What do you do to improve your work? An axe is probably not part of your regular toolbox but you have other tools that need sharpening. As developers of business applications we need to learn more about the businesses we work with as well as the latest most effective ways to write code. That could be in the form of education but also such basic things as upgrading the frameworks we work with.

Photo by Harry Cunningham @harry.digital from Pexels

This video got an interesting twist. Johan set out to figure out if there is a way to make clients better at explaining what they need, and the conclusion in the end was that the best way to do that is for us to learn how to pose better questions.

That also make sense in regards to the difference for large and small projects. Because in small projects you might only have a few questions that need answering. But in large projects there are often more questions then can be answered within a reasonable timeframe. Thus they get left behind and the final product have a higher risk of lacking important features.

It was many years ago that DataFlex started recommending SQL instead of the default native database. But there are still applications out there that run on the old record based database. In this video Klaus and Johan discuss pros and cons with the different options based on their experience over the last couple of years.

In this video Johan show how to migrate from DataFlex Native DB to SQL:
https://youtu.be/jsqD2ZAS_6M

Johan loves to cross breed ideas, because often the concepts are the same and the challenges that arise are very similar but you might think of different solutions depending on the context. Then you can try to migrate a good solution from one context into the other and you often have a new better solution for the other challenge as well.

Though it would be lovely to just work in isolation on your own system, the really great value of a system reveals itself as it starts to communicate with other systems. Even though the ways to communicate and the experience of developers and managers working with integrations has improved greatly, there are still a range of issues that can and do occur from time to time.
In this episode we talk about some of the issues that we have experienced and create a simple checklist to make sure we got all the information we need before we start.

Check list
————————————-
1: What interface (FTP, Webservice, Mail…)
2: Is the firewall/system open and listening for communications
3: Do we have the credentials we need
4: Who is involved in this project and what are each person’s role
5: Format and content (JSON, XML, SOAP, CSV…)
6: Frequency. How often and when should the message be sent.

Did we miss any? Feel free to complement the list in the comments below.

Who bought the last item in the shop? That is a question that developers run in to when coding booking systems and alike. But how do you get the answer?
In this video talk about some different situations you might face this problem and what options you have to solve it. Both on a database level and in the interface.

IT security experts has been warning us for several years that the online crimes are increasing and more and more businesses are getting hacked. In our work we see many systems that has been compromised and sometimes we get the task to restore or rebuild hacked systems. In this video Klaus is sharing some of the things he has learned about these hacks and how you could be more prepared if you end up a victim of one of these attacks.

If you are like me you wait to document stuff until you have spent a good amount of time trying to find some information about a system, for the second time… The same thing happend after being away from work over the summer and that triggered me to try to create a standardized template that I could use on every system from the start to keep all important and relevant information in one place, easy to access.

Since me and Klaus work together on a few systems I also wanted him in the boat and that’s the reason for this conversation. But if you get something useful out of this or have something additional we should include, we love to see it in the comments!

If you’d like to download the template, both the doc and txt versions are available here:
https://johanbroddfelt.se/downloads_s…

AI is coming and Johan have an early access account to GitHub, OpenAI and Microsofts new employee of the week, Copilot. So, now Johan is evaluating and playing around with it, to see how helpful our new little friend is.

In this video Johan and Klaus is exploring it’s skills in DataFlex and what it can do in languages it is actually trained in to let you see the power of this new tool.

For you who want to read more of the absolut latest of this technology can check out this blogpost: https://singularityhub.com/2021/08/15…

In the last episode of this miniseries about GIT we will look at how you manage your code when you have a new release while you got older code in production that you might need to maintain at the same time.

When everything is setup this is how you go about sending your updates to GIT and pull down updates that other developer have made to the code. This is enough for your own project if you are just playing around with some things and want to have the most basic version control of your code.

We are dedicating the summer to GIT. The video we did in November became one of our the most viewed. So, this summer we will release three detailed videos where we show our new process step by step. This is the first one where we setup a new workspace that is connected to GIT using BitBucket.

If you want to try out Fork, you can find it here: https://git-fork.com/

Online repositories that we have tried and use:
Bitbucket – https://bitbucket.org
GitHub – https://github.com

In this video Johan and Klaus share some war stories about issues that hey have encountered that perhaps was not the most obvious to find and get fixed. If you have any stories about issues that was tricky to debug then share them in the comments below or send us an email at info@frontiot.com and we might bring you on to the show to hear your story 🙂

Even though we usually try to keep track of tech news, Windows all of a sudden has released a version 11 of their operating system. We have not done much research on the topic, but we wanted to share our initial thoughs anyway 🙂

Is it time to look for a new job if you are a developer? Not really, but now you might need to spend a bit less time browsing the web for some code sample to copy and get it written by your AI pair programmer instead…

Link to the AI pair programmer: https://copilot.github.com/

If you want to get good coding samples directly in the top of your google search today, you can also check out the plugin Grepper at https://www.codegrepper.com/ a nice tool Johan uses almost daily to speed up the time looking for code samples on google.

Being forced to work remote has proven to have some benefits. We learned to use new tools and collaborate over video. Now as the pandemic seems to be more contained and we eventually might return to our old routine, do we really want to?

Join our conversation and tell us how your work life will change when this is all over. What new habits do you want to keep and what things do you look forward to doing?

If you have users writing comments in your system, you run the risk of getting content like spam and hate speech. How do you campat that in the best way? In this conversation we dive into the world of spam filters and the use of machine learning to identify negative comments.

What started out as a conversation about machine learning and face recognition turned in to an episode on different ways to login to systems. How do you prefer to login to systems? Have you seen any really good solutions? Tell us in the comments below.

When talking to my mentee Nicholas about marketing we landed on the topic of SEO. He has previous experience of SEO and marketing, but trying to apply that knowledge to his new project LuFu felt a bit backwards to what he used to do. This is a video where we try to rethink his old strategy in order find ways to apply it in this new context. Having the opportunity to look at a problem from different angles usually offers a great learning experience. So, we recorded it for your delight as well…

The IT giants are in a constant battle for attention and one of the latest moves by apple is to disable tracking by default. This is a direct blow to the business model of facebook and google. That use tracking, as a way to learn everything they can about their users, to be able to serv them the most relevant ads. But this not only hurt facebook and google, it also removes a cheap marketing channel for the businesses who by those ads, more or less disrupting the entire market.

What do you think, is this for the better or will it hurt the economy? How will this effect the market? Join the conversation in the comment section below…

It is said that 80 percent of the result come from only 20 percent of the work. Given that premiss we wanted to figure out what 20% we should focus on and which 80% we could replace with having coffee instead.

Which is the most important fifth in your work and what could you have other people do instead or scrap all together? Enlighten us in the comment section below =)

We did it. We managed to produce a new video every week for 6 months. Now we only have one year left of our little experiment.
In this video we want to share what we learned so far and some of our plans for the next half year.

Johan found a list of 7 types of finacial risks every business should prepare for and decided to evaluate our own business based on that list. Perhaps you want to join in and think about how these risks could impact your business and what you might do about it. If you do, we would love to hear your conclutions in the comments below and that might spawn ideas for further videos on this topic.

The easy answer is when all the requirements have been met. But what if you want to be perceived as a good reliable supplier and the customer hade expectations that you did not deliver on? You might argue that, then it was not a good specification. But if you want to get something delivered in a timely fashion, it might not be the best use of your time to start the project by burning the entire budget on specifications.

Join our conversation and learn how we manage projects and at the end of the conversation we realize that perhaps we are doing this all wrong. It is something we will investigate further…

LuFu is a startup making lupin based food, created by a group of students at Sten K. Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship at Lund University in Sweden. Since I’m part of the mentor program for that course I get to follow the progress of these students and review their progress in an advisory board setting and the students can always reach out to get feedback from any of the mentors in the program.

This time my intention was to give a few pointers on their design, but after reviewing and collecting screen dumps this became more of a brand design introduction, so I took the opportunity to make a presentation and a video out of it so that more students may benefit from this material.

When you think about ways to interact with your computer, perhaps a mouse, keyboard and screen comes to mind. But when you start to go down that rabbit hole there are many more ways to put and retrieve data from a computer. Join our little exploration down memory lane and peak into the future of interfaces.

As we are trying to learn more about our potential customers it is a good idea to take notes on good inspiration to content. This will make it much easier to brainstorm new ideas for content when that becomes important. In this video we explore different way to better understand the customer and things that could inspier to more and better content ideas.

As usual if you have any questions or ideas, you are more then welcome to post in the comments below.

When planning your marketing strategy it is a good idea to draw something like a funnel. Where you in the top bring customers in and then you follow them all the way down until they take the action you want. Then you can setup measuring points to see how well your channels perform and if they do what you want them to do.

Yes, I got it wrong, it is supposed to be Desire and not Descision. But in this video we focus primarily on the Attention part and we will probably dive deeper into the rest of them later.

The customer already have a solution to the problem you are trying to solve. Your goal is to catch them as they are trying to solve their problem, the same old way as they use to, and show them how your solution can provide a better outcome.

Perhaps you are starting a new venture, a project or you are just tired of relying on luck to find new customers. That is at least how Johan and Helen feel and they have now set out on a quest to learn more on this topic and share their knowledge with each other and with you. They are both just starting out and hopefully this will be a recurring segment in our casual conversations.

If you have any questions or thoughts about this topic feel free to write to us in the comments section below.

Sometimes customer ask for things that does not make sense. They might think they need it, but from your perspective the solution woun’t solve the problem. Do you still make the thing and let the customer discover that it did not get the expected result or do you suggest something that may have a greater chance to move the needle towards the customers goal?

Join our conversation on the topic, maybe you have some good examples or stories to share.

When you develop an application for a client that they pay for, you might expect that they own the rights to the code and the application. But looking at the law, it states that you as a developer is the author of the code and thus it is treated as a creative work made by you. This might not always be the best enterpretation and that is why it is good to have a conversation about this with the client, before starting the project.

How do you manage software ownership in your business? Join the conversation in the comments below.

Have you also noticed that we pay for more and more online? Just a few years back there was a big debate about open source, piracy of the media industry and law suits against sites like Pirate Bay. Now it seems as if the consumer end of the spectrum in regards to paying for valuable content is setteling online and it is time for the big fishes to figure out how they should work together in an ever globalizing online market.
Join our conversation in the comments below and share your thoughts on this exciting topic.

In this conversation we ponder the fact that things tend to follow the hype curve and the implications this has on businesses. We have seen a few hypes cross the peak of the hype curve through the years, and as ourselves when it is time to jump on the train. What is your take on this phenomenon and do you have a strategy for when to adopt new technologies? Join us in the comments below.

If you do not invest in new systems and new technologies you run the risk of falling behind the competition, but if you cut corners on security you run the risk of loosing it all. So, what are the things you need to think about and is there a good answer to this question?

GDPR was put into effect on May 25, 2018. And many businesses spent all that year going through their data and making sure that they complied with all the regulations. But what has happend since and were is this going in the future. Among other things there is a case named Schrems 2 that is putting additional preasure on some weak spots in the legislation and this might put some new regulations in place soon, we will follow this progress and keep you up to date.

The link to our quick guide to GDPR can be found at https://www.frontiot.com/en/gdpr-need…​.

If you have any thoughts or questions you want us to dive deeper into, let us know in the comments below.

You finished the application, it has been tested and the customer want you to release it right away. But you know you have taken some shortcuts in order to get the solution done in time and it would make it much easier when you get back to make updates a year later if you just could spend a fraction of the time right now, to clean up some of that mess while you have it fresh in your mind.

Do you, should you, who is going to pay? Join the conversation and share your experiences in the comments below.

Plugins are awsome, the can save you time, they can contain nice fetures that greatly improve the user experience, but they might also cause issues when you upgrade your framework or the platform you are running on changes.

In this conversation we talk about our experiences thoughs on using plugins versus writing your own code to solve complex problems.

When you have been writing code for a while and seen a few code bases you know that picking good names for variables and tables are important. In this conversation Klaus and Johan have a brief talk about naming conventions and if you get inspired just join in the conversation in the chat below.

Klaus have made some observations in regards to the need for Unicode and a 64 bit version of DataFlex. In this video he share a few stories that might help you decide if these new features are relevant for you and weather you might want to start migrating towards them as soon as they are available.

Is it a smart option to outsource or should you hire a new developer? What considerations do you need to consider when outsourcing a project and what trade-offs are you making? Join our conversation to learn what our thoughts are on outsourcing and tell us about your experiences in the comments 🙂

GIT is a useful tool not only used by developers to track code, but also lawyers that want to track changes in legal documents, poets who want to be able to go back to a previous version and chemistry researchers who collaborate on large chemical structures. Perhaps you might find your own use of the tool that has become the standard version control system for developers around the globe.

This is the second half of our conversation. To watch the first half go to
https://youtu.be/nUlTT5DPC_U​

Using social media as a marketing tool might feel like a lot of work and what would you post, who would like to read your posts and why would anyone care about you? Join our conversation with Helen Symington where we start to scratch the surface of social media and if you like this video and ask some questions in the comments, we will definitely do more in depth videos on this topic in the future.

If you want to do a screencast, we can recommend using OBS:
https://obsproject.com/sv/download

– This is the first half of this conversation, the rest will be published next week.

Using social media as a marketing tool might feel like a lot of work and what would you post, who would like to read your posts and why would anyone care about you? Join our conversation with Helen Symington where we start to scratch the surface of social media and if you like this video and ask some questions in the comments, we will definitely do more in depth videos on this topic in the future.

If you want to do a screencast, we can recommend using OBS:
https://obsproject.com/sv/download

Trust is an important part of good cooperation between people. High trust makes it easier to do business and collaborate on projects. Listen in and learn about the four variables that goes into the trust equation.

Albin Wisén is back and this time he share the begining of their journey, updating their system to the latest version of DataFlex. When we recorded this video, DataFlex 20 was still is in beta and Prosmart still have a list of external libraries and tests to do before they can close this chapter.

If you want to know more about DataFlex you can read about it at https://www.dataaccess.eu/​

There is also a video course at the DataFlex learning center on migrating to version 20 https://learning.dataaccess.com/cours…

How do you explain what you do? How do you differentiate yourself from other businesses doing similar things? Join us in this weeks conversation where we try to define what a business application is…

Have you ever started using an app that you just deleted after installing because the interface was awful? Are there any application that you admire for its seamless intuitive user experience? Let us know in the comments and hope you enjoy our thoughts on this topic 🙂

For this conversation we invited Albin Wisén from Prosmart to talk about a DataFlex plugin for the JavaScript library SyncFusion that has been developed by Wil van Antwerpen and PP7. It is a nice replacement for Codejock when you migrate your DataFlex application from Windows to the Web.

Here is a video where Will explan the plugin and the library in more details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0YaO…​

Read more about the SyncFusion plugin at…
DataFlex forum https://support.dataaccess.com/Forums…​
VDF-Guidance info page: https://www.vdf-guidance.com/ContribP…​

DataFlex Wiki: https://dataflex.wiki/​
JS Library page: https://www.syncfusion.com/

Do you make mock-ups, or do you just start to throw some code around until it looks good? Do you have any favourite tools, or do you live by pen and paper?

Do you struggle estimating it-projects? We do too. Join our conversation about what things you should account for and where things can go wrong.

Do you prefer to use framework or do you write your code from the ground? This week we talk about the pros and cons of using frameworks and libraries.Using a framework might get you started in a short amount of time, but is it the wise choice in the long run. What if the framework get discontinued…

Do you want to build an app for phones? Looking for developers, what stack to use or even what platform to pick? Then perhaps our conversation about mobile app development might give you some ideas on what directions to go.

Do you want to start a business based on a digital platform? Then our conversation about what is important on starting a business online might give you some inspiration for your next step.

Do you test your code? What type of testing do you do? Listen to Johan and Klaus talk about different aspects of testing and join the conversation in the comments below.

You know clean code when you see it, but how do you get there? There are many aspects and in this conversation we only brush over a few of them. So, we will probably revisit this topic a couple of times in more depth.

What do you do to kee your code clean, post all your tips and tricks as well as questions on this topic in the comments below.

We have been using version control systems since locked files and SVN. But todays tools offer much more flexibillity and Git give us options to work with code in new ways we have not really considered and used to its full potential yet.

Do you document your databases? If so, how? Join our conversation about how we look at documenting databases.

This is the first video in a series we plan to release on a weekly basis. We hope you want to join the conversation.
Now in the beginning we will experiment a bit with different topics, but depending on the feedback we get we hop that this will end up as an ongoing conversation in the community.