming Future
A lot of people in the industry believe that we're moving toward an era of passwordless authentication. I'm not sure we'll end up completely passwordless, but I can see the benefits. I believe passwords still have room in professional applications for power users but I also believe that passwordless authentication has a lot of benefits for apps aimed at helping less tech-savvy users. Let's take a look.
Joe Woodward
Should You Consider Outsourcing Your Service Level Agreement to a Vendor?
Providing service level commitments to your customers helps build trust. However, if you are unequipped to fulfill those guarantees, you could damage your brand or worse, face fines from regulators. Usually the team best equipped to take care of your service is the team that built it. Should you consider outsourcing your SLA commitments to your vendor?
Joe Woodward
Understanding Elixir OTP Applications - Part 2, Fault Tolerance
In this mini-series I'm going through the core principles behind the Erlang and Elixir languages piece by piece. In this article I will discuss Elixir's approach to fault tolerance through a philosophy they refer to as "let it crash".
Joe Woodward
Why OOZOU Includes A Project Manager For Every Project
Project managers increase the chances of success for a project and reduce risks associated with self-management. A good PM will help bring the team together, guide the project on the most efficient path, and bring transparency to the client.
Joe Woodward
Understanding Elixir OTP Applications - Part 1, Distribution
I love Elixir. Coming from Ruby I find myself in familiar territory with the syntax yet also rejoice at some of the things Elixir does differently. I'm doing a series on Elixir and Erlang's principals and how they work underneath. This post will cover distributed systems and processes.
Joe Woodward
Rack, The Underbelly Of Every Great Ruby Web App
Rack is used for practically every framework that runs on Ruby yet many Rails developers don't really understand what it is or how it works. Understanding rack can make these frameworks feel less daunting. It's surprisingly easy to understand when you take a look at it.
Joe Woodward
Using ActionText in Rails 6
ActionText brings rich text editing into Rails. ActionText includes the Trix, "A rich text editor for everyday writing", from the team over at Basecamp. Trix is an improved WYSIWYG style editor that gives us more control over what happens when the user presses a key.
Joe Woodward
Seeing Through Your Customers' Eyes with Customer Impersonation
Any website with customer support will eventually face an issue that is difficult for the customer to explain or difficult to understand without seeing what they are seeing. With the pretender gem we can log in to the users account and see exactly what they are seeing.
Joe Woodward
Standardizing RESTful JSON APIs with OpenAPI Spec
For as long as I can remember, developing JSON APIs has been a bit of a free for all. We've had the power to create complex APIs quickly, but typically every API follows its own standards. There've been some unwritten rules and sharing of ideas, but never has there been such a complete specification as the one that the team over at OpenAPI has developed. Let's explore what OpenAPI has to offer and why I welcome this specification so enthusiastically.
Joe Woodward
What I Learned from Reading Nudge and How You Can Apply it to Your Product
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness is a book written by University of Chicago economist, Richard H. Thaler and Harvard Law School Professor, Cass R. Sunstein which explores choice architecture. I believe there are some valuable lessons we can apply to technology that can help your customers make good choices or help you grow your business.
