Development Articles

Programming | 9 min read

Dodging Merge Conflicts in git

This article was originally posted on my personal blog under the same title, “Dodging Merge Conflicts in git.” Introduction Of all the source control management systems that have ever been created, git is certainly one of them. You’ve probably used it, and been burned by a particularly complicated merge conflict. Resolving merge conflicts can be […]

The Pico-8 logo
Programming | 10 min read

Exploring Game Development with Pico-8

Today, I will walk you through a few steps to start learning game development with Pico-8. Video games are all around us. They connect to our TVs, occupy our computers, and ride along with us in our pockets. Our experiences with them ranging from a quick, fun diversions to immersive multi-hour sagas. Many of us […]

consultation working meeting close up of laptops and hands drawing on paper
Practices | 5 min read

Software Design Accessibility Audits 101: What You Need to Know

Accessibility in software design is an important topic that often gets overlooked or deprioritized. The good news is, addressing accessibility does not need to be a giant undertaking. In this post, I’ll give an overview of accessibility laws and how you can conduct your own software accessibility audit. This won’t make you an expert on […]

person with painted nails tapping smartphone screen on the table
General Info | 5 min read

3 Reasons to Use Storybook for Your React Native Project

I adopted a dog several months ago. A roly-poly Shar Pei mix. The decision to take him home was easy. Navigating the adoption process was not. The UX of adopting a dog online is haphazard. You find the dog on your pet adoption app, and you send a message to the shelter in the app […]

SEP hex pattern overlay of person working on laptop
General Info | 5 min read

System Testing Multiple Deployment Environments in Cypress 10

Brief intro to Cypress In their own words, “Cypress is a next generation front end testing tool built for the modern web.” If you are not familiar with Cypress, check out their Getting Started docs and then Write Your First E2E Test. If you’ve arrived here from a Selenium-based tool, you might appreciate this comparison article from Cypress. I found this Cypress […]

Desktop | 11 min read

Is Your Xamarin.Forms Project Ready For Migration To MAUI?

What’s up with .NET MAUI? If you have seen any news about .NET 6.0 or anything Xamarin.Forms related, you have probably heard about the new framework called .NET MAUI. Microsoft has decided that the next major iteration of Xamarin.Forms will instead be replaced by the .NET Multi-platform App UI: MAUI. Since Xamarin support is intended […]

Product Design & UX | 5 min read

Tearing Down the Silos: 3 Ways to Foster Better Collaboration

Collaboration between design and development has historically been an uphill battle. It used to be that a designer (or team of designers) designed a software application, and then handed it over the fence to the software engineers and wished them the best of luck. As you can imagine, this silo approach ended in unexpected results […]

Culture | 4 min read

Adding a Design Practice at Lessonly – a Podcast Recap

On this episode of Behind the Product, Jaki Clark and Casey Cumbow join us to share their journey of adding a design practice into Lessonly‘s well-established engineering and product development groups. As design and engineering leaders, Jaki and Casey share the techniques, practices, and systems that have helped Lessonly level up over the past 18 months.

Agile | 5 min read

Did the 1973 Oil Crisis Create Lean Software Development?

US car companies were booming in the early 1970’s. Americans loved big cars and had cash to buy them. Demand for oil rose so quickly that, by 1969, the US began importing oil. Not long after, oil exporting nations began using US dependence on their oil to influence US foreign policy. During the first embargo […]

Culture | 7 min read

Designers + Developers: Why We’re Better Together

I want to start by sharing that I was inspired by the infographic below from InVision to write this. This may appear at first to be a silly and hunky-dory post about family-like co-worker relationships in the office. While I agree I am writing with this sentiment, I want to show how enriching and successful […]

Culture | 2 min read

Study Groups – Learning Together is Better

As I’ve mentioned before, professional development is a big deal at SEP. I love learning with other people. We’ve recently kicked off a new way (for us) to learn with other people: Study Groups. What are Study Groups The idea is to go through an online course, class, book series, or other structured or self-directed […]

Agile | 5 min read

How I Used Lean and Agile . . . for Dog Training

We’ve re-entered the world of training service dog puppies. This time, the team is bigger – the whole family is participating. How do we keep everyone organized? Turns out, Agile is a natural fit. Backlog – All the commands we need to teach her The Puppy Raisers Manual describes all the commands the puppy must master. Each command […]