
Tools Articles
We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.
SEP Named a Best Places to Work Company for 14th Consecutive Year
SEP has once again been recognized as one of Indiana’s Best Places to Work for the 14th year consecutive year. The statewide survey and award program evaluates participating organizations and honors those with the highest levels of employee satisfaction and…
Read Full Post

Though most shortcuts in work are ill-advised or perceived as lazy, some have proven otherwise. As Figma has exploded in use amongst many in the design field these last few years, almost all SEP’s designers have adopted this tool in their own unique way. Like artists, designers have their own approach to the pieces they […]
Read Full Post

Testing React Native Apps: A Sweet Setup for Full-Stack Cross-Platform Testing
Short on time? The answer is to use Jest, React Native Testing Library, and Detox. Here’s a sample repo with it all wired up: https://github.com/klcantrell/testing-react-native-apps-post. The advantages of building an app with React Native apply when testing the app as well. When building, you write code once and get native apps that work well on […]
Read Full Post

3 Tools to Develop Your Agile Product Strategy
I recently had the opportunity to attend a webinar on agile product strategy given by our Director of Innovation, Chris Shinkle. Here are three tools I took away from the presentation that you can use to develop an agile product strategy that works. The Problem Do any of these situations sound familiar? Your product strategy […]
Read Full Post

Challenge Your Favorites
I’ve written about the many benefits of personal projects before. One nice aspect is being able to try out tools & frameworks in a low-risk environment. In this post I’ll explain one such trial I’m doing and how the tool Comby made switching easy. Are My Go-To Tools Stale? As we gain experience on projects […]
Read Full Post

Refactoring JavaScript – a play in three acts
“the JavaScript Code” by Dmitry Baranovskiy is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Originally published on my personal blog. Act 1, the setup Once upon a time, there was a JavaScript codebase. This codebase used the function expression syntax: const returnTheNumberOne = () => 1; For reasons that aren’t relevant to this blog post, I needed […]
Read Full Post
GraphViz – A Tool You Aren’t Using, but Should
Recently, we had a book club where we read the Mikado Method, a process of handling large scale rearchitecting via refactors on the Master Branch without adversely impacting new features. One of the techniques that make up the method is visualizing the refactoring plan as a digraph of dependent steps. But as much as I […]
Read Full Post

Docker Hosting for ASP.NET Core
The containerization trend has been growing for a while now in the industry. The idea is to “containerize” (or package) any application into a well-defined container. This allows the same packaged application to be deployed to run on any infrastructure. In other words, placing your application in a container allows you to run the exact […]
Read Full Post

How IoT is Making Your Home Safer and Smarter
The Internet of Things (IoT) shows no sign of slowing down. As an industry-leading provider of home security solutions, Allegion™ is focused on identifying ways to employ the IoT concept – that many of today’s common objects will have Internet-related capabilities – in its upcoming products. The Schlage Sense™ system, unveiled at the 2015 International […]
Read Full Post
Android, Robotium and Spoon: A Practical Guide for Testing on Android Devices
Developing for Android is a lot of fun. It has actually become a niche for me here at SEP. Android has changed quite a bit over the past 3 years since I first started hacking on it – action bars, more screen sizes, and probably the biggest addition…fragments. But one thing certainly has not changed. […]
Read Full Post
SEP Blog Battle: Tools of the Trade
To whom do I owe any programming success I may have in a given day? My education? My wonderful peers? The shriveled wad of grey goo in my head? None of the above. My search engine. DuckDuckGo. Google. Wikipedia. Hardly a problem exists that can’t be assisted in some way by a quick search. How […]
Read Full Post