As Artificial Intelligence becomes more involved in business operations, the terms “machine learning” and “predictive analytics” are often confused to be the same thing. Though the two are basically under the same umbrella, they are completely different concepts. We decided to break down each concept and explain what they do and why they tend to get mixed up in conversation.
Tag: Technology
Why Your Team Needs Code Review
Code Review is an essential part of any project and there is a good time to do a code review and a great time to do a code review. The good time is while the project is ongoing and having a Senior or Architect level developer perform code reviews during the development process. Code reviews during development ensure that the development team is using best practices and meets a minimum standard in the project.
A great time to do a Code Review is when the project is overdue, should have been delivered, there is no end in sight, and problems never seem to find a resolution. Performing a 3rd party verification of your code and database development best practices can be a lifesaver.
Code review may seem inconvenient to regularly practice during your development process. Developers are rushing to meet deadlines and the last thing they want to do is drop everything to review someone else’s code. However, it is extremely beneficial to regularly practice during your development process, for more reason than a slightly better-coded piece of software. Let’s look at the benefits of performing a code review.
Reduced Time/Costs
Every software development company knows it’s cheaper to fix an issue in development before QA. Code review allows for the senior members of the team to review the code and find mistakes before the software is pushed into QA, helping to save your company time and money while reducing bugs.
Smartbear developed an ROI calculator specifically for code review. The application will calculate just how much you’ll potentially save from practicing a consistent code review. You can check it out here! https://smartbear.com/product/collaborator/roi-calculator/
Sharing Knowledge
Having consistent code review adds another layer of value to your software development team. Code review allows for your development team to share their personal knowledge and educate each other about specific coding practices that aren’t necessarily brought up on a regular basis. When a bug is found during a review it opens the floor for everyone to weigh in and share their personal experience and knowledge with that issue.
Peer Pressure
No one wants to have their mistakes shown in front of their peers. Code review opens the room to review and critique the code being done by your developers. Knowing that their code will be put in front of the entire company, developers will put more emphasis on following best practices and assuring there are no errors in their code.
Educating New Developers
Regular code review with your development team breaks down the wall between high and mid-level developers. Because the entire development team will be critiqued on their code, newer developers won’t feel like they’re being singled out in front of the experienced developers. Code review also allows for high-level developers to educate new developers on best practices and specific internal processes that the team has in place.
Conclusion
Code review might not be the most exciting thing to practice regularly with your development team. However, holding these review sessions will save your team time, money, and help educate your entire development team.
Why You Should Build With WordPress
WordPress was launched in 2003 and since then has grown into a “household” name in the website development world. 30% of all websites use WordPress. From beginner to expert level, WordPress is a go-to CMS for web developers. In this article, we discuss some of the main benefits of using WordPress.
Open Source
Open-source software is software that opens its source code for anyone to view, modify, and enhance. The source code is the instructions written by developers in a programming language to instruct and change the way a software works. In the case of WordPress, PHP is the name of the development language the platform was written in.
Community
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is supported by a large community that continues to contribute to the growth of the platform. Because of this, WordPress is free to use. However, you will likely end up paying for some part of WordPress. As your website scales, you’ll have to pay for hosting, and there are additional plugins to enhance your site’s functionality which can come at a cost. But, because it starts free you have total control over how much you invest in your site.
Learning Curve
WordPress is responsible for 30% of all websites. Due to its massive market share and it being an open source CMS, the number of resources to learn how to use the platform are endless. WordPress is already structured for all levels of developers; this combined with the massive community, learning the ins-and-outs is extremely easy for beginners to grow their developing skills.
Scalability
A huge perk of working with WordPress is the ability to scale up, or down with the immense amount of themes & plugins available. As your business grows your website should continue to grow with it. Let’s say you’re growing an audience and they want you to begin selling merchandise. WordPress’s mass number of plug-ins will allow you to easily intergrade almost every big eCommerce service available. Because the plugins are ready-made functionality that, like the term sounds, just plugin into your WordPress site. It becomes much more effective and often less expensive to add complex enhancements to your site as opposed to other CMS solutions like Drupal, which require more direct code customization. WordPress has around 52,000 plugins, and that is just from first-party publishers. There are also thousands of third-party plugins for you to intergrade into your website to take it to the next level.
Blogging
WordPress is best known for its blogging feature. When blogging first started gaining in popularity, WordPress took over as the main platform for people to start. They made it incredibly easy and free for anyone to start a blog. This is how WordPress initially gained market traction and eventually a massive market share. Since then it continues to grow its blogging features making it still one of the best platforms to run a blog on.
Plug-Ins
WordPress has streamlined the process of doing SEO. WordPress makes it extremely easy to add content to your website and offers a ton of plug-ins to help implement best SEO practices. WordPress auto-formats your images to be optimized for SEO by giving you the option to add keywords, metadata, and descriptions very easily. Another key feature is WordPress’ SEO friendly permalink. This allows you to create custom URL’s for your content that you can add specific keywords too. WordPress makes it super easy to optimize content for SEO; making it a favorite for businesses.
Conclusion
WordPress, in general, is your go-to CMS for any size of a project. It has the options to handle any task you throw at it and because of its massive community, it makes it extremely easy for you to learn how to use the platform.
What to Look For In a Mobile Development Company
In 2018 mobile isn’t a choice anymore – it’s a necessity. Mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic in 2018 with 70% of all traffic came from mobile and 8% coming from tablets. Mobile traffic is only going to continue to grow and has established itself as the main type of web traffic.
Most businesses don’t have the resources in-house to develop a quality mobile app and need to procure an outsourced development team. Taking time in the beginning when deciding on a development company will save you a ton of time and money down the road. Because mobile is continuing to grow and become the most dominant channel of web traffic there are more development companies than ever. We put together some main attributes you should look for when deciding on a development company to build your mobile app.
Portfolio
Asking to see a mobile developments company’s portfolio is extremely important. This is the company’s proof, and assurance that they can put their skills where their mouths are. Seeing their past work also gives you an opportunity to reach out to the companies and see exactly how the process went, and if they would recommend using them again for a project. Looking at a team’s portfolio also allows for you to look at other work they’ve done that aligns similarly to what you’re trying to create. You can ask questions such as; what was the length, did you have any unforeseen challenges, and how did you overcome them?
Price
When looking to develop a mobile app you don’t want to skimp out on price. You also don’t want to overpay. Mobile development projects can range anywhere from 10’s of thousands to 100’s of thousands of dollars. Look for a development team that can work with your budget. The bigger development companies charge more due to having larger overhead. Use the development teams portfolio to get a sense of the clients that they have worked with. If their past clients are like you then chances are they’ll align within your budget.
Communication
Communication is key – period. This is no exception when deciding to develop a mobile app. There are different development methodologies that vary in the amount of communication between the development team and the customer. Before discussing anything, think about how much involvement you want to have throughout the development process. If you want to have little to no involvement during the process, think about using a waterfall development methodology. If you’re looking for more transparency and want to be informed every step of the way – an agile development methodology is the approach to take. Regardless of how much or little you want to be involved in the process, be sure to make it clear with the development team. This will allow them to develop the right development process that will best align with your needs.
Maintenance
We discussed in our blog post, “5 things to Consider When Developing a Mobile App” how important it is to consistently update your Mobile App. Once your app is developed you’re going to need to perform regular upkeep to make sure your app is keeping up with new trends in mobile apps and therefore an enhanced user experience. Just like your business, your mobile app should always be evolving and growing. Discuss a maintenance plan with the development team. Be sure to incorporate this into your agreement before choosing a development team to work with. Maintenance and upkeep are almost as important as the initial build of your mobile app.
Release
You found a company that aligns with your budget. They created the perfect development process and incorporated a great maintenance plan for after the build. Your app is done – how’re you going to release it? The process to launch your app to the public can vary in length depending on the platforms you choose to make the app available on, such as Apple, Google, or even a Progressive Web App. Regardless, this is an extremely important process and working with a development company that can guide you through the process is extremely important. Talk with the development team about their experience with pushing mobile apps to market, and how they can help you with yours.
Conclusion
A simple google search with show you just how many mobile app development companies there are to choose from. Make sure you cover all the steps before deciding on a development company to work with. At Pumex Computing we work with you to design a mobile app that will work for your business. If you are trying to take your business mobile contact us! http://www.pumex.com/contactus
