Web Summit 2018. Tips and tricks

Mar 04

Web Summit 2018. Tips and tricks

Tweet Some tips & tricks about Web Summit 2018:...

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Gold Star

Dec 17

Gold Star

Tweet Materialise has an excellent tradition to promote the best projects for the year. Last year our project became the owner of Gold Star. Many parameters were taken into account: – customer reviews; – scope; – the budget; – time frames, etc. Thank you guys for our first team...

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Yes, man! PolyITAN-1 – the first Ukrainian nanosatellite is on orbit!

Jun 28

Yes, man! PolyITAN-1 – the first Ukrainian nanosatellite is on orbit!

Tweet Nanosatellite in the development of which I participated, was put into orbit. On the night of June 20, the first Ukrainian nanosatellite PolyITAN-1, created in the KPI, was launched into earth orbit. Nanosatellites are a class of small artificial earth satellites, the creation of which has become possible due to the development of micromythiatrics and nanotechnology. Now they are increasingly used for various studies, explains the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science. In the NTUU KPI was created nanosatellite in format “Cubesat”, weighing about 1 kg and 10x10x10cm. Sources: http://mon.gov.ua/ua/news/34662-pershiy-ukrayinskiy-nanosuputnik–na-orbiti;...

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JS Course. 5 Months of Wild Bender

Jun 23

JS Course. 5 Months of Wild Bender

Tweet The original article can be found at dou.ua. This spring, JS courses organized by CodeAngels/Kottans guys were held in Kiev (http://dou.ua/forums/topic/8181, http://kottans.org). Courses were held  2 times a week in the evenings over approximately a 5 month period: Cogniance + workshops on Saturdays + homework to consolidate the material. The program was very intense: Programming with JavaScript; HTML and CSS basics; High level languages (CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart); Popular frameworks (Backbone.js, Angular.js, Ember.js); Testing applications (Jasmine, Mocha); Server-side JavaScript (Node.js, Meteor.js); Speeding page loading time using various technics. Basically, the classes were led by John, but we also had time to listen and to write code with many other wonderful people, among which there were: Alexander Beletsky (@alexbeletsky) – ▶JavaScript testing; Julia Budnik (@Jubudni) – ▶HTML&CSS; Eldar Jafarov (@edjafarov) – ▶Node.js; Artem Trityak (@ArtyomTrityak) – ▶Advanced Backbone.js; Andrew Listochkin (@listochkin) – Ember.js; Valentin Shibanov (@olostan) – ▶Angular.js; Dima Yarmak (@dmytroyarmak) – Backbone.js; Mikhail Bortnik (@vessi) – ▶WebRTC; Jenia Koshevoi (aka Jim) – d3.js; Dima Tselinko (Dmitry Tselinko) – JS basics, JS OOP; Dima Filipenko (@dmfilipenko) – JS, HTML, CSS. Also, talks by Kira Puchnina (@kira__kit), Anton Nemtsev (@SilentImp) and Alexander Boychenko (@banzalik) were scheduled; perhaps next time everything will go as planned 🙂 Artem shared some additional materials in his blog, the slides can be found here, and here there are a lot of different links. In general, the target audience of the courses is already developed IT specialists (back-end and front-end developers, QA, and even a PM-girl), and the test task initially required a certain amount of knowledge and skills. I’d like to point out that the emphasis was on best practices, knowledge sharing, “how not to shoot your leg using one or the other framework” and so on, and not on the summarizing lectures, which are unlikely to be interesting for people for a long time. Apart from other things, WebGL, package managers, CI configuration, testing, application deployment, and many other practical things were studied. And finally, some feedback: “First of all, I understood JavaScript, its strengths. Also courses gave me the basic knowledge of various frameworks, despite the fact that I don’t remember details, I already have a basis which I can use as a start and continue “the path of the Jedi”)))....

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Forward to the Past, or How do I Organize Retrospectives

May 10

Forward to the Past, or How do I Organize Retrospectives

Tweet Once a disciple asked the Master, “How long should I wait for changes for the better?” “If you wait, you should do it for a long time,” said the Master. The truth is there is no need to wait for anything. Sprint by sprint, the team is working on the project, but where is the point where we could think the changes over and take a step towards them? And this point is a retrospective. Some theory “Why do we need retrospectives?” It is a frequently asked question. Sometimes in a marathon of infinite development, it is necessary to look back and think if everything is as good as we would like it to be. Perhaps the team members have suggestions/ideas on how to improve the code and design process, perhaps there were difficulties somewhere and we can do something to avoid them next time and so on. To do this, it is nice to get together and discuss these things. “Well, you can also send suggestions in letters and discuss them by mail”, once I heard this suggestion. It seems to me that this approach takes incomparably much more time and effort (as compared to one-hour meeting once every iteration) + in an endless chain of letters it is easy to miss rational ideas, everything is stretched over time, it is inconvenient to vote in a mail client and so on. “What kinds of retrospectives exist?” after every sprint (local improvements, better to say, short-term improvements); after the end of the project (long-term improvements, time for global changes). “Who to call?” As a minimum, the team (developers, test engineers, analysts, Project Manager). A good reference point is a meeting for planning, it is desirable that all those who usually take part in it, attend a retrospective. If there is an opportunity to invite the Product Manager do it, it will be good both for him and for the team. If the Product Manager speaks English, then hold the entire meeting in English: he should be fully involved in the process. “What about duration?” In my opinion, a 1 hour meeting after a sprint or 1.5 hour meeting after a completion of the project is enough (or I just...

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