When we started experimenting with Docker and Kubernetes, we were just looking for a more efficient way to stand up our applications. Traditionally, it’s an infrastructure or operations team’s responsibility to make sure every dependency an application needs to run is set up the server, and that none of them are in conflict — and then continue to ensure that throughout the life of the system. It’s also their responsibility to figure out which server the application need to go on in the first place.
It’s weird to call a process a perk, but our focus on reusable code is one of my favorite things about working at Table XI. Limiting ourselves to the absolute fewest number of components to build software is a challenge, and it’s one that’s made me a better developer.
Infrastructure is the framework running under your entire business — so it only makes sense that an infrastructure audit would look at the whole picture. If your infrastructure touches your email, applications, timesheets, employee communication and anything else, the audit should as well.
E-commerce is literally the most rewarding part of a web application — you can see money flowing into your company due directly to the code you have written. But dealing with payments and payment gateways is complicated and stressful. It's often the most complicated and precise business logic in a system.
I kind of didn't mean to go into development, which is how a lot of these stories start. I was a philosophy major finishing up school when I started learning Processing, a programming framework for building generative artwork and videos. Eventually I realized the programming part was rather enjoyable all on its own, so I went to Dev Bootcamp and spent 18 weeks learning Ruby. It was challenging, and I knew it was something I'd enjoy doing every day.
Then I just had to find a way to keep doing it.
Wondering which of the uncountable dozens of JavaScript frameworks to use for your next project?
At Table XI, we've become somewhat taken with Vue.js, a relative newcomer to the JavaScript framework.
In this video, Table XI's Zach Briggs joins Noel Rappin to talk about why to use Vue.js, and to give some examples of how it works.
We’ve been training our future competitors.
Code Platoon is a non-profit that teaches development skills to veterans, to help them transition back into civilian life and get quality jobs. A coding bootcamp for folks who have been to real-life bootcamp. The 16-week courses cover the full Ruby on Rails stack — the same technology Table XI uses — and equips veterans for paid coding internships, and hopefully from there a career. With the help of scholarships, Code Platoon offers all this for only $1,500, a fraction of what other coding schools charge students.
Money. It makes the world go round.
It’s also rather important to many web applications, in that it’s what we ask our customers to give us in exchange for goods and services. And when we do, both us and our customers want those financial calculations to be very precise. Even tiny rounding errors add up, given time.
The following is unfiltered Zach, as close to my thought process as anything I've ever put to pen and it comes with my potty mouth. As such, it is unlikely to reflect the views of Table XI.
I work at Table XI and that wasn't part of my plan. I had a system and Table XI fucked it all up.
All that gorgeous photography and stylized copy that makes your product sell so well — it’s also what’s taking precious seconds to load when you call up your site on a smartphone. You need rich media to properly showcase what you’re selling, but you also need your site to be speedy enough to load quickly on small screens and conform to web standards. Amazon estimates that every extra 100 milliseconds it takes a page to load cuts its profits by 1 percent. It’s not just that users won’t wait around for 10, 20 seconds for your site to load — Google uses site speed in its search rankings. Slow sites will take an SEO hit, hurting the odds of your customers finding you organically — i.e. without paid advertising.
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Workshops
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