
At Olio Apps we acknowledge that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an industry leader when it comes to providing reliable and scalable cloud services for companies across all domains.

Knowing this, we make it our mission to support our team members in growing their knowledge base and expertise regarding the suite of AWS services and use cases so we can suggest the best practices and architectures when it comes to solving client problems. This is why we are excited to announce and celebrate Laurie Waller’s recent AWS Developer Associate Certification.

The AWS Developer Associate certification validates expertise in developing cloud-based applications on AWS and ability to design, develop, and deploy applications on AWS. Those who achieve an AWS Certification can be assured they are up to date with Amazon’s best practices and innovation standards.

## AWS Developer Associate Bolsters Technical Abilities

Laurie found that the process of studying and learning for the AWS Developer Associate exam bolstered her technical skills:

> Securing the AWS Developer Associate certification significantly enhanced my proficiency in deploying, managing, and operating scalable systems on AWS. It not only bolstered my technical skills but also built up my strategic approach to cloud solutions, fostering both personal and professional growth and ensuring our team can deliver top-notch results...

Laurie is a Fullstack Engineer at Olio Apps and a self described lifelong learner. You can learn more about the team at Olio Apps here.

Congratulations again Laurie, we are happy to hear you learned so much by studying for your AWS Developer Associate Certification.


At Olio Apps we acknowledge that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an industry leader when it comes to providing reliable and scalable cloud services for companies across all domains.

Celebrating Laurie Waller’s AWS Developer Associate Certification


Since the launch of serverless AWS services in 2006 with S3 and general availability of AWS Lambda in 2015 there has been steady adoption of serverless architectures across all industry verticals.

Building serverless applications alongside our SMB and enterprise clients, we at Olio Apps have seen a clear differentiator between an organization that skillfully applies serverless best practices on AWS and those that don’t. Those that do are able to maximize the agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of AWS architectures.

This isn’t surprising. As when it comes to the market share of Cloud Service Providers, AWS is still the leader in 2024 due to the benefits its infrastructure provides.

Getting to serve clients during these critical moments of prototyping, architecture design, and development with our serverless expertise and experience is a key pillar of pride and motivation for our organization.

“Olio Apps successfully delivered a functioning product, which received positive feedback on its quality, stability, and ease of use. The team delivered on time and within budget and worked in sprints to ensure a seamless workflow. They impressed with their flexibility and prototyping skills” -Trevor Dryer, CEO Carbon Title

In light of this, we see the general availability of Amazon Bedrock as the next wave of highly impactful and influential services offered by AWS. Amazon Bedrock represents a paradigm shift where all companies have access to the possibility of accelerating the performance of their organization with high-performing foundational models of leading AI companies.

However, like with serverless, for companies to maximize the benefits of Generative AI they select the right technology for the job and have the knowledge, experience and expertise to implement the technology correctly.

This can prove challenging since the field of Generative AI is relatively new and growing in popularity. Its novelty means that true Generative AI development expertise is scarce and choosing technical decisions because they are popular and not the best solution can become a costly mistake.

That is why we have decided to grow our partnership with Amazon Web Services through the Amazon Partner Network, focusing on designing, prototyping, and building Generative AI solutions with Amazon Bedrock and serverless development on AWS.

We aim to offer our seasoned leadership to companies having to make critical decisions regarding the use of Generative AI and serverless infrastructure to achieve their business goals.

In step with this commitment, we are empowering our team to invest in their education and knowledge base in the areas of Generative AI and serverless infrastructure on AWS.

Today we are honored and excited to announce that seven of our team members have already taken charge and received Accreditation and Certification from AWS in Q1.

Congratulations to Laurie Walker, Dustin Herboldshimer, Aaron Whitaker, Aron Glenn, Scott Becker, Aron Racho, and Joshua Proto for their recent achievements.

At Olio Apps we value a growth mindset that supports continuous learning and development. Having knowledge is essential to ensure the experience driven execution of mission critical projects.

Whether an organization is considering implementing Amazon Bedrock or serverless for the first time, or looking to scale their usage of these services on AWS, Olio Apps looks forward to being your trusted technology partner.


We have decided to grow our partnership with Amazon Web Services through the Amazon Partner Network, focusing on designing, prototyping, and building Generative AI solutions with Amazon Bedrock and serverless development on AWS.

Olio Apps Commits to AWS Partnership in 2024


This is a collection of techniques and tools we use at Olio Apps to make UI application development faster and more efficient!

## Atomic Design
https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/

The UI is an aggregation of discrete, composable components. These components are concerned *only* with presentation, eg. styling and content -- not logic.
- Smallest reusable elements are called Atoms
- They are designed to be generally agnostic of their environment

Atomic components have well defined contracts (eg. props). This expands to their containers.

Global atoms are composed into global, reusable molecules. Global atoms and molecules form the basis of feature-specific Molecules and Atoms. Molecules and Atoms are composed into pages

### Why?

- Separation of concerns -- you can focus on a single domain and be maximally effective
- Reuse -- need to "bless" every button in the app with a spinner? Update the basal Atom for it
- Parallelization -- folks can be divided into focusing on the pure presentational UI components, while others work on the "logic" pieces
- You can use storybook. More on this below

## Storybook

https://storybook.js.org/

Storybook is a rapid-development environment for pure presentation components. It is a framework for exercising / displaying all the behavioral variations for components as controlled by their props.

### Why?

- With storybook, you get an immediate feedback on the components as they are developed
- No need to "hack" the live environment that the components are going to be used in
- Sometimes there is NO live environment yet -- but you will not be blocked because you can use storybook to view your components
- Storybook is to UI component development as test-driven unit-test development is to non-ui component development
- Developers can use storybook to interact with the design team, publishing the full range and variation of components in an easy to access way
  - You don't need to seed an environment to show all the permutations of particular components and even whole pages
  - Designers can easily manipulate the storybook to see what things look like by simulating conditions such as size of that page, values of the props

## TypeScript

https://www.typescriptlang.org/

TypeScript is JavaScript 2.0 -- a strongly typed flavor of JavaScript. It can be incrementally added to a pure-JavaScript environment.

### Why?

Compile-time checking of errors. In larger apps, sometimes you will only know that a shape going into a function is incorrect once its in production.

Contract-driven development. Think of types will get developers to start thinking and planning about how pieces interact, first at the function level; next at the module level; finally at the systems level.

Without types, you can only know what the "valid" shape of an object is from its consumers.

- There are infinitely more consumers, and they change all the time
- Without a type or interface, I would have to inspect ALL the consumers of an object to know what its valid attributes are!
- Without types you cannot efficiently describe how a system interacts with itself, or other systems

## Redux

https://redux.js.org/

Redux is global state management for large scale appplications.

### Why?

Larger scale UIs often need to cache server side state. For example:

- Logged in user
- Incoming unread chat notifications
- Synced media

It is useful to cache this state because you don't want to pull it down all the time. If your app is going to work offline sometime, caching the data from disk in memory in redux is often useful. When some region in that state tree is changed, other interested parts of the UI can "listen" and react to those changes.

[Redux toolkit](https://redux-toolkit.js.org/) and Olio's own [Sitka framework](https://github.com/olioapps/sitka) are syntactic sugar built atop redux

## UI Backend Modularization

Just as the pure presentational components are organized into modules of specific Atoms, Molecules, and Pages. The "backend" of the frontend is also separated out into modules by feature/responsibility area. These pieces are NOT concerned with presentational concerns But are instead concerned with:

- Navigation (routing)
- Interaction with the API
- Interaction with the device (local storage, services such as bluetooth, push notifications, etc)

Modules are concerned with the management of their particular subslice of the global state (or have their own private state); and the operations against that state -- and nothing else.

### Why?

Parallelization

- Folks can work on and concentrate on the "backend" of the app while others work on the frontend
- Folks can work on different feature modules within the backend tree

Separation of concerns

- The logical and UI layers can change without breaking each other
- The backend feature modules are less likely to have regressions when they change, as their logic is self contained with the module

Reuse

- The backend modules may reuse each other using well defined contracts
- For instance we can have a module purely concerned with activity tracking
- That can be integrated with the navigation module which can record activity using the aforementioned module

Testability

- The entire functionality of a logical feature / module is easily unit testable because its possible to mock their state without having to mock out the rest of the system

## Sitka

https://github.com/olioapps/sitka

Sitka is an opinionated framework built atop of Redux and Redux Saga. It encapsulates UI backend modules into classes that control both state and operations of those modules.

### Why?

Sitka ticks all the items of the UI Backend Modularization section. You can safely modify module state via callbacks from the UI.

Sitka implements pub-sub mechanism:

- One module does something
- Other modules can "subscribe" and react to those

Sitka implements background "jobs" - recurring polling tasks.

Sitka is very powerful, and has been implemented in 10+ projects across multiple customers. Alternatives include redux toolkit.

## Summary

This collection of tools and techniques forms the basis for fast productive UI development projects at Olio Apps. We continue to iterate and build on our toolset every day.


This is a collection of techniques and tools we use at Olio Apps to make UI application development faster and more efficient!

UI Architecture Powerups - What, and Why


![Stairs](/assets/blog/2021-04-14-practical-recursion-with-react-components/recursion.jpg)

## What Is Recursion, and When Is It Useful?

In computer science, recursion is a key programming technique in which a function calls itself one or more times until a specific condition is met. It can be particularly useful when working with deeply nested structures that prove too complex for an iterative solution.

Though recursion seldom appears in an average programmer's day-to-day work, there are real-world use cases in frontend web applications, like the one we'll go over here.

## A Practical Use for Recursion in React

My team was tasked with putting together a reusable, infinitely nested tree component. The nested data structure coupled with infinite depth presented an opportunity for a recursive approach. Follow along to understand the ins and outs of a working React Tree component powered by recursion + React rendering.

Giving our component nested data in the following shape, we’ll now have a functioning, modular, and recursive component ready for use!

```typescript
interface TreeBranch {
  readonly id: string
  readonly label: string
  branches?: Tree
  readonly selected?: boolean
}

type Tree = ReadonlyArray<TreeBranch>

const mockOrgTreeList: Tree = [
  {
    label: "Liberty Health",
    id: "1",
    branches: [
      {
        label: "Pacific Northwest",
        id: "2",
        branches: [
          {
            label: "East Portland Clinic",
            id: "3",
            branches: [],
          },
          {
            label: "Beaverton / Tigard",
            id: "4",
            branches: [],
          },
          {
            label: "Lake Oswego Regency",
            id: "5",
            branches: [],
          },
        ],
      },
      {
        label: "Alaska",
        id: "6",
        branches: [],
      },
    ],
  },
  {
    label: "Northstar Alliance",
    id: "7",
    branches: [
      {
        label: "Chicago",
        id: "8",
        branches: [
          {
            label: "Southwest Region",
            id: "9",
            branches: [
              {
                label: "Desplains",
                id: "10",
                branches: [],
              },
              {
                label: "Oak Lawn",
                id: "11",
                branches: [],
              },
            ],
          },
          {
            label: "Northwest Region",
            id: "12",
            branches: [
              {
                label: "East Morland",
                id: "13",
                branches: [],
              },
            ],
          },
        ],
      },
      {
        label: "New York",
        id: "14",
        branches: [
          {
            label: "Manhattan",
            id: "15",
            branches: [],
          },
          {
            label: "Queens",
            id: "16",
            branches: [],
          },
          {
            label: "5372 Arlington Heights",
            id: "17",
            branches: [],
          },
          {
            label: "The Earlmore Institute of Health",
            id: "18",
            branches: [],
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
]
```

The end product:

![Tree gif](/assets/blog/2021-04-14-practical-recursion-with-react-components/tree.gif)

## Building a Reusable Component

First, we’ll import React and create some styled Material UI components.

```typescript
import React, { Fragment, useState } from "react"
import { styled, makeStyles } from "@material-ui/core/styles"
import ExpandMoreIcon from "@material-ui/icons/ExpandMore"
import ChevronRightIcon from "@material-ui/icons/ChevronRight"
import Box from "@material-ui/core/Box"

// styles

const StyledLabel = styled(Box)({
  height: "24px",
  "&:hover": {
    cursor: "pointer",
  },
})
const StyledTreeItem = styled(Box)({
  display: "flex",
  flexDirection: "row",
  alignItems: "center",
})
const StyledTreeChildren = styled(Box)({
  paddingLeft: "10px",
})
```

## Props

Here are the prop shapes that we’ll use to build our components:

```typescript
interface TreeItemProps {
  readonly id: string
  readonly onSelectCallback: (e: React.MouseEvent<HTMLInputElement>) => void
  readonly label: string
  readonly isSelected: boolean | undefined
  readonly children: ReadonlyArray<JSX.Element>
}

interface RecursiveTreeProps {
  readonly listMeta: Tree
  readonly onSelectCallback: (value: TreeBranch) => void
}
```

### TreeItem

This will be our most atomic component, reused anywhere an item is rendered by the data we pass to our tree. This component can contain more of itself in a nested fashion, allowing us to render them recursively.

#### This component needs:

1. **onSelectCallback** - to power what happens when we click the item.
2. **label** - to display names of organizations (in our case).
3. **children** - to display nested items if they exist.
4. **isSelected** - to specify pre-selected items in the fetched data (as opposed to clicking to select the item).

```tsx
const TreeItem = ({
  onSelectCallback,
  label,
  isSelected,
  children,
}: TreeItemProps) => {
  const [isOpen, toggleItemOpen] = useState<boolean | null>(null)
  const [selected, setSelected] = useState(isSelected)

  return (
    <div>
      <StyledTreeItem>
        {children.length > 0 && (
          <Box
            className="icon-container"
            onClick={() => toggleItemOpen(!isOpen)}
          >
            {isOpen ? <ExpandMoreIcon /> : <ChevronRightIcon />}
          </Box>
        )}
        <StyledLabel
          className="label"
          onClick={(e: React.MouseEvent<HTMLInputElement>) => {
            setSelected(!selected)
            onSelectCallback(e)
          }}
          style={{
            marginLeft: `${children.length === 0 ? "24px" : ""}`,
            background: `${selected ? "#d5d5d5" : ""}`,
          }}
        >
          {label}
        </StyledLabel>
      </StyledTreeItem>
      <StyledTreeChildren>{isOpen && children}</StyledTreeChildren>
    </div>
  )
}
```

### Recursive Tree

This will be the workhorse component where our recursive logic lives. We pass our data here through listMeta to recursively render our TreeItem component as follows:

#### This component needs:

1. **listMeta** - the shape of our tree data.
2. **onSelectCallback** - to be passed down to TreeItems.

```tsx
const RecursiveTree = ({ listMeta, onSelectCallback }: RecursiveTreeProps) => {
  const createTree = (branch: TreeBranch) =>
    branch.branches && (
      <TreeItem
        id={branch.id}
        key={branch.id}
        onSelectCallback={(e: React.MouseEvent<HTMLElement>) => {
          onSelectCallback(branch)
        }}
        isSelected={branch.selected}
        label={branch.label}
      >
        {branch.branches.map((branch: TreeBranch) => {
          return <Fragment key={branch.id}>{createTree(branch)}</Fragment>
        })}
      </TreeItem>
    )

  return (
    <Box>
      {listMeta.map((branch: TreeBranch, i: any) => (
        <Box key={i}>{createTree(branch)}</Box>
      ))}
    </Box>
  )
}
```

## Our Functional Tree in Use

Check out the [Github repo here](https://github.com/jIrwinCline/recursive-react-tree).

## Some Final Thoughts

Recursion can be a crafty tool in a developer’s arsenal. But as we build a recursive pattern to have a lot of moving parts, complexity and drawbacks can start to manifest. There’s no magic associated with this concept. Most of the problems that can be solved by recursion are likely able to be solved with iterative loops. When recursive solutions seem tempting, make sure to consider the potential drawbacks.

#### When Not to Use Recursion

There are generally more reasons not to use recursion than to do so. Yes, it can be exciting to delve into an abstract solution, but a good engineer weighs the potential downsides, which we'll go over here.

- Results in code that's harder to read or comprehend

Recursion isn’t a pattern developers come across every day. When implemented, you’re bound to catch future developers off guard, which is a noteworthy downside. Difficulty comprehending the pattern at a later date is likely to occur, not only when teammates peak at the code, but also when you happen to return to your own code six months later.

This can be mitigated by extensively documenting and commenting your code. Explain to future developers (and yourself) why and where recursion occurs. For example, above the function, add a doc comment including an obvious note, such as, "This function is recursive. It calls itself in order to render all descendents." A comment directly above the line where recursion occurs can also be helpful to call out.

- Can make maintenance and debugging a nightmare

Developers maintaining the codebase in the years to come could potentially see this pattern in a bad light. When others (or even you) come back to the code, the recursive solution may not be self-explanatory. If new features need to be added or bugs show up, getting to the bottom of what’s happening may be harder with a pattern like this.

- Can lead to performance issues when processing large amounts of data

Recursion can be a memory-intensive operation with larger data sets. A function repeatedly calling itself will consume more memory when compared to an iterative loop. If your data set is not large, then pay no mind. But if a recursive solution is implemented in an environment where resources are scarce and the data is hefty enough, you could run out of memory.
Recursion can also be slow unless implemented carefully. For example, if each call to the function recomputes some value, but the result is actually the same for every iteration, or the same for each level in the tree, the function will be doing unnecessary repeated computations that could be avoided by applying memoization techniques.

## In the End

There can be good reasons to avoid recursion. But if your case doesn't have any of these red flags and you know your data set will always comfortably fit within your available memory, it can be a great solution to have up your sleeve.


Create a modular and recursively rendering tree component in React

Practical Recursion with React Components


<div style="padding-bottom: 40px; padding-right: 250px; padding-left: 250px;">
    <img src="/assets/blog/2020-10-19-survival-guide-for-your-teams-newest-developer/eagle-wing.png" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;" alt="eagle wing">
</div>

After a long-winded search for employment, including copious rejections, maybe you’ve finally landed a sustainable position at a well-grounded company, or maybe you’re still on the hunt. The job market ebbs and flows, but as long as you stay dedicated with your spirits up, you’ll likely be making this transition as well. I started my journey into tech a year ago, and I’ve now been working as a developer at my newest company, Olio Apps, for about 3 months. After a pretty great interview, I felt confident that I would be offered the position. Soon after, I had a start date to look forward to! As anyone would be, I was excited, but I couldn’t help but be nervous as well. I felt like this was a bigger opportunity than my previous positions at small start-ups.

Throughout these last few months, I’ve learned some things I wish I'd known beforehand, but there have also been things I wish I hadn’t focused on as much. Pulling from my quick onboarding process and other experiences I've had joining teams, I’ve written this guide as a roadmap for new developers, aimed at showing them what to focus on in order to be a successful hire. This "survival guide" should help new developers onboard more effectively, connect with their team in a meaningful way, and focus on the things that matter while joining a new company or team.

<div style="padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 50px; padding-left: 50px;">
    <img src="/assets/blog/2020-10-19-survival-guide-for-your-teams-newest-developer/chicks.jpg" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;" alt="chickling stage">
</div>

## First Day

So it’s your first day of work!

You’ll likely be getting access to the company’s software and email (if not later, depending on the company). You’ll probably be introduced to team members or managers that you’ll be working closely with, then go over your first tasks. Make sure you know what to work on, who to report to, and which tools you’ll need to be an active part of the team. JIRA, Confluence, Slack, and the company Gmail were some of what I was granted access to on my first day.

I expected there to be delay on some of these things, since there always seems to be… But I was lucky to have a small and lightweight team that got things done quickly, compared to a larger company that might move more slowly on getting approval for a new hire. The first day probably won’t be full of excitement, but you’ll likely learn some basic details about the company and your place in it.

First day checklist:

- I know my direct supervisor and who else to turn to for help.
- I have access to whatever I need to perform my job (at least for the next day).
- I understand my process for starting, working on, and completing a task (often, this could simply be moving a JIRA ticket from the to-do section to done).
- I am as prepared as I can be to start the next day of work.

<div style="padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 50px; padding-left: 50px;">
    <img src="/assets/blog/2020-10-19-survival-guide-for-your-teams-newest-developer/ducklings.jpg" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;" alt="duckling stage">
</div>

## First Week

Your first week will be a great opportunity to reach out and connect with a few of your teammates. If there are any extracurricular activities, like happy hours or company meetups, make sure to go! If there’s a teammate around your level who’s been there a little longer than you, reach out and ask what they would recommend you focus on to succeed (after all, they’ve most recently been in your position with this team). Your first week is also a great time to get a feel for what level of communication your manager is expecting. Make sure to give updates on the tasks you’re completing, and if they’re still reaching out about your tasks, it may be a sign that you should be communicating a bit more frequently.

Whatever progress is made at this point, typically you’re still catching on to company-specific conventions and processes. Try to forgive yourself for any little mistakes that are bound to happen. During your first week, it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you’re learning from them. Also remember that, as a new part of the team, your work speed is important but not the most important variable of your job performance. I had conversations with my supervisor about how accuracy, independence, and then speed were important, and typically in that order. So don’t sacrifice one higher priority item for another, and always be aware of where you are putting your energy.

First week checklist:

- I’ve tuned or optimized my dev environment for my position. Reach out to coworkers for tips on this one!
- I’ve gathered company resources (such as handbooks, PR guides, etc.) in case I have questions.
- I know who I can pair with on any problems I’m facing (you’d be surprised what experienced developers can teach you within the span of 15 minutes).
- I’ve reached out to coworkers for advice they wish they had when they first started here (and why not add some of them on LinkedIn?).
- I am periodically checking other employee’s work (i.e. pull requests) to see what coding patterns they use and what could be considered good or bad code.

<div style="padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 50px; padding-left: 50px;">
    <img src="/assets/blog/2020-10-19-survival-guide-for-your-teams-newest-developer/geese.jpg" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;" alt="geese stage">
</div>

## First Month

Around the close of my first month, I started to feel like a strong part of the team, but don’t be discouraged if it takes a little longer. At this point, you’ll probably be fully onboarded and set up for success. And really, the best thing about the first month is that it’s when you start to see growth. You’ve learned company processes, and now dividends are paying off for having a growth mindset and learning from setbacks.

Even though you seem to be establishing yourself within the team, don’t forget to focus on basics such as testing the functionality of your work and communicating effectively with your teammates. During my first month, I started to focus more on speed of development rather than accuracy and ultimately paid for it with pull request rejections. I then had to dig through non-working code to fix the issues, which can be a difficult process, especially compared to creating something correctly the first time.

First month checklist:

- I’m starting to feel confident that I’m a valuable part of the team.
- I’m asking for feedback on work when I’m not getting a clear understanding of what’s going on with my code.
- I’ve started picking up smaller tickets of my own accord (as long as they’re within your scope of work).
- I’m starting to feel comfortable in areas of the codebase where I previously may have felt confused or lost on what was going on.
- I’m still welcoming code reviews and working on not repeating mistakes that have been commented on previously. (Your managers will notice this!)

<div style="padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 50px; padding-left: 50px;">
   <img src="/assets/blog/2020-10-19-survival-guide-for-your-teams-newest-developer/eagle.jpg" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;" alt="eagle stage">
</div>

## Onward and Upward

By now, you will certainly know if you’re excelling or still need to make minor adjustments. Take the time to revel in the fact that you’re doing exactly what you want to do and getting compensated to do it! It’s a long road to get where you are, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Continuing to grow and develop your skill set will be important moving forward, but if you’re providing value by this point, you’re on a good path.

Remember to focus on the things you can control and that no hire is perfect. If you follow some of the core principles of this guide, you’ll have plenty of resources to work with on your journey, and your journey certainly doesn’t end here. Everyone on a team was the new hire at some point, and as time goes on, you’ll probably laugh at the nervous thoughts you had leading up to your first few days. Just know that no one here wants you to fail, and your coworkers want to enjoy working with you. Keep improving, don’t listen to thoughts that make you feel like you don’t belong, and you will certainly be just fine.


A Survival Guide for Your Team's Newest Developer


<img src="/assets/blog/2020-08-12-save-money-building-mobile-apps/calculator.jpeg" alt="A mobile phone calculator app" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

In this article, I discuss seven principles for minimizing the time and money spent building a mobile app. If you're looking to build an app, are pressed for time, and don't have an unlimited budget, keep reading!

## Planning

No plan is perfect, though a healthy amount of planning will help a great deal when it comes to saving money and time.

### Fully Explain

At my software consulting company, [Olio Apps](https://www.olioapps.com/), we are often approached with projects and asked to estimate without much information. Sometimes we're given little more than a sentence or two of a business idea ("Uber for cats! How much?"), or a slide deck with mostly pictures and a few words, and we are left to surmise what that actually means, or how grand the vision is. If you ask someone for a quote but provide little to go on, and you do get an estimate back, be aware it's a wild guess and could be off by orders of magnitude.

To help customers flesh out their product visions, we provide [Discovery and Roadmapping](/services/discovery-roadmapping/) engagements, where we spend a week doing working sessions with them, building up the use cases, user stories, and wireframes, and whatever else is needed to build an informed development plan and cost estimate.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-08-12-save-money-building-mobile-apps/wireframes.jpeg" alt="Drawing wireframes on paper" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

### Mock Up the App

The clearer you make the picture of what you want up front, the less guesswork your engineers will have to do. You want to eliminate guessing. If you leave right vs. wrong up to chance, there is a very good chance it will be partially wrong, which will cost more time and money.

The more you can fully tell the story of how your software should work, and ideally how it should look, the more likely you'll get it right the first time. Mocking things up with pictures and written descriptions has a way of revealing the holes and corner cases not yet considered. It's cheaper and faster to find and flesh out the murky areas before you build.

Conversely, the most beautiful mockup images are just images, and though they may look great, software needs to be touched and used before you truly know if it is a joy to use, or super annoying and difficult. So make mockups of the most critical pieces. Whether you’re sketching the app in [Balsamiq](https://balsamiq.com/wireframes/) or prototyping in [Figma](https://www.figma.com/), emphasize functionality over beauty. Then get to a working prototype that users can try as quickly as possible, so you can learn and refine from working software.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-08-12-save-money-building-mobile-apps/user-testing.jpeg" alt="Drawing wireframes on paper" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

### Get User Feedback Before You Build

Are you part of the target audience of your app? If so, that's a great start. Have you talked to others in the target audience and asked for feedback on your app? You don't have to wait until after you've spent a lot of time and money building the app to start. Before your app is built, you can and should ask for feedback to validate and refine your ideas.

Turns out, there is right way and a wrong way to ask for feedback. Wrong way: saying to family and friends, “I’m going to build an app for X! Will you use it?” The answer will be yes, but that’s not useful. It does not tell you whether real users will use it. Your friends and family are biased towards you. Better: “Do you have any problems with X? How do you deal with X today?” We recommend reading [The Mom Test](http://momtestbook.com/) to guide your approach to getting useful feedback.

If you've done the work to mock up your app, you can even build a clickable prototype using a tool such as [Figma](https://www.figma.com/) or [Invision](https://www.invisionapp.com/) to let users walk through the user interface and see how the app would work, before you spend the time building it. This will obviously save you more time and money.

## Technical Choices

We are a technical consultancy, so here's where I'll make some technology recommendations. There are many ways to build a mobile app. Depending on your choices, you could spend wildly different amounts of time and money to arrive at the same outcome. The common thread here is leveraging existing expertise and re-use.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-08-12-save-money-building-mobile-apps/tools.jpeg" alt="Lots of tools neatly arranged" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

### Use Tools Lots of Developers Know and Like

If you choose technology and tools that lots of people know and like, you can find people happy to build it now, and others willing to maintain it going forward. If you pick something obscure, overly clever, or proprietary, there will be a smaller pool of people who can work on it, which will make it more expensive. If you are non-technical or getting advised on technology choices by others, do a little research, ask around, and see if the terminology being thrown around is familiar and well-received by others.

### Use a Cross-Platform Framework

A cross-platform framework cuts development time and gets your app running on multiple platforms with a single code base. One team can build for both platforms at once. The 80/20 rule applies: 80% of the code is shared, 10-20% is platform specific conditional code, but it all lives together in a single version-controlled code base.

There are many options, such as those listed in this [roundup article from March 2020](https://hackernoon.com/9-popular-cross-platform-tools-for-app-development-in-2019-53765004761b). The top four listed are React Native, Xamarin, Flutter, and Ionic. All of these are decent choices, and the best choice for you should be influenced by the current expertise of your developers (C# developers? Xamarin. React web developers? React Native. Angular web developers? Ionic.) But ongoing maintenance and the hiring of future developers to maintain the project should also be a consideration.

I recommend [React Native](/services/react-native-applications/) because it is well known and supported, and used successfully in many popular apps. It allows front-end developers who already know [React](/services/react-web-applications/) (the most popular frontend web framework as of August 2020) to leverage their existing expertise to build native mobile apps, as well as web apps. If you need something specialized and platform specific, you can drop down to native code and write an extension. These days, existing open source extensions exist to cover most common use cases. It is now possible to build a React Native App that runs on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and the Web.

### Use Libraries for Common Features Found in Every App

There are now libraries and components that implement the common things that most apps do. For example, almost all apps require you to sign up and log in. There's nothing new or ground breaking about this part of an app, just potentially time-consuming work, implementing the same thing many people have done before. Instead, make use of the libraries and services that allow you to skip the heavy lifting and get sign up and login functionality working right away. Some examples are [Amplify](https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/), [Cognito](https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/), [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/), and [Auth0](https://auth0.com/). Unless you have a good reason to roll your own, it makes financial sense to use one of these, so you can spend more time on the actual unique value your app will provide.

## Lean on Experts

If you are not an app developer, or if you have a team of technical people who focus on other things besides mobile app development, consider working with experts who have successfully built multiple apps already. Not only will this help you get your app off the ground faster, it will also help you avoid mistakes and keep you from incurring technical debt that may slow down your project. Plus, an experienced team can work with you to bootstrap a good software development process that you can carry forward within your organization.

Looking for an experienced team to build your mobile app? [Contact us](/contact-us) today to start a conversation about your project.


7 Great Ways to Save Time and Money Building a Mobile App


<img src="/assets/blog/2020-04-24-internship-2020/team.jpg" alt="A team of people around a laptop" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

There are many paths into software. Some start a career right out of college, some self-teach in the evenings for years, others smash away at intensive summer boot camps, and some seem to roll into this world with a penchant for technology. For a lot of us, it’s a combination of these. Eventually, we transition into the professional side of software (though it sometimes doesn’t feel like it at the time). Maybe that means getting hired to build a website for your uncle's small business, starting an internship or apprenticeship, landing a full-time gig in a fancy office, or somewhere in between.

For me, it was an internship fresh out of a boot camp with a small but mature company in Portland, Oregon. It was an experience, though imperfect, I’m immensely thankful for. Shortly after completing my brief internship, I was hired by Olio Apps, a Portland-based software consultancy. As a company, Olio Apps focuses on building web and mobile apps, but as a team, we’re encouraged to focus on personal development through skill-building and sharing. One way we do this, while also giving back to the development community, is by occasionally offering internships to junior developers. We’ve seen several rounds of interns, and each time, we learn something new and refine the process. This year, I was given the opportunity to lead the internship. Thanks to careful planning, the support of the whole team, and two excellent interns, I’ll be the first to report it was a smashing success.

Internships can come in many shapes and sizes, and can have mixed results for the interns as well as the company. There are a lot of factors to consider when planning to host interns, such as company size, senior developer availability, project complexity, intern skill level, etc. Some factors can be controlled, and others can’t. But there are a few things that can help maximize the value of the internship both for the interns and the company. If you or your company is considering offering an internship in the future, or already has an internship program, here are some of my top tips.

### Choosing Interns

To find interns, we typically work with a local code school, Epicodus, and are given 10 or so junior developers to interview. We have quick, speed-dating-like interviews that are 30 minutes long. For us, it feels like seconds. But for them, most of whom are experiencing their first ever technical interviews, I’m sure it feels like hours. The code school then does the final match-making based on both the interviewers' and interviewees' responses. Because of this process, we don’t get the final say in who our interns are, but for the most part, we’ve had good luck with getting our top choices.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-04-24-internship-2020/interview.jpg" alt="Two people in an interview" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

At Olio Apps, we kind of make a holiday of the intern interviewing and selection process, pausing our work to meet the interns and talk about how the interviews went. We involve the whole team in meeting and selecting the interns because team cohesion is an important part of our company culture. Based on our collective experience working with different types of people, we coined our ideal candidate “the humble ass-kicker.” We look for someone who is the right combination of cultural fit and skills (or perceived ability to obtain skills). That may seem obvious to some, but it can sometimes be tempting to lean toward someone who has impressive hard skills but lacks in personality, or vice versa. From experience, we’ve learned that a blend of hard and soft skills is essential, especially because there’s a lot of collaboration and pair-programming encouraged during the internships we offer. If someone isn’t easy to work with, it’s difficult for everyone.

It can be challenging to get a sense of a junior developer’s skills and personality during a brief 30-minute interview. We do about 5 minutes of “meet the whole team,” followed by 10 minutes of non-technical, cultural fit questions, and then dedicate the final 15 minutes to a collaborative whiteboarding exercise. Whiteboarding can be intimidating for junior developers, but it gives us an opportunity to see how they operate under stress, how they solve problems verbally and visually in real time, and how they ask questions and engage with team members. It also gives them a taste of a real-world technical interview, which is good for their professional development. After the 30 minutes are up, one of our team members usually offers to take them for coffee to answer any of their questions and decompress after the interview. Interviewing is always a two-way street (though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it as a junior developer), and it’s important to us to make a good impression with the internship candidates.

### Pre-Internship Planning

Having a plan for the internship is vital. Through our years of offering internships, there has always been a rough plan that includes a few lectures, practice problems, toy apps, and eventually test writing and basic tickets in various real-world projects. This time was different. As the internship facilitator, I created a structured (yet flexible) five-week plan that would provide a guide for the interns, as well as me, while I navigated taking on this new role and continued to fulfill my other roles as technical lead for [Shoutbase](https://www.shoutbase.com) and architect on other projects.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-04-24-internship-2020/planning.jpg" alt="planner with sticky notes" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

The plan included a one-week ramp-up of JavaScript skills, which included reading materials, coding exercises, code review, and topic lectures. After the ramp-up, they were introduced to the Shoutbase code and the detailed tech design I had created for the feature we would implement together. I took the challenging parts while they started taking from an organized set of tickets. Starting small, they worked on writing unit tests for stateless utility functions, similar to what they had seen in coding exercises the week before, followed by writing different stateless utility functions themselves. After that, they moved to writing simple React components. By week three, they were writing progressively more challenging React components and integrating reusable existing components. After that, they added functionality to their components using our in-house rendition of Redux called [Sitka](https://github.com/olioapps/sitka). By the end, they got to experience the end-of-sprint testing, debugging, and bug-fixing cycle.

Having a detailed tech design and a structured plan of attack was critical to the success of the internship. It helped me communicate what I needed from them and eliminated any confusion around basic things (like what to name a certain function) as well as more major things (like state management and expected behavior). It also allowed me to step away and work on other duties while remaining confident that they could work independently and deliver what was expected, even as juniors.

Maintaining flexibility was also key. Each week had its own set of goals that could be fine-tuned based on the week before. Throughout the internship, we focused on learning and writing quality code, rather than stressing over hard deadlines. This gave everyone room to make mistakes, enjoy the experience, and learn.

### Involving the Whole Team

Beyond an introduction to writing code in a professional environment, a primary feature of an internship is exposure to senior developers. That way, interns get to hear different perspectives around programming, working in the industry, and tips and tricks. While I was the primary facilitator for the internship, each Olio Apps team member had their moment to shine by delivering a talk in their area of interest or expertise. The talks gave a primer on new subjects or expanded on what the interns had learned in code school. In all, there were over a dozen talks that included our company's philosophy for writing code, tooling to enhance productivity, pull request etiquette, ES6 syntax and conventions for clean JavaScript code, writing unit tests, advanced CSS and styling techniques, React, Redux-Saga, Sitka, frontend and backend architecture, sprint planning, QA, and manual testing.

The talks served many functions. Of course, they helped teach the interns skills they could then apply to their work, but it also gave the team members an opportunity to stretch themselves. While preparing for their talks, many of them refined their own understanding of certain topics and had to take on the beginner’s mindset, in order to simplify complex ideas into their simplest forms. It’s a challenging but rewarding task. In addition to that, junior developers often ask great questions that can spur conversation and even challenge senior developers' understanding.

We also recorded these talks. By recording them, the information could be shared internally amongst current and future team members. Instead of siloing information into a few “topic experts,” we can now create a bank of tribal knowledge of which we all share. And having a set of videos geared toward junior developers is a great place to start. Additionally, we can share these videos with future interns and potentially externally as well, to spread our knowledge beyond the company.

### Scoping a Project for Beginners

At code school, the students become very familiar with creating short-lived projects from scratch. For us, it’s important to provide a more real-world experience for the interns where they can be introduced to a sophisticated, public-facing app. It’s also essential to create a safe playground environment, where the focus can be on learning without the potentially stressful pace or standards of client work.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-04-24-internship-2020/scope.jpg" alt="eye glasses on a desk in front of a computer" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

The timeline for the internship lined up ideally with the introduction of a new feature to our internal project, [Shoutbase](https://www.shoutbase.com). I had already implemented the majority of the backend for the feature, and the interns ramped up just in time to help me start on the frontend. The UI was relatively complicated, including forms, state management, and communication with the backend—“not your average code school project,” to paraphrase one of the interns. One might say it was a relatively ambitious internship project. Despite this, the interns were able to complete a huge chunk of the feature, and they exceeded our original goals for the internship.

The key was dividing the work into incremental pieces that the interns could understand and then progressively introducing more difficult tasks as their skills developed. While the end result of the feature was similar to how I (or another senior developer) would have written it, the path we took to get there was much different.

Normally, when I’m planning to introduce a new UI feature, I will break up the feature into pieces and create tickets that consist of isolated chunks of end-to-end functionality. This includes any state management, utility functions, tests, styles, and behavior. I had the interns start in areas more familiar to them, like writing stateless utility functions and tests, which strengthened their skills in that area, and then we branched out from there. Breaking the work up in a way that allowed them to focus on the same type helped them gain mastery in an area before moving on. In the end, we could weave the pieces together into a working UI.

The proverbial saying, “Measure once, cut twice,” is valuable philosophy for developers, but sometimes, it’s good for a junior developer to have to “cut” the same piece of code two or three times to understand the difference between “functioning,” “better,” and “best” code. There were a couple occasions where I provided a ticket with little guidance, reviewed the resulting code with a little more guidance, and then challenged the interns to try once again to take their code to another level. Though being asked to write the same piece of code over for the third time might be frustrating for some, a beginner with the right attitude is going to gain a lot of value from the experience and learn how to challenge their own code to reach a higher standard beyond being “done” or “functioning.”

The first couple of weeks, I understood that I was spending more time reviewing and re-reviewing the interns’ code than it would have taken me to write it myself. But I also understood that the time I was taking to write out thoughtful critiques, provide links to further reading on the topics, and offer suggestions, rather than giving out all the answers, was an investment into developing their skills. And that benefitted me as well: in the final weeks of the internship, they were able to work relatively independently and deliver code that needed very little revision.

### Defining a Workflow

Creating a consistent workflow helped the internship run smoothly for everyone. From the interns’ perspective, the workflow was relatively simple. Each Monday, we would review the progress from the week before and plan the following week based on the master plan I created pre-internship, factoring in any necessary adjustments. For me, I needed to integrate the internship workflow into my other responsibilities. This was particularly challenging for the first couple of weeks, when the interns needed the most guidance. To help alleviate this, I created a schedule of black-out times when I was unavailable, and the interns would have to rely on each other or ask a different team member for help. This helped me get my own work done, and it also gave the interns the opportunity to interact directly with the other developers at Olio.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-04-24-internship-2020/workflow.jpg" alt="man writing workflow on a whiteboard" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

Another important part of the workflow, beyond just slinging code, involved giving and receiving feedback. Feedback is essential for growth, and encouraging two-way feedback ensures that both parties are getting what they need and that the process improves over time. Each Friday, the interns were involved in our team’s weekly retrospective, which is an informal meeting where we reflect on the week, celebrating the highs and discussing solutions for any low points. By involving the interns in the retro, we gained insight into their experiences that helped us create a better internship for them and hopefully others in the future, leaning into the positive aspects and attempting to eliminate or mitigate any negative aspects. They also got to participate in one of my favorite rituals of the company, and hear the thoughts and emotions of more senior developers as we experienced and navigated through the highs and lows of creating software.

### Words of Caution

After recently concluding a very successful internship, it’s easy to focus on the positive aspects, but I think it’s also important for me to address a possible downside that could impact both the company and the intern. Offering an internship can take a lot of resources. If you’re unable to front these resources, or if you think a low or unpaid internship is a good way of getting cheap code, think again. As I stated before, for quality results by the end of a several-week internship, significant investment by one or more senior developers is vital.

<img src="/assets/blog/2020-04-24-internship-2020/handshake.jpg" alt="Two people shaking hands" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

Personally, I think offering an internship is a combination of two things:

- an opportunity to give back to the developer community by giving the interns real world experience
- an opportunity to meet new developers as a trial period for possible hiring into your company

Both of these opportunities involve having respect for the intern's time and effort, instead of seeing them as a resource for cheap code.

### Conclusion

By now, I hope it’s clear that offering an internship can be a valuable experience for everyone at a software company. Whether you’re considering taking interns for the first time or you’re a seasoned pro at hosting interns, hopefully, you feel inspired to provide an internship that strengthens your team, empowers junior developers, and gives value to everyone involved. If you’re interested in hearing more about internships at Olio Apps, check out this post by former interns and current full-time employees, Ami and Cory: [Internship Experience](https://www.olioapps.com/blog/internship-experience/).


Providing a Rewarding Software Internship


<img src="/assets/blog/2019-11-25-hard-mode-development/alien.jpg" alt="A photograph of a mural of a space invaders sprite by Francesco Ungaro via Pexels" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

A day in the life of a software developer is mostly a system of routines: you do your stand-up meetings, you portion out your work, you set your goals, and (hopefully) you accomplish them with a little extra time to spare. Some days, you demonstrate your work to the client, some days you set up a planning meeting to codify your sprint objectives, and some days you create a technical design for a more complicated feature.

Whatever your day ends up looking like, it likely falls into a pattern of an established cadence set by your employer’s standards, or through trial and error experience with the project—except when it doesn’t.

In my case, my place of employment, [Olio Apps](https://www.olioapps.com/), mostly functions as a consultancy, taking on a variety of projects from different fields and disciplines—some greenfield projects and some that are already in production. For additional context, in my 14 months at Olio, I’ve personally worked on about six or seven different code bases for various clients.

Most recently, my boss, Aron, assigned me and my co-worker, Frank, to a prototype project where the client already had a deadline established. The delivery date they requested was about three weeks out from when we accepted the contract and the goal was to finish a prototype scheduling wizard that would be in a high-fidelity, demo-ready state.

As I mentioned before, software developers generally adapt to a “normal” cadence for their work flows; I have one as well, but this project required me to rearrange my “normal.” Aron coined the term “hard mode” to describe this paradigm for dealing with crunch, but what really makes “hard mode” different from what we deem normal and how did we successfully end up with a functional prototype that met all of the client’s requirements?

## “Normal Mode” Versus “Hard Mode”

Let’s start with operational definitions of what “normal mode” and “hard mode” are. For me, “normal mode” looks like this: my team and I set sprint goals about once a week, tackling a few small features or one large feature, with the goal of a small but stable release. The project I’ve worked on that is most representative of “normal” for me is the project that has comprised the majority of my time at Olio Apps thus far. The codebase was already in production when the project started, and it used our standard [React](https://reactjs.org/)/[TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/)/[Redux](https://redux.js.org/)/[Redux Saga](https://redux-saga.js.org/) stack.

The work was done on a per-feature basis, where the client would send a list of changes and bugs. This list was then broken up into individual Jira tickets and assigned to myself or my project partner. Though there was a deadline, we were rarely aware of it because there was no real crunch. Everything got done, we performed routine regression testing, and we would ship a build to the client every week.

This particular cadence had its moments of stress, especially when untangling unforeseen regressions, but overall, it had a lax and sustainable pace. Similarly, the majority of other projects I’ve worked on also had weekly checkpoints, where we had work scoped out at the beginning of the week, and we would release, demo, or at least check in on Friday.

In contrast, “hard mode” had a totally different rhythm. I’d experienced crunch before through hackathons and agile swarms, but usually only for an eight-hour block, as opposed to a two week project. Our pace was defined like this: Frank and I would set our goals in the morning, and we would do internal demos to our manager every afternoon.

On top of the time crunch, there were technologies in our stack that needed to be reconciled with the stack of the client, such as learning how to adapt our [Sitka framework](https://medium.com/olioapps/reduce-redux-boilerplate-with-sitka-493369691d38) to work with [ImmutableJS](https://immutable-js.github.io/immutable-js/) and using [BEM](http://getbem.com/introduction/) SCSS instead of [styled-components](https://www.styled-components.com/). There was also a sizable amount of legacy code whose patterns we wanted to emulate, to keep the app consistent and easy to continue building upon in the future. You can check out my blog post about how to handle legacy code [here](https://www.olioapps.com/blog/legacy-code/).

So that begs the question: how did we do it? How did we go from a set of mockups and a set of user stories to a full scheduling wizard in roughly 14 days with only two people working full-time on it? Let me count the ways.

### Scope

<img src="/assets/blog/2019-11-25-hard-mode-development/binoculars.jpg" alt="A photograph of binoculars by Skitterphoto via Pexels" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

One of the strategies we adopted for tackling “hard mode” was making certain we scoped blocks of work appropriately. In the case of creating the scheduling wizard, it felt natural to make each step of the wizard a discrete day’s work. Some days bled into each other when it came to fixing bugs from a previous step of the wizard, but overall, this scope and pace kept things organized and made daily goals clear.

### Specialization

Another thing that helped the workflow was having Frank and me stay highly specialized in terms of what we worked on. While I have confidence in my ability to handle Redux and business logic, my strength is in handling CSS/SCSS and translating the mockups into a high-fidelity user interface at a rapid pace. In contrast, Frank has more experience doing Redux and business logic and less experience doing design and CSS-oriented work. Dividing the work to match our strong suits made development faster and more efficient, and it prevented us from stepping on each other’s toes and creating merge conflicts while working on the same branch.

### High Level of Communication

<img src="/assets/blog/2019-11-25-hard-mode-development/phone.jpg" alt="A photograph of a red telephone on a white background by Negative Space via Pexels" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

For this project, Frank and I forewent the standard practice of using feature branches, making pull requests and merging work after review in order to reduce time spent not building the wizard. As stated before, we worked almost entirely on the same branch. When done improperly, working this closely git-wise can cause merge conflicts, and work can be lost while resolving those conflicts. In order to prevent this from happening, my partner and I were in close communication. We both had a rough understanding of what the other person was working on, and we would ping the other person via Slack to commit their work and pull from our remote branch when substantial changes were made. An unforeseen advantage of working this way was that we were able to test each other’s work regularly on our two different machines to verify that everything functioned and compiled as expected.

### Rigorous End-of-Day Demo

Another factor that made this project so successful was our project manager’s acute attention to detail. During every demo, which happened around 3:00 p.m., we would test obscure use cases in the flow of the wizard and put the user interface under intense scrutiny, directly beside the mockups. This allowed us to have a very concrete and approachable list of functionality and UI fixes, and having the demo a few hours before the true ending of the day gave us time to fix them. On a good day, this allowed us to tie off the step of the wizard we were working on and start fresh on the next step the day after.

### Time Management

<img src="/assets/blog/2019-11-25-hard-mode-development/clock.jpg" alt="A photograph an old fashioned alarm clock on a pink and blue background by Moose Photos via Pexels" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

The most crucial part of powering through “hard mode” was tracking and managing time. I did this by using [Shoutbase](https://www.shoutbase.com/), Olio’s time tracking application. Seeing where time sinks occurred while working on the scheduling wizard allowed me to get better at creating an appropriate timebox for when I should get a second opinion on how I was approaching a problem. This was arguably the most important part in terms of setting a cadence for the project as a whole, and it’s an important skill to have, whether you’re developing in “hard mode” or not.

## When to Develop in “Hard Mode”

So when is “hard mode” the best way to get the job done over a normal, relaxed cadence?

For us, there were a number of factors that led us to adopt this workflow and cadence. The first factor was the tight deadline, which is pretty self-explanatory: a closer deadline means less time to get work done. The second factor was that the app was still a prototype. The combination of these two factors meant that features like unit testing weren’t necessary at this phase of the web app’s development. The third factor was that the features that were a part of our client’s requirements had few technical unknowns. Once we had BEM and ImmutableJS sorted out, and we had acquainted ourselves with the codebase, we were able to continue in a “business as usual” way, just faster and with a narrower technical focus. There was no need for any new algorithms or patterns or libraries in order to accomplish our goals, which was good, since researching new technologies to implement them into legacy code can make a hefty dent in your time budget.

## Why It’s Not Sustainable

<img src="/assets/blog/2019-11-25-hard-mode-development/sprout.jpg" alt="A photograph a plant sprouting in gravel by freestocks.org via Pexels" style="display: block; max-width: 100%;">

As I mentioned in the previous section, there are advantages to changing the paradigm to “hard mode,” but with the advantages come disadvantages that make this style of development unsustainable for any developer, regardless of experience.

For one thing, the fast pace of development left limited time to add in unit tests. Unit tests are an important part of production code for ensuring the maintainability of a codebase and the scalability of a codebase: you know what the input of a function is, and what the output should be, and [Jest](https://jestjs.io/) (or your testing framework of choice) will catch any bugs before you release a build as you grow the app. For more tips on transitioning from prototype to production code, check out my co-worker Stormi’s [blog post about production versus prototype code](https://www.olioapps.com/blog/prototype-vs-production/).

Crunch is normal and expected in most development cycles—that’s just the nature of any work that has a deadline. I personally really enjoyed having daily milestones and the ability to finish work and receive feedback quickly, but despite the preparation we did and the adjustments we made to our workflow to speed up our development, it was still hard. It’s simply not sustainable to be working at that pace for a prolonged amount of time.

Not only can it be stressful when you start to run up against the clock, but that stress can also cause creative blockage when it comes to problem solving. We managed to mitigate a lot of the stress and mental fatigue by getting out of the office at 5:00 p.m., no excuses.

## Conclusion

What I gained from this experience is learning how important it is to have a strong division between work hours and personal time. I haven’t had the experience of working longer than a regular eight-hour day to compensate for a crunch like this, but I can say that timeboxing the daily sprints and going home at the same time was paramount to keeping myself energized and focused throughout the busy workdays.

To sum it all up, there’s no right or wrong cadence or way to get your work done, as long as it gets done, but it was an enlightening experience to switch things up and try working at a “crunchier” pace. That said, even “hard mode” development doesn’t have to be a bad experience, provided that you scope well, communicate well, and work efficiently. These may seem like obvious tools for completing a successful project, but if you aren't already doing foundationally important work beyond your actual coding, putting additional constraints on a project will make that really apparent.

I’ve laid out a few of the tips that my team has tried while handling crunch, but I’m curious if there’s anything I missed. [Feel free to @ me on Twitter (@ARC_Tangents)](https://ctt.ac/fFzIc).

---

## What did we miss?

Please let us know by tweeting to [@olioapps](https://twitter.com/olioapps)

## Ami Cooper

Developer at [Olio Apps](https://www.olioapps.com)

Thanks for reading!


Development on Hard Mode: How to Deal With Crunch


<img  style="width: 100%;" src="/assets/blog/2019-11-01-rest-hooks/phones.jpg" alt="Stock image of phones">

Imagine this: You just moved away from home for the first time to go to college. Your mom calls. "How are you? Is anything going on?" she asks.

"I'm good. Nothing exciting is going on yet," you reply. It's good to hear from her.

Twenty minutes later, you get the same call: "How are you? Is anything going on?" There's nothing going on. You get the same call every twenty minutes for the rest of your life. What a nightmare!

Thankfully, this isn't your reality, but this is the reality for many REST APIs out there, constantly getting polled with the same request over and over again. It is a communication nightmare.

As web services become more integrated and dependent on sharing data between systems, this wasteful use of REST APIs becomes increasingly problematic. Thankfully, there are modern solutions for the polling problem.

## Integrations

Integration has been a major theme for the [Shoutbase](https://www.shoutbase.com/) team lately. We’re asking questions like “how can we make the tools that we already use work even better?” and “how can we automate tasks and streamline our workflow?” Integrating systems makes work on the frontend easier, but implementing integrations on the backend can get complicated real fast. So we’re also asking questions like “how can we make meaningful integrations without having to overhaul our system, make extensive changes, and add increasingly complicated code to maintain?” In other words, “how can we make integrations simple?”

I love simple. It’s important that the end-user has a straightforward experience. And as an engineer, I want my specs and code to be simple, too. Simplicity isn’t always possible; I was reminded of that while implementing [OAuth2](https://oauth.net/2/) in our last [Shoutbase release](https://www.shoutbase.com/blog/fall-release/). But simple is an ideal nonetheless.

While seeking a simple integration solution, we came across Zapier. [Zapier](https://zapier.com/) is a platform for creating custom integrations called “Zaps.” I took a deep dive into Zapier (you can read more about that [here](https://www.shoutbase.com/blog/zapier-dynamic-duos/)), but one thing that really resonated with me was how they handled real-time communication between web services: [REST Hooks](https://resthooks.org/). It was simple. I liked it. We added it to Shoutbase.

In the rest of this article I want to clarify what webhooks are, what REST Hooks is, why you might want to use Rest Hooks, how the pattern works, how we implemented it in Shoutbase, and how to address potential security concerns related to the software pattern of REST Hooks.

## Webhooks

Key to understanding REST Hooks is understanding webhooks. Webhooks allow web apps to communicate with each other, sending automated messages to notify others that something new has occurred. In a typical API, the client-side application calls the server-side application and consumes data. Webhooks are often referred to as “reverse APIs” because they flip this relationship. Instead of the server waiting to hear back from the client, the server-side application will call the client-side application through an end-point URL provided by the client application. That end-point URL (supplied by the client and consumed by the server-side application) is a webhook. It’s that simple.

The beauty of a webhook flow is that it occurs in real time. As soon as the server has something it wants to report, it relays the information to the client via the webhook. The client doesn’t have to routinely poll the server, checking to see if there is new data. There are other ways to achieve this communication between services. For more on that, I think O'Reilly does a great job of clarifying the difference between webhooks, websockets, and server-sent events in this [article](https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/restful-java-patterns/9781783287963/ch06s05.html). But I’m focusing on webhooks because that’s what REST Hooks uses.

## What REST Hooks Is and How It Works

According to the [website](https://resthooks.org), “REST Hooks itself is not a specification, it is a collection of patterns that treat webhooks like subscriptions.” The REST Hook subscriptions are created, updated, and deleted using a REST API. The pattern is easy to understand and implement and advances the power of the traditional REST API. With REST Hooks, the REST API is able to communicate with other apps in real time, via webhooks, without a complicated setup. The REST Hooks pattern has four basic requirements.

1. Mechanism to store subscriptions
2. Mechanism to modify subscriptions via API
3. List of event types & implementation of events
4. Mechanism to send hooks

The data needed to store and manage the REST Hooks is simple. Each REST Hook record needs only three pieces of information: An event name or names you want to subscribe to, a subscription owner or account relationship, and a target url (webhook) to send payloads too. The record may also include a state, active or inactive. You could also add additional information to the record in your own custom implementation, but that’s all you need for the basic REST Hooks implementation.

Next you need basic CRUD capabilities to modify the subscriptions. There’s nothing novel here. All you need are REST endpoints to create, update, delete, and read subscriptions. As new subscriptions are needed, REST Hook subscriptions can be created. As end points change, we can update them. And when subscriptions are no longer relevant, the client can choose to delete them.

The most challenging part is perhaps defining and handling events. Thankfully, most modern APIs, Shoutbase included, already have an event handling system to tap into. If you’re new to the idea of event-driven architecture, you can read more about it [here](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/architecture-styles/event-driven). Basically, you need to define a system that contains a list of events and event listeners, and then using those two pieces, you can transmit information about events as they occur.

In the case of REST Hooks, when the event listener picks up a new event, you need logic to find any matching REST Hook subscriptions in your database. When a matching REST Hook subscription, based on event and originating user, is found, you can send your notification or payload to the webhook defined in the matching REST Hook subscription.

The Diagram below depicts the process of creating webhook subscriptions and handling events using the REST Hooks pattern. Your implementation may appear slightly different depending on the setup of your API.

<img style="width: 100%; border: solid white 20px;" src="/assets/blog/2019-11-01-rest-hooks/chart.png" alt="Diagram depicting the concepts discussed above">

## Why Use REST Hooks?

Now that we understand what REST Hooks is and how it works, let’s dive in to why it's so useful. The major argument for REST Hooks is really an argument against the alternatives. First, let’s talk about REST APIs. This popular paradigm powers the web, but has some serious limitations. One of the most common ways to get “updates” on data from REST APIs is through polling, or routinely making the same request in hopes that new data might be found (just like your mom calling every 20 minutes). There are two problems with polling. First, there are a lot of wasted calls to the server. According to a [case study](https://resthooks.org/#why) by Zapier, using traditional REST API polling, “Over a representative time period, Zapier polled for changes 30 million times but only took action on 460,000 of those polls.” For those doing the math, that is 1.5% efficient. Over 98% of the calls were a complete waste.

Beyond the inefficiency of making fruitless calls, polling is also far from real time. Realistically, polling only occurs every 10-15 minutes. Any more than that, and the margin of wasted API calls would be even greater. Polling is more or less a hack for receiving real-ish time data. On top of that, polling can be complicated. It requires a mechanism for managing and storing previous state, and comparing new state against previous state to find changes.

REST Hooks solves those problems, while also working within the popular REST paradigm. There’s no need for polling because webhooks simply wait for new notifications and receive updates on data as it originates. The communication is basically real-time. And there is no need to maintain previous state and make comparisons. The event encapsulates the data changes, and the changes are communicated directly to the webhook.

## REST Hooks in Shoutbase

As I mentioned before, I recently implemented REST Hooks to Shoutbase. The current case is limited and it hasn’t been documented for wide developer usage yet, but I’m excited to open it up in the future.

Right now, we’re using REST Hooks within our Shoutbase Zapier integration. We created a REST Hook trigger called “Prepare Report.” When a user creates a Zap using the “Prepare Report” trigger, Zapier posts a REST Hook subscription to the Shoutbase API to create the new webhook subscription, containing a webhook “target URL” from Zapier. When the Zap is turned off or deleted, Zapier makes a request to the Shoutbase API to delete the subscription. The Shoutbase API can send data to Zapier using the webhook when certain events occur.

Thanks to the existing infrastructure of Shoutbase, implementing REST Hooks was fairly straightforward. I added new REST endpoints for creating, deleting, and modifying the REST Hook subscriptions. I added a new table in our PostgreSQL database for storing the subscriptions. The Shoutbase API is written in Golang, so I added a type for the REST Hook subscriptions, which I dubbed “WebhookSubscription.”

WebhookSubscriptions in Shoutbase look like this:

```go
type WebhookSubscription struct {
    ID        string
    OwnerID   string
    EventName string
    TargetUrl string
    CreatedAt time.Time
    UpdatedAt time.Time
}

```

Shoutbase has a [multilayer architecture](https://hub.packtpub.com/what-is-multi-layered-software-architecture/), with distinct separation between the presentation layer (or resource layer, containing the endpoints), application layer (or API layer, containing the business logic), and the data layer (connecting to the database). So I added a new API for WebhookSubscriptions that contains all the logic required to fulfill the REST endpoint requests and communicate with the database. This API contains all the security gatekeeping for subscriptions.

The final piece of the puzzle is handling the events. Shoutbase already has a powerful event system that we use for communicating with our client app via WebSockets, managing events relevant to other integrations (like Stripe), and passing asynchronous notifications and events between different parts of the Shoutbase API. I was able to create a new WebhookSubscriptionsEvents API that taps into the existing event stream and handles specific events for REST Hook subscriptions. When an event occurs that matches a REST Hook subscription in our database, we simply post the event payload to the target URL in the subscription.

REST Hooks was right for Shoutbase because we had a lot of the right ingredients already. We had a database to store REST Hook subscriptions. We had an existing REST API. And we already had a way of submitting, listening to, and handling events. It also filled the need to communicate in real time with Zapier to make more meaningful integrations. In the future, we hope to open up our REST Hooks API in Shoutbase for developers to create custom integrations with webhooks.

## Security

When data is passed from one system to another, security is always a concern. Before I conclude this discussion on REST Hooks, I want to clarify issues related to security because it is important to us at Shoutbase and [Olio Apps](https://www.olioapps.com/). The REST Hooks [documentation](https://resthooks.org/docs/security/) describes ways to implement the pattern with security in mind. I will list them here, as well as include my own suggestions.

1. Only accept new subscriptions and update requests from authorized sources. This may go without saying, but anonymous users should not be able to access or make changes to your API’s REST Hook subscriptions. You can use your existing API authentication to verify sources. Since the REST Hook subscriptions contain a user or account relationship, only the user who owns the subscription should be able to view or make changes to it.

2. Limit the events that are subscribable. If you have a system of events already in place, you may need to decide which ones are appropriate for subscriptions. Define which events can be subscribed to via REST Hook subscriptions and prevent subscriptions to unsubscribable, private events.

3. Never send sensitive information. This also goes without saying, but payloads containing private information should never be sent via REST Hooks. The docs recommend sending “skinny payloads,” or payloads containing little to no real data, but rather, a notification that an event has occurred. The client that receives the payload can then make a request back to the API for the new data. This ensures the client still has the proper authorization to access the data.

4. Be transparent about existing subscriptions to user accounts. The documentation for REST Hooks doesn’t mention this, but I think it’s important to note. Giving the power to the users to review and understand what subscriptions exist and where their data might be flowing will help ensure account security. If a user sees a subscription they don’t recognize or no longer desire, they can delete it. This is something I hope to implement in the Shoutbase App before we widen the scope of REST Hooks. We currently have something similar for managing OAuth authorizations in the Shoutbase UI.

By carefully considering and implementing the suggestions described above, REST Hooks can enhance your API without posing a risk to your users or your service.

## Conclusion

Integrating with other systems is not without its fair share share of complications. In efforts to make things appear seamless to end-users, a lot of heavy lifting has to occur behind the scenes. I prefer solutions that have three qualities: efficiency, effectiveness, and ease of implementation. In this case, REST Hooks fit the bill. We can now use REST Hooks to pass real-time data from events to webhooks and maintain those subscriptions via our REST API.


Reinforced Learning