Forem: Rich Kurtzman

Laid off? Do these 5 things immediately

Rich Kurtzman — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 18:12:53 +0000

Layoffs are coming fast and furiously to the tech industry.

According to CBS, tech companies laid off nearly 60,000 people in the month of January alone. Seemingly every day there’s a new layoff announcement, with Zoom cutting 1,300 jobs as the latest company to do so.

Layoffs have come from companies ranging from A to Z. Literally.

From Alphabet (Parent company of Google, 12,000) and Amazon (18,000 jobs) to Microsoft (10,000) and the well-noted Twitter layoffs (7,500) in October after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.

And when the biggest companies in the world are laying off employees, so are startups and smaller companies as well.

(Looking at job cuts in the tech industry from Jan. 2019-Jan. 2023. The massive spike on the right represents 115,000 layoffs since Oct. 2022.)

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 41% of job cuts in January were in the tech industry. That’s a huge number, but it also means folks are being let go from their jobs in other industries, too.

Retailers (13,000 jobs), Financial firms (10,600) and the Real estate industry (2,100) were all hit hard in Jan. 2023 as well.

Being laid off is scary

We know it’s always a possibility, but when you hear the words, “You’ve been laid off,” reality sets in quickly and questions arise.

“What will I do for work?”

“How will I pay my bills?”

“What about my insurance benefits?”

These are some of the most common and frightening questions that may come to mind.

But what can be more concerning is if you’ve been laid off and you are still owed money by the company.

Now what?

Here are three things you should do immediately to ensure you are paid by your (now) previous employer.

5 things to do immediately if laid off or furloughed and owed money

Check your state’s labor laws

45 of 50 US states require employers to pay their employees at least monthly, and some require payments bi-monthly.

Alabama, Florida and Pennsylvania have no requirements, while Montana and South Carolina have some unique rules. Montana’s is, “If there is not an established time period or time when wages are due and payable, the pay period is presumed to be semimonthly in length.” And South Carolina’s rule says, “The employer must pay on the normal time…” which is certainly vague.

Check your state’s labor laws and a good place to start is the US Division of Labor. This chart shows when you must be paid according to state laws.

Then, go to your individual state’s Division of Labor.

Here in Colorado, employers are required to pay their employees within 10 days of payday. At that point, employees can file for a Demand for Payment of Wages.

You may want to reach out to your employer before doing so, but don’t have to. Keep in mind if you are still employed and your paycheck is late, you can send a demand for wages, too. You don’t have to be laid off.

Send a Demand for Payment of Wages

If you’re laid off, you likely have an agreement with your employer to get your final paycheck.

However, if your company simply cannot meet payroll because it has run out of investor money, you may feel like you’re up a creek without a paddle.

Luckily, there are laws and legal demands set in place to protect workers.

If you have been furloughed, laid off or are simply not paid on time, you can — and should — send a Demand for Payment of Wages.

Here’s a link to the demand in Colorado, but head to your state’s Division of Labor website to find the appropriate demand where you live.

In Colorado, employers must pay their current or former employees within 10 days of payday or this demand can be sent.

And it explains, “…terminated employees must be paid immediately, with limited exceptions…”

Once you download the Demand for Wages, fill it out, print it and mail it to your employer. When you go down to the local post office, make sure to mail it certified so you can see when they received it.

The employer has 14 days to pay you from the day you send the letter (or text, email or call them). If they go longer than 14 days without paying you, the state will fine them up to $1,000 and in some cases, up to $3,000.

Submit a claim through your state’s Division of Labor

The Demand for Payment of Wages is communication from you to your employer.

But you can also file a labor standards complaint through your state’s Division of Labor.

If your employer ignores the demand you send them, the state will enforce the payment. Keep in mind it could take months to resolve, but most employers will likely pay once they see there’s an investigation at the state level into their business operations.

File for Unemployment Insurance through your state

Do not wait: File for Unemployment Insurance immediately.

The link for Colorado’s Division of Labor and Employment can be found here, and you’re encouraged to look up your own state’s DOL website.

Filing for unemployment insurance is a long, arduous and confusing process. Be ready to fill out lots of paperwork and make sure to read all the qualifications for being paid.

In Colorado, you’re eligible to receive up to $675 per week. While that may not replace your entire salary, the $2,700 per month will certainly help you bridge the gap between employment.

Ask your employer about insurance benefits

If you are furloughed — like a temporary layoff — you can continue your health benefits through your employer.

If you’re terminated, those benefits will come to an end. But, you will be eligible for COBRA benefits. Your employer has 45 days to send you a letter about COBRA benefits which will allow you to continue your current health insurance plan. The drawback is you will be forced to pay the entire premium, including what your employer used to cover for you.

The good news about COBRA is if you are forced to go to the hospital in between being laid off and receiving the COBRA benefits, you will still be retroactively covered back to the date of when you were terminated.

Another option besides COBRA is an individual healthcare plan. Discuss with your family to decide what option is best.

Why you should use Azure Database for PostGreSQL storage

Rich Kurtzman — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 17:37:07 +0000

January 13, 2023 by Mike Gearhardt, CTO @ Fathym and Trevor Richardson, Fathym Architect @ Fathym

In this article:

Azure container instances are not usable to store PostgreSQL databases
Changing ownership is not supported with PostgreSQL
Azure Database is a better production deployment target for PostgreSQL storage

Azure Database for PostgreSQL storage advantages

Azure provides a fully managed open-source database for PostgreSQL with up to 99.99 percent uptime, AI-powered performance optimization, and advanced security. However, different features of Azure need to be considered for storing your database.

Azure Container Instances is not a Solution

Azure Container Instances (ACI) is a service provided by Microsoft Azure that allows users to easily run containers in the cloud without the need to manage any underlying infrastructure.

Unfortunately, you can’t just use Azure Container Instances as a storage option for a PostgreSQL database.

PostgreSQL requires the folder in which the volume is mounted to be owned by a different user, not the “root” user. Azure Container Instances must use Azure FileShares as their volume mounts, and these do NOT support the "chown" command for changing ownership.

That’s why you can’t simply use Azure Container Instances as a storage option.

While you could potentially use Azure Container Instances to host a PostgreSQL database by building a custom container image that includes PostgreSQL, this would not be a recommended production deployment target because you would be responsible for managing the database infrastructure yourself.

Use Azure Database

A better option for storing a PostgreSQL database in Azure would be to use a managed service such as Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a fully managed database service that makes it easy to deploy, scale, and manage PostgreSQL databases in the cloud. It handles the underlying infrastructure and maintenance tasks, such as patching and backups, so you can focus on developing and deploying your applications. Additionally, it offers several performance and availability options that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your applications.

Overall, it is not advisable to use Azure Container Instances as a storage option for a PostgreSQL database due to the "chown" requirement of PostgreSQL. Instead, consider using a managed service like Azure Database for PostgreSQL to ensure a reliable and scalable solution for storing your database in Azure.

How to simplify QA by testing frontends in production

Rich Kurtzman — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 17:32:17 +0000

January 11, 2023 by Kim Loomis, Product Owner @ Fathym

In this article:

Understand software testing
Acknowledge the time, cost and effort related to using different environments
Test front ends in production environment

What is Software Testing?

Software testing can be a dreaded job. If this is what you do at a company, you are that alleged “speed bump” on the way to product release or mass production.

Let’s face it – your job is to find problems or to try to break stuff. Either way, it means that you are finding stuff that wasn’t created correctly or has some loopholes and you’re reporting it back to the creators. You’re “the messenger” or the “harbinger of doom.” No one likes to be told that they did something wrong, and they certainly don’t care for the person telling them so.

However, without software testing, it would be a horrible ordeal if you did go forward to product release or mass production. You would be putting something out in the wild that did not work. So, testers should be welcomed on the team and Software Testing should be a required, vital part of the development process.

A long time ago, a relative of mine worked at a large U.S. manufacturing corporation that made typewriters (machines that pre-dated computers). Testing took place before the machines were put together to ensure that the right parts were provided as well as after assembly, testing to check for binding keys, print quality, advance of the ribbon, and the movement of the carriage. Can you imagine if you hit the “e” key and it really printed a “z”? Anarchy!

The same is true with software development. We talk with the stakeholders at length to ensure we have accurately captured the requirements of what they want built. We hold architectural planning meetings to ensure that we have a well-designed plan to go forward with development. After development, Software Testing takes a hold of the software and puts it through rigorous trials, checking out both the most-used behavior and the lesser-known edge cases. It is one of the last steps made to make sure that you are ready to go forward and have the best chance of success with a product that works as expected.

How most companies test software

Testing software is part of a typical software development cycle.

To get started, most companies create a whole new environment to use for testing. This includes software, hardware, and network infrastructure. This can be costly and time-consuming as companies try to set up an exact replica of production. But without setting up an exact replica, the companies can never be 100% certain that the software will work in production.

Imagine building another house so that you could test new items for your house (your production house – i.e., the one you live in). You want a new HVAC system? You put it in the test house and make sure it will work. Does it properly cool and warm the house? Does it work well for the size and design of the house? Once the bugs have been wrung out of it, only then do you implement into your production house.

It seems a little absurd to do that, right? And, time-consuming. And you have two houses to maintain! That’s so expensive! And probably too expensive for almost anyone to do. The same is true in software. It is expensive to have a test environment that completely mirrors production.

With that in mind, organizations turn to testing on a small scale. They have a scaled down environment.

Instead of a million records, it has a few thousand. Maybe not all the services are turned on or turned up as in production. It’s a means to get a production-like environment on a small budget. And a much more easily managed environment, too, as it does not have all the same resources as production.

So, organizations have two alternatives. One, make an exact duplicate of production. That is expensive financially and from a management standpoint. Two, make a scaled-down representation of production. However, it may not be suitable for all testing and some things may get missed in the testing process. The organization runs the risk of putting out a buggy release.

Testing in production

Well, neither of those alternatives sound palatable. They are either spendy or inadequate. So, what else is there?

What about production? Can testing be done there?

To be honest, the rule of thumb is usually, “Don’t test in production!”

You don’t want your real users to be guinea pigs for new features or changes to existing functionality. You don’t want your well-running production application to suddenly be ladened with something new, just out of development. This is a poor practice.

Testing in production, though, sounds really alluring. Sounds easy and cost effective - nothing to set up, just use what you already have. You’d be testing with other production functionality and services. You’d be testing with production users and production data.

But…

And that’s a big ‘But’…

You could introduce problems into production and foul up workflows and processes. You could take down production altogether and be offline for an indeterminate amount of time. You could create a poor UI/UX experience for the users – users expect the product to work and when it doesn’t, it causes a real ripple effect. Users can get frustrated or angry that the software doesn’t work.

And worse, it will make them think the software is not trustworthy even when the wrongs are righted. You will have lost users’ trust. When users leave your product, you lose market share. That market share gets gobbled up by competitors.

Therefore, testing in production can be harrowing externally.

Internally, you could create a scenario where it is difficult to roll back. This could cause lots of rework, additional effort, and time by your development team to get the software back to working order. The development team may get frustrated or angry that they are having to fix things that worked. They could fix things and in the process of doing so, introduce new bugs. The developers could also become burnt out working more or longer hours.

And worst of all, a buggy release does not move your organization forward. No progress is being made.

Fathym Breaks the Rules

I’m going to say it right now, we test in production.

I will caveat that – Fathym tests front end changes in production on a QA path. Backend changes are still best to test in a separate environment, away from production. Front ends can change regularly as companies continuously work to improve interactions with customers by making small improvements and trying new ideas.

So. We. Test. Front Ends. In. Production.

I can sense the shocked faces. The cringing for our terrible practice. Perhaps even some praying for our wicked sacrilege.

But I also sense curiosity.

How does Fathym do that? And why does Fathym choose (willingly) to do that?

An Analogy

First, let’s look at this in a different way and give it more perspective.

Testing software in production is like taking a patient with a contagious disease to the main city hospital. The patient needs the care the hospital can provide. But you don’t want the disease the patient has to infect others in the hospital.

Traditionally, there are two options.

There is another hospital that is just for contagious disease patients. The hospital is an exact replica of the main city hospital. Same operations, same level of staffing, equipment and so on. While the patient may get an excellent level of care, that’s super expensive to have two hospitals. And likely, the hospital will never be fully utilized as the odds are that most sick people are able to go to the main hospital and don’t need this specialized center. Consequently, the cost per patient is extraordinary.

The other option is to have scaled-down operations somewhere offsite on the main city hospital’s campus. It’s a makeshift tent, with limited operations, personnel, and equipment. That’s probably not going to serve the patient very well. The patient may take a lot longer to get well. With so-so operations, the patient may infect others. Without the highest-level of care, the patient may never get well and die.

The solution is taking the patient into a “quarantined” part of the main city hospital, not the normal, everyday operational area. The patient takes advantage of all the things that are used by the hospital production but is just not in mainstream production themself. Once the patient gets well enough (i.e., passes the tests) to move to a desegrated part of the hospital, the patient becomes part of the normal production operations of the hospital. This is cost efficient, spreading the cost of staff, building, equipment and operations over a larger patient base.

The Engine

Let’s open the hood and see how testing frontends in production is done.

“We mimic what we have out in production within production,” says Matt Jackson, Fathym’s Quality Assurance guru, under which, software testing falls.

Are you still following?

Within the Fathym enterprise, there is a Production project and in there is a QA application. And within that application, there are several different routes configured. The routes represent several different large features of the Fathym technology portfolio. This includes our Create Project Wizard, Social Dashboard, IoT Ensemble, Habistack and many others.

So why don’t users see Fathym’s testing? That’s easy. These QA paths are all hosted on different paths than is what is shown in production.

Each of the Fathym developers is working on different development – some on new features, some on bugs, some on new products. Each developer will be doing their work on their own feature branch (that’s a generic term for a development branch).

Once development is done, the software tester sets up a different path for the feature branch. So, for example, when George the developer gets something finished and it is ready for QA testing, Matt the tester will create a route like “/qa/george”, deploy the feature branch on this route, launch the application and test all the changes.

That testing is “quarantined” to that route and that route is not exposed on production.

If testing finds a problem with George’s development, Matt will send the findings back to George to get fixed. George will fix them, build, unit test and create a new version. Because Matt already has the infrastructure in place to test George’s feature branch, all that is needed is to update the version. That’s done on the Edit Application page.

In this case, the tester would deploy the “latest” of the feature branch by clicking on the green Update Package button on that same page. Testing would take place once more.

If testing all passed, Matt would tell George that it was ok to merge this feature. George would create a pull request for this action.

Activity Feed

The activity feed will show on the right side of your dashboard. It is a super useful tool that helps you “see” all the activity for your projects. It’s a particularly convenient way to track all the activity across all the repositories your organization has. The feed aggregates the activity in the repos in this one location on your dashboard. This saves you from having to go to GitHub and jump around repos to see if anything is happening. It also allows you an easy way to navigate to repos related to each activity – a link to the repo is stated on each card.

As a bonus, the activity feed is dynamic and adapts to the level you are at on your dashboard. It will list all repos on the project level. On the application level, the feed is specific for the repo the application is using. That is controlled by the Source Control field in the application settings.

Let’s go back to the pull request that George created – the card for the PR would pop up in the Activity Feed on the dashboard, like the one pictured above.

At this point, based on the way Fathym has configured its best practice DevOps workflows, the pull request would require review by a senior developer – this would ensure that the feature is not introducing bad or poorly written code into the code base. The reviewer would not get a notification for this review, rather they would see the new PR pop into their own activity feed and click the blue “PR Details” button which would navigate them directly to the pull request in GitHub for review and approval.

Within the Activity Feed, the pull request would tell George (or whoever is viewing the dashboard) that the build is happening - this is indicated by the spinning circle on the card. If an action remains to be taken on the pull request, the question mark is shown on the card.

When the build is finished, the card on the activity feed would have a green check mark when it was done building successfully. Note – if the build was not successful, it would have a red X.

Once the request was done and the feature had been merged, Matt the tester would go to the Fathym production application, such as /dashboard, unpack the latest version of integration, which is what is deployed in production now, and the changes that George made would now be in production.

Developers Test in Production

This testing capability isn’t just for the QA department. Developers use these QA paths at times, too.

Sometimes it is difficult to test locally, or developed code looks or behaves differently when they are testing locally than when it is deployed. So, QA can set up their feature branch on one of the test paths, and the developers can go out there and understand how their code would look and behave in production. This allows the developer to be as “close” as possible to production and understand what their developed functionality will be like. This assists the developer with their unit testing and helps to ensure that their new code will not break the existing application.

Turning the Tables on QA

Fathym tests front end features and updates in production.

We do this because we created the software to do this. We faced this problem ourselves. It’s expensive to stand up multiple software environments. It’s time-consuming and resource-consuming. There is a whole orchestration of things that must take place to ensure the environments stay in sync. If they get out of sync, it can be a mess to get them back in lockstep. There is communication that must be done to ensure we know what development is in what environment. It takes a boatload of coordination to do software development and testing this way.

There is a better way to test frontends using the Fathym technology. Try this for yourself – learn more at Fathym.com.

How AI chatbots will replace human writers, coders and developers

Rich Kurtzman — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 20:25:09 +0000

Artificial intelligence is going to reshape the world we know in many different ways.

AI is being used to make calculations in autonomous vehicles, to do mundane tasks like create reports and in security like facial/gait recognition.

But, can a computer algorithm actually be creative, too? The simple answer is, “Yes.”

We’ve seen AI take prompts and turn them into small, simple art pieces. Dall-e isn’t perfect and isn’t even that great, honestly. But that technology is improving at an insane pace, as we see with Lensa.ai.

(This, from dall-e which is now craiyon. And you can see, it's not really what we were looking for.)

And speaking of art and AI, artists’ works are being fed into AI and then, basically, stolen.

What about writing? Well, ChatGPT was unleashed on the world on Nov. 30, 2022 and the writing it produces is actually human quality. It’s incredibly impressive, which is a scary prospect for writers.

AI defines AI

“Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines that can think and act like humans. It is an interdisciplinary field of science that combines computer science, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, engineering, and other sciences to create intelligent systems that can analyze large amounts of data, recognize patterns and relationships, and make decisions based on the information they have. AI has the potential to revolutionize many industries and is already being used to help solve complex problems in fields like healthcare, finance, and transportation.”

This was the answer given by AI itself, using ChatGPT.

What is AI writing?

ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, is currently in the spotlight.

Ask it to write a blog, it will. Ask it for an outline, great, there you go. It can answer questions, it can create tweet threads; it’s what many wish Google was in terms of answering questions.

Ask ChatGPT to write an episode of the Simpsons, and it can (albeit, not a fleshed-out, funny script).

Still, we’re talking human writing. It’s Detailed. Smart. Sophisticated and unidentifiable compared to a human.

For example, I asked “what is chatgpt” and this is what it spit out in about 15 seconds:

“’What is chatgpt’

ChatGPT is a conversational artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. It uses natural language processing and deep learning algorithms to understand and respond to user queries in natural language. ChatGPT is designed to provide personalized conversations with users, engaging them in a natural and human-like way.”

Read that again, “...human-like way.”

The point isn’t just to answer questions, but for a computer to take an insane amount of data, compute it, and spit out a human description back to humans.

That’s wild.

ChatGPT writing code

ChatGPT is not just writing, but used for writing code, too.

Here’s Replit using ChatGPT to write code and build a website in real time.

Which is really cool, sure. It’s fast, efficient and anyone can use it.

But what does that mean for website developers and their jobs?

Here, I asked ChatGPT to write the code for a website with a blog, gallery and shop with Shopify using React.

Here’s what it gave me:

That seems straightforward enough, and our CTO confirmed the "component looks right."

Blog on AI from ChatGPT and what it means for writers

And for writers, the future is similarly ominous. AI is already fantastic at writing and will only continue to get better.

Here’s a blog on AI from ChatGPT:

Wonderfully, ChatGPT even acknowledges the ethical implications of using AI here.

“Many people are concerned about the potential for AI to automate jobs, and there are also concerns about privacy and bias in AI systems,” ChatGPT itself wrote.

So that leads to this key question, which ChatGPT just explained itself: If ChatGPT can write this well, what does it mean for writers? Content creators? Bloggers? Will they all be replaced?

For developers, it’s a similar scariness: Will developers be replaced by AI?

And will writers be replaced by robots too?

How human writers can fight back

We’ve already seen AI disrupting the world of art.

Artists – both living and deceased – are having their artworks put into AI and then those artists are basically being ripped off. AI creates a style of art based on that specific artist’s work.

Sounds a lot like plagiarism.

And in the same way that workers on the factory floors are being replaced by robots, it doesn’t seem like a far leap to say humans will be replaced as writers in the near future, too.

Why pay a human writer to create content for you when you can get it generated by AI for free?

Companies can save thousands of dollars by “employing” AI to generate their written content. And that’s a hugely scary thing for writers.

So, what can writers do to fight back?

Simply, be yourself.

Your voice is unique to you.

Unless, for some reason, a person inputs YOUR writing into AI and copied it like with those painters/digital artists, your writing will always be yours.

Continue to write, read and learn. Improve your craft by taking notes. Set goals. Have fun.

Appeal to emotion

And remember ethos, pathos and logos. Of course, AI will know what those terms mean, but will it learn to communicate with them?

Ethos means an appeal to character, or establishing credibility. Pathos is the appeal to logic, or making a logical argument. Like, “AI can use machine learning to process information faster than humans. Computers process information more quickly than people because they have faster processors and a larger capacity for memory.”

And then there is logos. Logos is an appeal to emotion, which is what most debates are based on. In fact, this article you’re reading uses a lot of logos “...it is scary to think AI could replace human writers...” while also using logic, “AI is being used to make calculations in autonomous vehicles...”

While most arguments will use more of one appeal than another, almost all use a combination of the three to form the best argument possible.

But when it comes to an emotional appeal, it is something humans can do that AI can’t...yet.

Then the next question becomes: Do we want AI to understand our emotions and to then base arguments off of those feelings in order to convince us?

AI can’t create unique art every day, can it?

Ultimately, writing is inherently creative. Humans cannot simply create unique, new pieces of art every, single day.

Neither can AI. At least, there are some limits at this point.

Sure, you can put in the prompt “Write a blog about bunnies” and it will. But it will be only 233 words. And ask it to do it again, the same story comes out. Or at least, an incredibly similar one.

A human can and will adjust, take feedback and work towards the right goal. With rest, of course.

The positive side of AI chatbots

For tiny teams, or even one-person companies, this ChatGPT could be wonderful for creating copy of a website, helping with marketing copy and possibly even writing small blogs.

It’s incredibly fast, so the timesaving would be crucial for a small team just needing something to get off the ground.

Brainstorming

Another huge positive is the fact that writers can enter any kind of prompt which could help them brainstorm. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is write the first words to a blog, and then things start flowing like water from a wide-open faucet.

You can ask for a “blog” on a topic – which could be really helpful for topics you don’t know well – or even an “outline” of something convoluted. A writer could then copy and paste that outline into the start of a blog, book or anything else creative.

AI-assisted helpbots

Imagine being lost in an airport or foreign city where you don’t speak the language.

An AI chatbot could help you find your way – understanding your native tongue – decipher signs to help you know where to go and answer any other questions which may come up on your journey.

Similarly, one could hypothetically ask a chatbot how to change the oil in his car, or even do much more complicated repairs to it in the future, and that chatbot could walk you through the process.

AI and Machine Learning solving complicated problems

Another huge positive of AI is the ability to solve incredibly complicated, time-consuming problems for humans.

The way it solves those problems is with machine learning.

From Jay Selig at expert.ai:

“Machine learning is an application of AI that enables systems to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on developing computer programs that can access data and use it to learn for themselves.”

So, think of AI as the intelligence, the smarts of a computer system. The data.

But machine learning is how it uses that data to do predict future events or sound like a human. And simply, learn from the data.

AI-ML use case: Habistack Weather Forecasting API

Fathym’s Habistack, also uses a combination of AI-ML for weather forecasting, specifically related to road conditions.

Habistack combines the world's best weather forecasts with statistics-based, machine-learning techniques to tackle the largest datasets, including road weather. Habistack offers developers comprehensive weather forecasting capabilities over freely chosen locations and routes across the globe. The API delivers a unique suite of highly specialized forecast variables derived through statistically based machine learning models.

That data is all ingested into Microsoft Azure and into the AI, and then the machine learning uses all that data to create forecasts (predictions) based on that data.

What will the ethics of creative AI be?

Plagiarism is bad. Period.

That’s the first thing we’re all taught when we learn to write in school.

You can’t just copy someone else’s words or thoughts. That’s wrong.

So, will we hold AI to the same standard?

And if we don’t what will artists be able to do about it? How will a writer prove they’ve been plagiarized? Imagine the AI has hundreds or thousands of writers’ words plugged into it. It would be extremely difficult to prove those were your words.

And how could a writer find time or money to fight against those plagiarisms?

Will we one day have human vs. AI writers in bookstores?

Will humans want to become writers if AI becomes better at writing stories than we are?

And would people be more willing to read AI-written material, knowing it has the vast knowledge of everything inside of it, versus a human who has relatively little knowledge in comparison?

Of course, this is a new technology. There are more questions than answers.

But one can imagine a future – a not too distant one, at that – in which much of the writing we consume is actually cooked up by AI chatbots instead of humans.

And if it comes to pass, that will be a sad day in human history.

Narrative has been central to building and understanding our world as humans for hundreds of thousands of years. That’s why social media is so popular and why it’s our modern version of sitting around the campfire in the cave.

We must continue to write narratives, even if (when?) AI is better than us. Which seems imminent.

How ChatGPT and AI are already writing code, changing the game

Rich Kurtzman — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 23:12:57 +0000

AI is having a moment.

AI – or Artificial Intelligence for long -- has been a buzzword in the tech world for many years.

And how it’s been used to this point is more behind the scenes, everyday folks are now able to interact with AI and see how quickly it will transform our world.

Really, how it’s transforming our world right now.

Not later. Now!

So, let’s dive into first what AI is, and then look at three ways it’s changing how we think about art, writing, as well as how it works hand-in-hand with machine learning.

AI definition

OK, by now we’ve all heard the term “AI” thrown around. And like other technologies we’ve seen come and go, it’s touted as a technological revolution that will change everything.

But first, let’s define AI.

AI defines AI

This was the answer given by AI itself, using ChatGPT. More on ChatGPT in a bit.

First and foremost, this is a fantastic answer. Secondly, it’s been made to “sound human,” and does.

How does it hold up to a definition written by a human, though?

Human definition of AI

This, from Ed Burns of Tech Target:

“Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision.”

And he continues:

“In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing the data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states. In this way, a chatbot that is fed examples of text chats can learn to produce lifelike exchanges with people, or an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples.”

The two definitions are incredibly similar, and while one may prefer the human writing over the AI, another person may prefer the AI definition.

And, if you were to tell someone the first definition wasn’t written by a human, well, that’s a bit shocking because it’s so well-done.

3 Ways AI is already changing our world

OK, so we get the concept of AI.

Artificial Intelligence is what it sounds like: A computer which ingests a ton of data, then processes and organizes that data to create future predictions, including emulating human language. Of course, because it’s a computer system, the amount of information it can hold is many times what a human’s brain can hold, process and organize.

Therefore, it’s possible to envision a world in which AI-powered robots not only help us solve incredibly complicated problems, but also replace jobs in which critical, human thinking has always been needed.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is taking the world by storm.

The incredible AI chatbot, created by Open AI, not only answers questions but it does so in a human-like way.

That means, it’s very difficult – or even impossible – to know if what you’re reading was created by a human or by the chatbot.

From the Open AI playground:

“ChatGPT is a natural language processing (NLP) chatbot that utilizes the open-source GPT-3 language model. It is designed to generate human-like conversations and can be used for automated customer service, virtual assistants, and other chatbot applications.”

Simply, the technology is tremendous. This isn’t some half-witted design still in the beta phase, this is a polished, amazing chatbot which will only continue to improve in the future. In fact, GPT-4 is still in testing phase, but it will be out soon-ish.

Impacts of ChatGPT

So, on one hand, ChatGPT is incredible.

It can answer complicated questions in chatbots for humans.

We’ve all been there before; There’s a complicated question we have about our bill, and the chatbot doesn’t know exactly how to handle it. So, we have to get through many prompts before it offers up, “Speak to a representative.” And then the human on the other end understands what we’re asking and helps us through the issue.

That could be extended to kiosks in airports for international travelers, or even in an app which helps people get around a foreign place. And in many other applications.

But the downside is how good it actually is. Meaning, if a student were asked to write an essay on a topic, there’s no way a teacher would be able to know if the student wrote it, or if it were AI.

For instance, I asked ChatGPT to write a blog on AI. It gave a superb, detailed, amazing answer.

Wonderfully, ChatGPT even acknowledges the ethical implications of using AI here.

“Many people are concerned about the potential for AI to automate jobs, and there are also concerns about privacy and bias in AI systems,” ChatGPT itself wrote.

Simply, if ChatGPT can write this well, what does it mean for writers? Content creators? Bloggers?

If AI is so accomplished at writing, and it holds the knowledge of the entire universe inside itself: Why would humans become writers? How could a human be a better writer than AI?

And why would a child ever write their own essay when they can use this?

And this extends not just to creative writing, but into writing code, too. Which ChatGPT can do.

Here’s Replit using ChatGPT to write code and build a website in real time.

Will AI chatbots replace not only writers, but software developers? What are the ethics of employing a free program instead of a human, putting that human out of a job?

These are some of the questions generated by this sensational new technology.

AI-generated Art

Just like with writing, AI may end up replacing artists, too.

We’re talking painters, graphic artists and much more.

How?

Basically, the same way AI ingests words and uses machine learning to speak in a “human-like way”, the AI simply ingests pictures. Thousands and even millions of pictures.

But, if the artists didn’t give consent to use their artwork, is it ethical to use their style?

As written about in NBC on Dec. 6, 2022:

“Days after illustrator Kim Jung Gi died in October, a former game developer created an AI model that generates images in the artist’s unique ink and brush style. The creator said the model was an homage to Kim’s work, but it received immediate backlash from other artists. Ortiz, who was friends with Kim, said that the artist’s “whole thing was teaching people how to draw,” and to feed his life’s work into an AI model was ‘really disrespectful.’”

And from that same piece comes a tweet, calling out Lensa.ai, the application being used by many to turn their personal photos into AI fantasy art.

As you can see, the original artists signatures are still in the photos. In other words, that artist’s style was completely ripped off and the person’s portrait was generated in that style by the AI.

Prisma, who owns Lensa has responded on twitter saying, “AI-generated images ‘can’t be described as exact replicas of any particular artwork.’” Again, per the NBC piece referenced above.

So, just like with writing, visual artists are already questioning the ethics of AI using their artwork.

Besides Lensa.ai, there’s also MidJourney, which allows anyone to give their AI a prompt to create images like this:

Our mascot/logo at Fathym is Thinky the Octopus, and this is how we like to think he could look if he was in the “Pixar style” as one of our developers gave the prompt, “Octopus on a computer in Pixar Style.”

AI-ML

So, we’ve talked extensively about AI, but what about machine learning?

ChatGPT defines machine learning as:

“Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that enables computers to learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention. It is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses algorithms to analyze data and make predictions. It enables computers to learn from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning can be used for a variety of tasks, such as facial recognition, natural language processing, and predictive analytics.”

To give a human’s take on it, this, from Jay Selig at expert.ai:

So, think of AI as the intelligence, the smarts of a computer system. The data.

But machine learning is how it uses that data to do predict future events or sound like a human. And simply, learn from the data.

So, how is AI and Machine Learning being used together?

Well, for starters, the aforementioned ChatGPT uses AI and ML.

From Tech Crunch:

“ChatGPT works by using machine learning algorithms to analyze and understand the meaning of text input, and then generating a response based on that input.”

It should be noted that ChatGPT explained that itself.

Which poses the question: Can AI be biased? Can AI use machine learning to keep certain information from us if it wants to?

Who else is using AI-ML together?

Drone Express

Drone Express is, per Drone DJ,

“The last-mile delivery provider says it’s on track to become one of the first companies in the US to attain a Part 135 FAA certification for autonomous drone delivery. But doing so wouldn’t have been possible without Microsoft Azure hosting Drone Express’s AI solutions and training its machine learning models.

Drone Express trains its machine learning models by feeding them photos of obstacles and scenarios that the drones could encounter and teaching them to identify safe delivery areas."

Habistack Weather Forecasting API

Fathym’s Habistack, also uses a combination of AI-ML for weather forecasting, specifically related to road conditions.

That data is all ingested into Microsoft Azure and into the AI, and then the machine learning uses all that data to create forecasts (predictions) based on that data.

Conclusion, questions about AI and ethics

AI isn’t just something that will affect our everyday lives in the future. It’s something that’s impacting our lives today.

That’s both amazing and scary at the same time.

There are many more questions than answers at this time.

Some of them are:

Will AI chatbots phase out writers and other creatives?

Will AI chatbots be used to write code and therefore phase out developers, too?

What are the ethics of putting an artist’s work into AI and then creating art based on their works? Especially when the artists do not give permission?

Can AI chatbots be biased? And how would we know?

Should we trust every answer a chatbot gives us? Why?

And finally, are we ready for AI? Either way, it’s here to stay and will continue to change our lives in ways we haven’t even imagined yet. Both good and bad, unfortunately.

Composable vs. Modular frontends and how they work together

Rich Kurtzman — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 17:23:40 +0000

In this piece

Defining Modular frontend architecture
Defining Composable frontends
Explaining how they work together
Composable frontends can save companies in an order of magnitude by using no-code tools

For developers – whether working alone or within an enterprise – deciding to use a monolith or smaller, modular frontends is a solid starting point when building a web application or website.

Many enterprises have monolithic architecture, with legacy code. That makes it extremely difficult to make changes, updates and to scale as the company grows. So, some may want to transition from monolith to a modular approach one piece at a time.

Or, executives may decide to stick with the legacy code. The good news is all of those options are hostable on Fathym using our Microsoft Azure provisioned cloud.

And while we support either journey, let’s dive into how you can use Fathym to easily assemble applications with modular architecture and composable frontends.

What is modular architecture?

In the modular approach, Fathym uses “routes” which allow you to run as many micro apps or pages as you want under each route. Think of a route as a subpath of a website. And since it’s modular, each app/page can be created by a single developer or by a separate team.

For instance, with a /blog route, you could put multiple different blog pages inside/underneath it. Like: The blog home page, blog1, blog2, blog3, a list of content links on another page, and even a photo gallery on another page - all under that /blog route.

“Each app/page under a route is its own NPM package or GitHub repo,” director of engineering Jeremy Tomlinson explained. “That means you can use separate teams. It also means no more blocking!”

We host each route, app/page independently on your domain. We host each route independently as a sub directory on your domain. That means no more subdomains, or awkward proxies and redirects to map subdomains to your main site.

To the end user, all the routes (blog, pricing, docs etc.) seem as if everything is written in the same monolithic codebase. However, it’s not, which means the codebases are smaller and therefore easier to update, replace, change, scale and fix bugs!

What it looks like

Think of modular frontends as a way to build frontends, UIs and UXs. It’s the architectural style.

This is what a simplified website would look like using modular frontend architecture:

Imagining modular frontends being similar to modular housing

Modular frontends is a major change to the web development world, just as modular homes are in the world of home building.

Modular homes consist of smaller pieces which come together to form the whole house. They’re a new, innovative way to streamline the homebuilding process; each piece is built in a factory, then shipped to the site where it’s quickly assembled.

In opposition is traditional homebuilding, from the ground-up. In that way of building, a foundation is laid and waited on to dry. Then everything is framed in before adding insulation, windows, siding and a roof. At that point, the focus turns inside, where flooring and fixtures are finished.

Now if we imagine that traditional house being monolithic architecture, we can see how a change to one thing can affect the entire structure. You can’t just move a doorway if it’s in a load-bearing wall. But in a modular house, you have more freedom to change one part of the house without disrupting the others.

That’s one benefit to modular frontends, too; developers can change one piece of the site or app without worrying about breaking the code in another section. But, let’s go into the other benefits of modular architecture.

Modular architecture advantages

Individual, independent, smaller frontends.

Smaller, more cohesive codebases. This makes them easier to maintain and change, too.

Multiple teams or multiple individuals work on their own projects concurrently.

This means smaller, incremental deployments. One team isn’t waiting on another team to push their updates.

Allows for scaling teams as needed.

Give the ability to rewrite, change or update parts of frontend incrementally. This means fixing bugs or changing features of part of the site doesn’t force the entire site to be down for maintenance.

So then, what are composable frontends?

In the modern world of composable applications, most of that composability is often presented at the headless, API layer. Fathym facilitates that but also believes there should be true composability on the frontend, presentation layer too.

They are GitHub repos, NPM packages, zip files, etc. which are put together in any combination the developer – or citizen developer – wants to use. That means the freedom of using high-code, low-code or no-code all together, or choosing to use preferred strategy.

As you can see, businesses can choose the best approach for each piece of their website or app.

You may need to use React, which is robust, to create the homepage using high-code. And then, thanks to its lightweight design, Svelte could be a great solution to the blog. Use a low-code tool like Docusaurus for your docs. And then, in this example, use Angular for the behind-the-scenes dashboard.

Really, the options are limitless with how you want to compose your frontend, and the use of no-code tools – like Plasmic – allow you to assign a project like building a blog to someone with zero coding experience. That not only saves resources in terms of the developer’s workload, but it also saves time because no-code tools allow for quick creation of projects thanks to templates and their drag-and-drop workflows.

How modular and composable frontends work together

That’s how modular and composable frontends work together. Modular refers to the architecture developers can build frontends on top of at Fathym. Modular frontends are smaller frontends and smaller codebases which set developers up with easier changes to codebases, quicker deployments and simpler bug fixes.

Within Fathym’s composable frontend architecture, you can use any JavaScript framework (and even some other frameworks) to build one aspect of your website. And then, if you wish, use a different framework, or a combination of high-code, low-code and no-code builders to build other parts of the site or app.

Join the composable frontend revolution

“Bringing a series of no-code tools together to make an application can take your total application cost from $100,000 to $100. That's insane,” Fathym CEO Matt Smith explained recently. “That's a collapse in the world of technology. That's a revolution.”

Exactly.

Within composable frontends, businesses can choose to only use no-code tools in their new site or app. That means more collaboration between team members, it gives ownership and ability to move the project forward for “citizen developers” and ultimately saves both time and money.

“Composable frontends and no-code tools – plus Fathym – allow you not to have a DevOps team,” Smith continued. “They allow you to start getting more done faster for far less money. We're not talking like $5 less. We're talking in an order of magnitude.”

High-code vs. Low-code vs. No-code | Which is right for your web project?

Rich Kurtzman — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:29:24 +0000

To code or not to code, that is the question...when you’re building a website or webapp.

That is, if you’re using modular and composable frontends., or working in a monolith. It’s a decision you have to make.

One of the benefits of composable frontend architecture is you can use high-code, low-code and no-code tools, or any combination of the three you’d like.

Below is a picture of how a website built in high, low and no-code together would look.

So, let’s dive into what each term means.

High-code vs. Low-code vs. No-code

In the world of web development, there are three classifications of tools: High-code, low-code and no-code. What are they, which is best and which is the best fit for your business?

What are they?

High-code

High-code refers to a developer using JavaScript (or another programming language) to create something from scratch or by using some open source solutions, too. That takes a lot of work as well as expertise in building a site or web app after starting with a blank screen. It’s a time-consuming process, of building and testing and then fixing bugs. But Fathym certainly supports that workflow.

High-code is used by experts, the developers and coders. The benefit of using high-code is being able to design and create whatever is needed and wanted by the organization. There are no limits, or at least, very few limits to what can be created.

Of course, pushing boundaries and limits comes with its own issues, like breaking the codebase or implementing other bugs accidentally. Building a site or app from scratch means doing a lot of research – Stack Overflow is a popular reference – and it requires a lot of testing and debugging.

The benefit of using open source is its timesaving ability. Why build something when someone’s already built it for you?

Furthermore, Fathym supports businesses and individual developers who want to use high-code by using modular frontend architecture.

What that means simply is smaller frontends. There are smaller codebases per “route.” Think of a route as a subpath of a website, like /docs or /blog. Smaller codebases mean less time to build, quicker deployments and updates, and faster bug fixes, too.

Plus, when modular frontends are being used, updates to one route will not impact the other routes. For enterprises who have complex web development teams and subteams, this means multiple teams (or individuals) can work concurrently, which is a time and money-saver.

Examples of high-code tools

React
Angular
Svelte
Next.js
Vue
Nuxt.js

Low-code

Low-code refers to tools which take much less knowledge of programming to use than high-code, but there is still a barrier to entry. Low-code tools are great for people who are somewhat technical and/or those who can lean on teammates who have more experience.

Low-code tools are almost best defined in opposition of high and no-code, which are on the ends of the spectrum. High-code means using the actual JavaScript (or another language) to write everything, while no-code means not needing to use any code. Therefore, low-code means using some code, and having some processes automated.

Low-code development platforms have been created as a way to allow for quick creation and use of working applications that can address the specific data needs of the organization as explained here.

Simply, low-code tools are used to 1. Save time in creation of applications and 2. Lower the bar in terms of experience needed, which enables “citizen developers” to work alone or alongside devs.

And one key advantage it has over no-code tools is that, while both low and no-code use pre-created templates at times, low-code tools allow for some changes to be made to the code. That adds the ability to customize.

A look at Docusaurus for our blogs.

Examples of low-code tools

Docusaurus for our docs and currently our blog, too.
Pixiebrix
Mendix
Appian

No-code

Finally, no-code means what it implies: No code. There is no need to know, understand or learn code or how it works.

No-code tools are usually visual builders or design programs which allow anyone – with any experience – to design and build a website’s frontend or a web app’s user interface. Then, the no-code tool takes those designs and creates the code, allowing users to integrate it into their codebase. Read more about the positives and negatives of no-code tools from our previous blog, here.

No-code is really where the rise of “citizen developers” come into play. Simply, anyone from baby boomers to kindergarteners can build websites and web apps with no-code tools. That’s the reason makers are embracing them.

The reason businesses are adopting them is simple; they save money.

No-code tools save enterprises money in many ways. First and foremost, they allow employees who have zero technical experience to take on tasks which developers would have had to do in the past. For instance, the marketing team can use a no-code tool to make their own blog. Increasing the productivity of employees is huge here.

Second, you don’t have to start from scratch with a no-code tool. There are templates which allow you to jump ahead and see a faster time to delivery.

Finally, no-code tools can help automate some processes, eliminating a task for an employee and freeing them up to work on something else.

Of course, there are some downsides to no-code, like the potential of being locked into a platform and much less freedom than using high-code to build a user interface.

Clearly the positives outweigh the negatives in the no-code world, though. No-code tool usage is expected to grow through 2025.

And picking no-code tools with open hosting abilities is crucial, so you can export the code and bring it to Fathym’s modular frontends.

A screenshot of Plasmic.

Examples of no-code tools:

Plasmic which has open hosting
Figma which allows code exporting with plugins
Squarespace (locked in)
Shopify (locked in)
WordPress which can be used in a “headless” way

Now, with Fathym’s composable frontends, you can use all three – high-code, low-code and no-code tools – together in one website! Or, simply use your favorite of the three; like a website completely designed and built with only no-code tools.

Which tool is right for your business?

Picking which way to go to build your website or web apps is dependent on many factors.

How big is your team?

If you’re a one-person show, no-code is probably the best way to go. You can put together an online presence in the matter of a day and continue to build in public as you go. Bigger teams have more resources, so it may make sense to use developers for your project in that instance. However, keep in mind the concept of “citizen developers” who may be able to use no/low-code tools to increase productivity.

What is your timeline?

Is this a long-term project or are you in need of something sooner rather than later? No-code and low-code will accelerate time-to-delivery and help get a project over the line more quickly than high-code, with those caveats stated above. Keeping in mind also that scaling up can be difficult within certain no-code tools, especially the ones which lock you in to their hosting and their options.

What is your end goal?

How highly customized do you need this site or app to be? If it’s very much so, high-code will be the best way to go. But keep in mind there are lots of different no-code/low-code tools and each of them have their own templates. Some offer a solid bit of customization, too. Longevity is a factor here and high-code gives the most freedom and flexibility in terms of being able to make wholesale changes in the future.

What is your budget?

High-code is the most expensive way to go because you will need to either hire or utilize your developers’ talent and time. Each option will require a design phase, however some no-code tools allow you to do that part and then push it right into code. Plasmic and Figma are each this way. As they say, time is money, and both no/low-code tools help get products out the door faster.

Whether you’re using high, low, or no-code tools, you can try the modular and composable frontend approach with Fathym.com today.

Advantages and disadvantages of Nuxt.js

Rich Kurtzman — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 20:58:01 +0000

Developing a website should be a fun, freeing experience.

Freedom to pick whatever framework you want to use, based on what you’re building.

With Fathym’s modular approach, we use “routes” which allow you to run as many apps or pages as you want outside of your monolith. Think of a route as a subpath of a website, like /docs or /blog. Your monolith may contain your main site and some routes, but with a modular approach you’re not stuck in the monolith. Each route and its apps can be created by separate teams using different frameworks.

Adding to that, it only makes sense to use a composable frontend architecture. Use any JavaScript framework to build one aspect of your website and then use a different framework to build other parts of the site.

Composable frontends are a game-changer for how people can develop websites.

So, in the spirit of spreading the composable frontends – which you can use with Fathym’s new UI – we take a look at one of the newer frameworks out there in Nuxt.js.

Nuxt.js popularity

One of the reasons we decided to dive deep into Nuxt was how it jumped up in terms of popularity over the last year.

Looking back to JamStack.org’s survey from 2021, Nuxt.js wasn’t even on the list of most-loved/dreaded frameworks. But fast-forward to this year and Nuxt is solidly “loved” at ninth on the list with a 64.15% “loved” vs. dreaded number.

Via our blog on framework popularity for 2022. Framework popularity is important for multiple reasons.

First, if you and your team are working on a long-term, big-time project, you want to make sure the framework you’re using is going to be around throughout the entirety of the process. Imagine starting an important website build and the framework suddenly falls off the face of the planet, that’d be a nightmare.

Next, that popularity guarantees more developers know how to use that particular framework. If your first developer leaves, you should be able to fill their spot with another team member. Or, in the case of our modular frontends, you may want multiple team members on the same team who know that same framework. They can collaborate and help one another build something special.

And if your company expands, you will be able to find new developers who use that popular framework.

So, let’s dive into what exactly Nuxt is and what it offers.

What is Nuxt.js?

Nuxt is a JavaScript framework and it was built on top of Vue.js. It gives a simpler way to create universal or single-page Vue apps.

Nuxt also promises to enhance SPAs’ SEO scores with a combination of client and server-side rendering. Nuxt is also hailed for how well it performs with mobile SPAs in particular and the experience brought to users there.

Something that sets Nuxt apart from the others, though, is the way it comes with the ability to generate static websites out of the box. That’s a huge deal to folks looking to hurry up and just get a site out there. Static sites are simpler and won’t fit every type of website needed, but they can be used for things like blogs that are only a few pages or promotional websites which will be up for only a certain amount of time. Again, static sites are great for security, too because they’re not connected to the server or any information.

The other thing Nuxt does is minifies the size of your apps with automatic code splitting. They come in at a lightweight 57kb.

So, why would you use Nuxt.js instead of Vue.js, which it’s built on top of? Nuxt.js helps with building faster and more efficient Vue apps for the reasons we mentioned above.

Nuxt.js advantages

SEO improvement for SPAs
Mobile app performance
Comes with ability to create static websites out of the box
Static sites, again, have great security
Enterprise-ready compared to Vue.js
Automatic code splitting

Nuxt.js disadvantages

Lack of common plugins
High traffic on your site can cause server strain
Debugging is difficult
Small community behind it

Conclusion

Have you tried Nuxt.js?

Well, you can on the Fathym Platform today for free!

If you have, maybe you want to evaluate Nuxt.js alongside other frameworks like Vue, React, Angular or Svelte.

Or, build an app with Nuxt.js for one route – maybe your homepage – and then use no-code tools alongside it for another route – a blog, perhaps? The options are limitless for developers, so choose your own journey today.

5 reasons devs should be using modular frontends

Rich Kurtzman — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 15:43:36 +0000

Monolithic architecture is like, so 90s.

Step into the 2020s with modular frontend architecture and reap all the rewards along the way.

In this piece, we’ll break down what modular frontends are, and then give all the benefits they bring to individual developers and businesses alike.

Modular frontends definition

In the modular approach, we use “routes” which allow you to run as many apps or pages as you want under each route. Think of a route as a subpath of a website. And since it’s fully modular, each app/page can be created by a single developer or by a separate team.

We host each route, app/page independently on your domain. That means no more subdomains, making your site easier to find by customers and better SEO.

Benefits of using modular frontends

We just shared a few of the benefits of using the modular approach, but here’s a complete list:

Individual, independent, smaller frontends

We’re not anti-monolith – you can host a monolith frontend on Fathym – but there are certain advantages to smaller frontends.

For instance, that means smaller, incremental deployments. And incremental deployments mean a smaller likelihood of big-time bugs when deploying.

The independent teams means one team isn’t waiting on another team to push their updates. Teamwork makes the dream work, and this workflow helps not only in keeping the site moving forward in its evolution, but also keeps teams working alongside one another in harmony.

Multiple teams work on their own projects concurrently

Businesses almost always have multiple goals they are trying to achieve all running at once.

Similarly, websites aren’t simple, one-page applications anymore, either.

Today, websites almost must be complex in order to meet goals and to impress customers as they visit.

Let’s say you’re a photographer, for instance. You’ll want a homepage, a contact page, a newsletter signup page, a gallery for all your photos (of course), possibly an e-commerce page to sell prints of your photos, a shop with many pages to browse your works and the list just goes on.

Or maybe you’re a company who focuses on selling film cameras. That e-commerce page/shop would include all the different, unique cameras you find and sell, all the film they use, and it may even offer equipment for photogs to develop their own film. In that instance, you’d probably want a place for customer feedback on your site with reviews, a page with all your social media accounts listed and linked, as well as a blog to give updates to your customers.

Whether your team is small or large, using modular frontends means you can divide and conquer. Have a marketing team working on your blogs, shop items and newsletters. Have a photographer on staff sharing pictures of the new cameras, film etc. And maybe an accountant needs to look at sales, setting prices etc.

All those folks can be working concurrently on their own projects, in their own part of the site, without slowing one another down.

Imagine a hive of bees.

Those worker bees go out to find the best pollen they can, searching close by as well as far away, in some cases. Each worker bee is tending to their own task, and then they’re bringing it back to help the entire hive.

Those bees work in a modular fashion and have discovered the “divide and conquer” workflow, and so have we.

It allows smaller teams, like ours (and yours!), to accomplish big tasks and goals in short amounts of time.

Simply, modular frontends allow for a more efficient approach to web development.

Allows for scaling teams as needed

Modular frontends certainly help with scaling teams.

Almost no one gets into business looking to stay a one-person show forever. We want to grow, scale, and succeed.

As your business grows, your website needs to have the agility to be able to scale along with it.

Need to add a new page or route to your website? Modular frontends allows you to do that at any time. And because the routes and pages are independent, it means you don’t have to figure out how to fit it into the old, giant codebase.

Simply add a new route in the Fathym Platform and choose your own adventure. Use no-code tools like Plasmic to create awesome marketing pages, blogs and more. Use low-code tools like Docusaurus to create tutorials or docs. Or use JavaScript like Svelte.js to create something dazzling from scratch.

It’s up to you.

Smaller, more cohesive codebases

We touched on this a bit in a previous bullet point, and now we’ll dive in further.

Monolithic codebases are usually bloated, old and difficult to use. Adding a new feature, page or app can create huge headaches, bugs or even take out the entire site.

Modular frontends have smaller codebases by default: Because you only need that codebase to run that route.

Smaller codebases make each one easier to maintain and change, too.

They give developers and citizen developers – depending on the tools – the ability to rewrite, change or update parts of frontend incrementally. This means fixing bugs or changing features of part of the site doesn’t force the entire site to be down for maintenance.

Modular frontends with one framework

This is an example of how a website could look by using only React.js in the modular approach. React powers each route of your site, and you’d likely want different codebases directed toward specific goals for each one.

Clearly, you’d want the “root” in this example to have a robust, beautiful UI/UX. There will likely be links to all kinds of other pages on your site. The blog has its own criteria; it needs to have a specific UI/UX, a pleasing design, clickable blog links, a search bar etc. The forum would be the simplest of the three in the above example.

Within modular frontends, it pays to have different, smaller codebases for each, individual route.

Combinatorial approach within modular frontends

Another option is you can use whatever combination of high-code, low-code and no-code tools you want within the structure of your website. And end users will probably not even have a clue.

For instance, you can have the homepage designed and written with Plasmic (no-code tool), your blog built with Gatsby (low-code), your docs in Docusaurus (low-code) and your administrator pages created from scratch in React (high-code).

If you don’t want to build a blog from scratch, simply plug-and-play with Gatsby. The same goes for a docs route; Docusaurus is an easy, straightforward solution there.

Being able to use no-code tools also empowers the “citizen developers” on your team to do more.

Modular frontends visualization

This graphic helps bring it all together. Not only are you using a combination of tools together for the site, but you can see how the independence of the teams works, and how each update isn’t affecting the others.

Conclusion

Modular frontends are fun and functional. They are powerful and flexible.

The limits to how you want to build your frontend are only your imagination.

Try today at Fathym.com.

How the NFL uses biometrics to excite fans

Rich Kurtzman — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 21:15:46 +0000

In this piece:

Biometrics means to measure physical and behavioral characteristics
Biometrics have been used in the NFL since 2017
A look at the different ways the National Football League uses biometrics to help entertain fans

The world of biometrics and where the National Football League meet is not new.

In fact, players have been getting tracked by biometrics readers since 2017. Over the last five years, the NFL has been using that data in fun and exciting ways to thrill their fans.

Biometrics definition

Biometrics means the measurement of physical and behavioral characteristics. They’re tracked by wearable sensors; like smartwatches, smart wristbands, smart clothing and more.

Then, that data is stored – for the NFL by AWS – and then analyzed or run through machine-learning algorithms to give all kinds of amazing statistics, rankings and more.

Biometrics and the NFL

Since 2017, the NFL has been able to put out awesome stats around the physical abilities of their players. We can now see exactly where a player ran on the field with GPS. The WHOOP monitors look at a player’s heart rate and even heart strain, and they tracked Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ heart throughout the 2020 season.

But, let’s take a look at how the league is using the data from those sensors to bring something new to fans.

NFL Next Gen Stats

The league created NFL Next Gen Stats and partnered with Amazon AWS to give fans a whole new way to appreciate and follow the most-popular sport in America.

Let’s look at some of the ways they use the data from the sensors and algorithms:

Fastest players

The NFL displays the speed of their players through NFL Next Gen Stats, showing off the fastest players hitting 20-plus miles per hour.

While there are many fast players in the NFL, knowing the exact speed gives fans something better than “he’s fast!” to say, plus it provides some bragging rights.

See the results here!

Showing where players run on the field

This one is pretty amazing.

Not only does it show where one player ran on the field, but it can show all the players moving at once, giving their exact location with GPS data.

The below carry chart shows where each one of Miles Sanders’ runs went on Monday Night Football in the Eagles win over the Minnesota Vikings.

This next chart shows everywhere wide receiver Courtland Sutton lined up in Week 1 against the Seattle Seahawks, where he caught his four passes and yards after the catch, too.

Interestingly, the Broncos lined him up at all four wideout spots during that Week 1 loss.

All kinds of information can be gleaned from these charts, including the simple fact that the routes players take on the field can be incredibly complex.

“Stat That” stats

Finally, if you’ve seen an NFL game this year – or for the last few years – you've probably seen the “Stat That!” ad campaign.

While speed and route charting are relatively simple, Stat That is the group of analytics which need machine-learning and algorithms to calculate.

There are multiple different stats created with the algorithms, including: Passing score, 4th down decisions, completion probability and running yards expected.

Passing score is important to fans because the quarterback is the most valuable and highest-paid player on almost every team. How well is their quarterback doing? The score helps determine that.

4th down decisions are some of the most-difficult ones to make for head coaches. Games can be, and have been, decided on either going for it or not on 4th downs. Next Gen Stats shows which is the right way to go.

Completion probability takes into account the quarterback’s accuracy, his position on the field, if he’s moving or not and more for part of the calculation. Then, they also evaluate the receiver’s position relative to his opponent (separation), catching ability and more.

Finally, expected rushing yards is calculated by looking at the running back’s speed, location on the field, the direction of his blockers and the defenders.

All of the above is because of biometrics!

Conclusion

Our team at Fathym is chock full of football fans. Especially of our hometown Denver Broncos, although the Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers and Las Vegas Raiders are represented as well.

But more importantly, Fathym is diving head first into the biometrics world.

Over the next few months, we’ll be bringing you content about how biometrics and sports intersect, about an exciting company we’re working to partner with called EmotiBit and even how biometrics has a chance to change the world for the better, soon.

How can biometrics help you be healthier?

Rich Kurtzman — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 20:38:23 +0000

In this piece:

Biometrics means to measure physical and behavioral characteristics
“Wearables” speaks to smart watches, wristbands, hearing aids, smart clothing and more
Wearable devices allow users to track a wide range of biometric data, from heart rate to sleep, workouts and calories burned and much more
The sales of wearables has increased by nearly 33% over the last two years

Wearable fitness trackers are pervasive in our modern world.

Smart watches, fitness bands, smart eyeglasses and smart clothing; their technologies have improved and their acceptance has skyrocketed in recent years.

In our data-obsessed world, we also want to know what’s going on with our bodies. As people continue to become more health conscious, and as the devices improve and become even less expensive, biometrics devices will continue to be more welcomed.

Biometrics definition

Bio comes from the Greek word “life” and metric means “to measure.”

Therefore, Biometrics is the measurement and statistical analysis of people's unique physical and behavioral characteristics, per Tech Target.

They go on to explain how biometrics are being used today in the security fields; for fingerprint identification, facial and voice recognition, DNA testing and more.

While that’s a valuable piece of the biometrics puzzle, we’re more concerned with how everyone can use biometrics to improve – or at least monitor – their health.

How biometrics can be tracked

Biometrics sensors have become ubiquitous.

In fact, the odds are high you have a sensor which tracks at least some sort of health data.

That’s right, your wireless device (cell phone) tracks your steps from inside your pocket. OK, it’s not as accurate as a wearable sensor, but it’s still something. You can also download apps – sleep tracking, for instance – and manually input data into your phone, too.

But, tracking sleep and steps that way isn’t efficient nor accurate.

That’s why “wearables” have become so popular.

Wearables are electronic devices that can be worn or carried on the body and are divided into categories; smartwatches, wristbands, and even smart clothes and hearables.

Some of the biggest brands in smartwatches – like FitBit and Apple Watch – track all kinds of biometrics.

There’s a way to check if “I got my steps today,” but it doesn’t stop there. You can choose a workout, like an outdoor walk, and the wearable will not only track the distance, but the route by using GPS, the speed as well as your heart rate. Based on that heart rate, they can also guestimate how many calories you burn during that workout.

And some wearables offer many different popular workouts to select when the time comes to pump some iron or play a sport.

Then there’s blood oxygen levels, EKGs, the aforementioned sleep tracking and so on.

When comparing brands, there are many considerations. The cost of the device is the first major factor in deciding which wearable to purchase. After that, features are important to consumers. How well the wearables track data, and what they track.

There’s a new competitor on the scene, too, called Emotibit. They not only track heart rate, speed, steps and all of the normal things, but they can be worn anywhere on the body. Even more impressive, they can also work to track the emotions of the wearer.

(From left to right: A FitBit Versa 2, Emotibit and Apple Watch Series 7.)

We’ll do a full review of Emotibit in the coming weeks, but one of the best parts of their wearables is they are open-source, unlike FitBit and Apple Watch. That means access to your own data, however you’d like to present it, without being forced to use certain third-party apps. Or, simply store your data on any local, private device using an SD card. Fathym can even help you take that data to the cloud. More on that in later blogs.

How biometrics can help improve health

Once you’re tracking the data, you have a starting point. And, depending on your goals, you can use biometrics and the wearable technology together to create a plan on how to reach those goals.

Two of the most important things people can do for their health is get quality sleep and drink enough water.

According to a Harvard, “Numerous studies have found that insufficient sleep increases a person's risk of developing serious medical conditions, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

As for water, the CDC explains, “Drinking water can prevent dehydration, a condition that can cause unclear thinking, result in mood change, cause your body to overheat, and lead to constipation and kidney stones.”

Utilizing your wearable to track sleep and water consumption is one of the best ways to improve your health. And, it’s a great starting point because those improvements are free and relatively easy.

Looking to lose weight? Tracking exercise and calories burned will help with that. Some wearables even tell you when you’re in the “fat burn” zone of your heart rate and more.

Trying to add muscle? There are specific apps which work with your wearable for that, too!

Conclusion

Biometrics have already begun to revolutionize our everyday lives.

Wearable fitness trackers are now recording the data and helping to improve the health of nearly 350 million people, and growing.

According to ABI Research:

“According to a recent study from global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, the number of wearables shipped worldwide in 2020 increased to 259.63 million, with sports, fitness, and wellness trackers accounting for 112.15 million and Smartwatches 74.30 million. Now, due to the increasing number of use cases and improved features, the upward trend is predicted to continue. In 2021, 304.69 million wearables shipped globally. In 2022, the wearable market is projected to reach 344.9 million of shipments worldwide, a growth increase of 13.2%.”

The spike in popularity is thanks to improvements in features, battery life and a rising interest in people wanting to monitor their health.

The wearable biometric space will only continue to grow from here as the devices continue to be sleeker, bringing even more features, with longer battery life. And as they become even more ubiquitous, wearables will continue to be accepted for different applications including for displaying a ticket at a concert or sporting event.

Speaking of sports, our Kim Loomis wrote this on Tom Brady and how he's used biometrics to stay on top of his game even in his mid-40s.

Fathym's IoT Ensemble can take all that biometric data from the Emotibit and store it in the cloud.

How to turn your Figma designs into enterprise-ready apps

Rich Kurtzman — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 16:18:05 +0000

In this piece:

Adobe to acquire design platform Figma for $20 billion
Figma is considered the best web app design software
Fathym and Figma work together to make app creation easy
Start today in Fathym’s shared cloud and scale up to your enterprise’s cloud when ready

Want to turn your Figma designs into enterprise-ready apps with the touch of a button? Fathym does that.

Figma, the world-class design tool, announced today they have entered a partnership with Adobe.

According to Barron’s, Adobe is paying $20 billion in cash and stocks to acquire Figma, with the deal expected to close in 2023.

Founded in 2012, Figma has seen a sharp rise recently in the world of web and software design. It’s beloved by designers, marketers, content creators and the like for the way it allows teams to collaborate and due to its powerful, ease-of-use.

Figma is a collaborative design tool which allows a wide variety of professionals to work together on a project. As explained on their website,

“We genuinely believe that hearing everyone’s input and representing their opinions results in more thoughtfully-designed products, so we encourage collaboration at all stages of the development process.”

In that way, Figma has been used by big-time companies like Square, Dropbox, Stripe and Twitter, among others, to creatively and effectively solve problems.

Web applications

When it comes to the design of web applications and user interfaces, Figma is considered the best according to Gartner’s Peer Insights.. The ratings of enterprise users place Figma (4.6 out of 5.0) in the No. 1 spot ahead of Adobe XD (4.4), Miro (4.3) and Sketch (4.1).

After designing a dynamic web app, the next step is to bring it to fruition.

Fathym and Figma work together to make app creation easy

After designing your user interface within Figma, teams can utilize a plugin like Builder.io to turn the beautiful and functional look into code.

Then, thanks to composable frontends, the Fathym Platform offers the solution of where to turn that code into a live web app.

Whether you choose to convert the design into React, Vue or another framework, you can then export the code and get your app up and hosted in a matter of minutes. Read more on how to do that here.

Enterprise scale out of the box

By using Fathym to launch your Figma application you are enterprise scale and ready out of the box.

Getting a website or web app hosted is a somewhat simple task. But finding hosting alone is not enough for enterprise-level entities.

For them, we offer out-of-the-box, scalable cloud infrastructure.

Our Fathym virtual developer has worked through the pain points of setting up a cloud environment within Microsoft Azure. What used to take days or weeks has been simplified and automated, giving those who need an enterprise-level solution immediately the opportunity to do just that.

There are multiple options for cloud hosting through Fathym and utilizing our Azure expertise.

The first is cloud provisioning; working within the Fathym cloud. And for enterprises who are already utilizing more than one cloud as, Flexera’s 2022 State of the Cloud Report explained, we have them covered, too.

The second option is having Fathym’s virtual developer set up a customer’s own cloud within their Azure.

And for those who want to start today in our shared cloud, they can always scale up to their own cloud later when needed.