Currently I am working on a project where we need to create Excel reports from a datasource. There are several ways to do this programmatically, but our first thought was to do this in Java. We actually abandoned this path later on and went for something with Nodejs, but I’ll share my thoughts on the Java road nonetheless. There are several Java libraries available which enable read-write of Excel sheet formats.

I truly believe coding software should be part of the curriculum of young people. Kids can learn to express themselves digitally. Currently the primary school that my kids attend does not have resources for this kind of tuition. So I decided to offer my assistance in organising two courses (2x 2 hours) in Scratch programming. Scratch is a visual programming language designed by MIT media labs in 2003. The kids were able to create some nice games in that timeframe!

I have started a small github project for hosting a demo test. In this project there is an Appium test for the TodoMVC app we built in earlier posts and this test can be run on Sauce Labs with accompanying scripts. First thing is to get a trial account at Sauce Labs. BTW, Sauce Labs, Inc. is at Microsoft’s Build conference right now and they have announced better support for Visual Studio (with a plugin) and the fact that Microsoft itself is going to support the same automation API (the JSON Wire Protocol).

By choosing for Cordova as an App container, most developers aim to build an app that should run on the iOS and Android platform from one codebase. In the last post I demonstrated how to embed a javascript React App in Cordova on the Android platform, now I will do so for iOS (on a Mac). A quick recap to make this work (repeating steps from former posts): In Part1 and Part2 (Android version) I used the ‘npm start’ command to create the concatenated javascript file bundle.

When I wrote this part of the series, I started it on a Mac. Along the way I had to write some of it on a different computer, running Linux. So I decided to change the contents a bit of this post. I will still get the App in a container, but I will show it to you for the Android platform as well as iOS. Part 2 will therefore be split in two (an Android part and and iOS part).

Everyone knows Facebook, the biggest social-networking site. It is one of the largest sites of the planet. For years they have run their site on a customized version of PHP, named Hack. Not so long ago they switched to an internal product for parts of their site. This product is called React, it is a JavaScript framework. It’s star rose quickly internally. The crux of the product is that it is a component-based, decoupled way of developing software, which is based on the best ideas from computer science about good design.

Last week I have done a presentation to explain to colleagues how they can use the CI and CD infrastructure I have put up for us. The image links to the presentation:

My blog has been running on the Wordpress platform for years. During the last year my development focus has been partly learning javascript and mobile development. As such, the time has come to put that knowledge to use in my personal projects. In the last couple of weeks I have migrated the old Wordpress platform to a new platform: Ghost It is pure javascript and is more focussed on pure publishing than Wordpress.

In the wonderful world of crossplatform App development it’s hard to do end-to-end testing and CI. We have been able to setup CI for the CHECK web application, and I wanted to use the experience to make it work for mobile as well. Those React mobile apps generally run in a Cordova container, not as a native app. Of course there is the React Native project, which will run directly through a javascript bridge, but for now we are still using Cordova.

So now you’re reading this trying to find out ‘who’s this guy with this weird blog!’. So that would be me then. Let me introduce myself. I’m married and have two kids. Started working in IT in the 90’s after a failed attempt to study Public Administration. I liked it so much, I stayed in the industry. Started as an administrator, got to developing and now I like both worlds.