Note: This post was co-authored by Emily Douglas.

For one of our recent projects, we developed a public-facing website that needed the ability to search through a large number of archived PDFs. This may sound trivial, but we had some unique needs and situations we had to work around (isn't that always how it is): More...

During a recent one-on-one session, I had a discussion with one of our engineers about her role as "build master" for one of our companies. In this role, she was responsible for building the initial project architecture, and setting up and managing most of the TFS build definitions. But as various project components changed, she had to make sure that any affected aspects of the build process were also changed. We talked about how we might be able to transition that role to someone else, like a new hire. She mentioned that it should now be more manageable because the job was more about maintenance than development. More...

The EliteForm team recently faced a tough problem, and perhaps you've experienced something similar. We're currently amassing loads of athlete workout video for further refinement of our PowerTracker product. PowerTracker, in short, is a hardware/software solution that uses video to analyze an athlete's form in real time at the rack. This provides never-before-seen athletic analysis. It's magic. It's math. It's processor-intensive. And it requires A LOT of time to test.

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"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein

In the world of software development, there are always religious arguments being made as to which method is best. Most people agree that Agile-based methods are the most appropriate for software development, but we stop short of saying this is always true. I have always felt the type of problem being solved and the personnel involved should dictate the method. Planning, constraints, and preliminary design should be tailored to the level of complexity and uncertainty of the problem, as well as the composition and maturity of the team involved. More...

During our work on the hardware-based, motion-tracking side of EliteForm, we started out in a heavy R&D mode. We went through a number of possible solutions and the process was prototype, prototype, prototype. Once our current technology passed our smoke tests, we needed to put it through several rigorous testing and validation cycles to see if it would hold up in the field. Luckily, that’s about the time we hired our Applied Mathematician, Josh. Yes, that Josh from MinutesPlease.More...

A common thread that I've noticed in several projects I've been on throughout my career is that reports usually come into play at the 11th hour and the engineering team has to draw straws to see who will go "into the unknown" of reporting. I think part of this is just the nature of an engineer's mind where we care more about how we collect, store, and present data, rather than trying to figure out what the data means. Another cause for this may be the fact that while we are professional developers, we may not be professionals in the industry our products are targeting and we just don't know exactly what metrics our clients want to get out of our software.More...

It's not too hard to imagine summer with all the spring-like weather we've experienced during the past few weeks (the recent cold-snap not withstanding). But regardless of what the calendar says, it'll be here before we know it. That means it's time to start talking about our Summer Internship Experience we'll be hosting again this year.More...

As a recent graduate from the university, I can empathize with the many seniors who are starting to think about what the next chapter of their life is going to look like. A key component of this is the decision about where to apply and ultimately decide to work. There are so many things to consider when deciding where to work, especially given the many opportunities available in software development. More...

VS2010 and MSBuild don’t provide a good way to deploy windows apps using continuous integration (especially to different environments). Over the past couple days I’ve wasted a lot of time manually deploying my apps to test them on dev. Brian Gansemer has talked about creating hooks for deploying ClickOnce apps as part of the build process, but I wanted to keep my apps as regular console apps. Here is the solution I came up with to automatically deploy my project. More...

If you’re familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s haunting film The Shining, then you surely remember the scene where Wendy finds what she thinks is the manuscript of Jack’s novel. Instead, she finds the following typed repeatedly over hundreds of pages: More...