10 Tips to Become a better Node.js Developer

It’s no secret that I absolutely love JavaScript and Node.js.  For those that don’t know Node.js is a framework that is built on top of JavaScript.

Node.js is an open source JavaScript runtime environment that runs on pretty much everything. It’s a great environment for building fast scalable network applications.

Node.js uses an event driven model that makes it really efficient and really good for real-time applications. Paired with serverless computing it’s fantastic for a lot of modern use cases.

In this article, I will go through the best practices for becoming a better Node.js developer. Over the last two years or so, I’ve interviewed and hired a lot of developers for the startup I’m working at.…

5 Reasons to Use AWS Lambda

In late 2014, AWS Lambda launched and has grown in widespread use since then. AWS lambda is a serverless computing technology which has been a game change for software development.

AWS Lambda is a service that makes it easy to build small scalable applications. Lambdas are small functions that are packaged up and sent to AWS. Using a framework like the serverless framework makes it fairly easy to work with and pretty efficient.

Lambda is event driven. It works by responding to events whether they be timed, API driven or responding to events within AWS. One of the most common examples of using lambda is to resize images that have been uploaded to an S3 bucket.

Lambda is stateless meaning that every time a function is triggered, it is a completely new environment.

There’s so many reasons to use AWS Lambda. It’s easy to get started with it, it’s massively flexible, it is very scalable and more. …

Why I love VSCode

I’ve been programming for a long time, and I’ve tried a lot of editors over that time. As a developer, I believe that my editor is the most important tool I have. At least half of what I do is done in my editor, a really terrible editor can even lead to injuries. Having a bad editor that isn’t working with my workflow leads to a lot of stress and wasted time. I was happy with Visual Studio for the most part, it could do everything I needed as long as I stayed on the microsoft stack. I find VS Code to be different, very different.…

What is ORM

What is ORM?

Most software projects need to talk to a database at some point – they usually do GET queries for data, update a field or create a record. In the past, people would write raw code that communicated with the database and built an object or some code representation of the data that they would manipulate. This lead to an incredible amount of duplicated code for every project that usually had some subtle bug that was present in all libraries. …

5 Tips for Finding Amazing React Components

5 Tips for Finding Amazing React Components

One of the most important parts of building scaleable systems quickly is to find work that others have done and use it as part of our system. Using packages others built and assembling it with your business rules and logic is a lot like putting together pieces of Lego but following your instructions.

One of my favourite parts of React is that there’s usually hundreds of small open source components that can be used and usually easily modified to suit my needs. For example, there’s dozens of really well done date/time pickers that usually require no effort to put into place.…

What are Design Patterns

What are Design Patterns

Design patterns have been around for a long time in software development. Design patterns are basically a standard approach to solving a problem that can be found constantly in software development. Patterns are typically used for creating reusable designs, and defining the interactions between different objects or subsystems. I like to think of design patterns as a structured approach to software development and a very good way of improving communication between software developers. …

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Everything You Need to Know About Salesforce Relationship Types

When building a database it’s so important to build the right relationships between database tables. What this means is that when we’re creating relationships between objects is that we’re deciding how they will be associated with one another. Salesforce has a very similar concept, which shouldn’t really be a surprise considering there’s a database powering the entire thing!

Best Practices for Writing Tests

Best Practices for Writing Tests

When I say the word test, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? It’s probably the boring tests that you did in school that were either multiple choice or required sentences or in math showing your work. When I talk about tests it’s usually an automated process which can execute on software and help improve the quality and act as part of the quality assurance process.

There’s a bunch of different ways of doing tests such as automated testing, manual testing, smoke tests, and then various different subtypes such as unit testing or regression testing.…

How to Use CRM to Grow Your Business

How to Use CRM To Grow Your Business

Implementing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is vital to growing a company’s business because having a relationship with customers is vital. In this post, I will detail how to use crm to grow your business by implementing it correctly, making sure staff are using it and providing a few really good tips to automate business processes which will help reduce costs and drive revenue.…

5 Strategies to get Around SOQL Query Limits

5 Strategies to get Around SOQL Query Limits

In Apex, there’s quite a few constraints that are strictly enforced because the platform is a shared multitenant environment. Quite a few of the limits result in runtime exceptions that can’t be handled.

For those familiar with Salesforce, it’s no secret that there’s a lot of limits. For example, there’s limits around the ViewState which were pretty painful to work around.

One of the first limits, I believe all new Salesforce developers hit is the limit for a maximum of SOQL queries that can be done.…