Software Engineering Daily

Access to education is something everyone strives for but not all achieve–especially education that leads to meaningful and well-paying work. In today’s world where software is eating all sorts of industries, access to a good technical education is still out of the reach of many people. Laboratoria is a social enterprise which teaches women from low-income backgrounds in Peru, Mexico and Chile how to code and helps place them inContinue reading...

Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning where a program learns how to take actions in an environment based on how that program has been rewarded for actions it took in the past. When program takes an action, and it receives a reward for that action, it is likely to take that action again in the future because it was positively reinforced. Michal Kempka is a computer scientist workContinue reading...

In its most basic definition, machine learning is a tool that makes takes a data set, finds a correlation in that data set, and uses that correlation to improve a system. Any complex system with well-defined behavior and clean data can be improved with machine learning. Several precipitating forces have caused machine learning to become widely used: more data, cheaper storage, and better tooling. Two pieces of tooling that haveContinue reading...

Software engineers have a skill set that can be applied to solve problems outside of a codebase. Analytical skills can be used to evaluate investment opportunities. Creative thinking can be used to build businesses. Communication skills can be used to build and enhance relationships. John Sonmez is a software engineer who created the Simple Programmer, a community of developers who discuss strategies around software, business, and life. He joined meContinue reading...

Every software company backs up critical data sources. Backing up databases is a common procedure, whether a company is in the cloud or on-prem. Backing up virtual machine instances is less common. Rubrik is a company that is known for building backup infrastructure for enterprises. Their main product is an appliance that sits on prem at an enterprise and stores snapshots of virtual machines running within the enterprise. If aContinue reading...

Shopify is a company that helps customers build custom online storefronts. Shopify has built upon the same Ruby on Rails application since the founding of their business 12 years ago starting with Rails 0.5 and moving all the way to Rails 5.   MRuby is a lightweight implementation of the Ruby language. Shopify made the decision to use mruby to allow customers to create custom scripts that are run everyContinue reading...

At Coinbase, security is more important than anything else. Coinbase is a company that allows for storage and exchange of cryptocurrencies. Protecting banking infrastructure is difficult, but in some ways the stakes are higher with Coinbase, because bitcoin is fundamentally unregulated. If a hacker were able to syphon all of the money out of Coinbase accounts, Coinbase would have no recourse–which means this is a more sensitive problem than theContinue reading...

Software deployment evolves over time. In the 90s, a “deployment” might have meant issuing a new edition of your software via CD-ROM. Today, a deployment is often a multi-stage process. A new software build will undergo automated unit tests and integration tests, before being deployed to users.  The deployment might only go out to a small percentage of total users initially, with that percentage going up as the deployment provesContinue reading...

A cryptocurrency exchange faces a uniquely difficult fraud problem. A hacker who steals my credentials can initiate a transfer of all my bitcoin to another wallet, and it is a non-reversible, non-identifiable payment. So it is really important to prevent those kinds of fraudulent transactions. At the third Software Engineering Daily Meetup, Coinbase director of data science Soups Ranjan explained how Coinbase stays ahead of fraudsters, and he describes someContinue reading...

Airbnb is a company that is driven by design. New user interfaces are dreamed up by designers and implemented for web, iOS, and Android. This implementation process takes a lot of resources, but it used to take even more before the company started using React Native. React Native allows Airbnb to reuse components effectively. React Native works by presenting a consistent model for the user interface regardless of the underlyingContinue reading...