Programming Articles

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SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2024 Innovation Service Partner of the Year Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Innovation Service Partner, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named the Innovation Service Partner of the Year by TechPoint at the 25th annual Mira Awards. The Mira Awards, Indiana’s largest…
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Stop Using Variables – Learning Through Constraints

My new year’s resolution for 2017 was to stop using variables. My goal was to force some learning by applying a constraint to my work. Over the course of the year, I attempted this while writing various types of code: Restful api endpoints – good. It felt quite natural to write code without variables in […]
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3 Xamarin.Forms Tricks to Maximize Shared UI Code in Mobile Development

In 2014 I was tasked with creating a relatively simple iOS/Android app from scratch using this newfangled mobile app development technology called Xamarin.Forms. I was on the project for a total of three days. I had years of C#/WPF experience but none in Xamarin, and this Forms business was the confounding icing on the proverbial […]
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A minor shift in mindset that improved my SQL

I am currently working on a project that involves writing stored functions in PostgreSQL. Typically the goal is one SQL query that returns all the data needed by a particular web page. At first I approached this from an Object Oriented perspective with a focus on minimizing redundant data. This led me down the path […]
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close up laptop keyboard and screen with code

WSL, git, and Beyond Compare

Back Story As I was drafting some new blog posts, I was exploring some stuff on the technical side. Part of that was using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) to set up git. Since the Windows 10 Creators Update just dropped, it came with a WSL of Ubuntu 16.04. Not too shabby. Since I’m a […]
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A day in the life of a wannabe data scientist

I recently had an experience that I think matches well with the textbook steps often presented in “day in the life of a data scientist” discussions: Frame the question Collect data Clean the data Explore the data Analyze the data Communicate the findings I thought it might be fun to share my trip. Join me, […]
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Connecting Ruby to a Google Spreadsheet With a Service Account

Ever wanted to connect your ruby app to a Google Spreadsheet? Yeah. Me too. I find myself writing ruby scripts and console apps all the time. Many times needing a simple way to store or pull data. Databases are good at that (storing data). But, sometimes a spreadsheet is a more natural place to put […]
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Rotating Title Headers for Tables

One of my co-workers (Jason Giles) and I were recently pairing on the implementation of a table for a client that would allow dynamic addition and removal of rows.  The table would have section headings of rotated titles display across the side of the table.  I will walk through the code that we wrote to […]
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Swift iOS Tutorial: How to Customize UISegmentedControl

Customizing a UISegmentedControl If you have spent any time developing an iOS app, you have probably realized that customizing UI elements in Swift can be hard. There is either a checkbox that does what you want, or it takes hours of research and trial and error to get something just the way you want it. […]
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Security in the Age of the Internet of Things

Originally published on my personal blog. The Internet of Things is big. No, really big. No, even bigger than that. How big? My colleague Brad Boyer explains it better than I could (and handily defines the thing part of IoT, too). Go read it – I’ll wait. Welcome back! Security is hard. No, really hard. […]
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