Recent blog posts
We write about testing, design systems, Cloud native, and Backstage.
Interactors: the design systems testing ally
Charles Lowell and Jeffrey Cherewaty — August 04, 2021
Components from a design system make building UIs easy. It should be just as easy to test them. Interactors enable more robust tests for component-based UIs, and improve component libraries' maintainability.
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Relieve developers’ churn in your Cloud native strategy with Backstage
Taras Mankovski — May 14, 2021
Adopting Cloud native strategies has proven to improve organizations' delivery performance, but the complexity brought in with them is making life harder for developers. Using the example of a unified Secret manager, I present how Backstage can improve DX in the Cloud native world.
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Unleashing the Genie: Helping both designers and developers with Storybook
Varya Stepanova — April 07, 2021
Good documentation is key to design systems. However, what "good" means varies according to the reader. This article will go through tips to generate documentations for designers and developers from a single Storybook—keep everyone happy with minimum effort!
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There and Back Again: Testing and Stack Upgrades
Taras Mankovski — February 18, 2021
Upgrading your application stack to new major versions can be terrifying, especially when you have a massive application with 75 developers working on features non-stop. However, a good testing strategy gives you confidence to make bold moves that take your organization to heretofore unexplored lands.
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Kubernetes: Dip your toes in this
Min Kim — January 29, 2021
Kubernetes is on the rise and having it in your toolkit can get you a long way. In this article, Min shows us how to set up a MicoK8s in your local machine.
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The context dilemma: design tokens and components
Varya Stepanova — January 15, 2021
Design tokens are used to keep a consistent look across an entire system. How do you name them semantically if they have to make sense everywhere but also respond to the inner logic of individual components which are independently developed?
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Renaming `main` with purpose
Robbie Pitts — December 11, 2020
As generic default branch names like `master` for Git repos have gone out of fashion, possibilities emerge for more effective and informative naming conventions. Learn about the branch naming strategy Frontside uses for our Open Source libraries and how we name app project branches.
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We invite thought leaders to share their ideas about engineering.
OpenTelemetry with Austin Parker
Hosted by Charles Lowell and Taras Mankovski
Austin Parker, Principal Developer Advocate at Lightstep talks about the OpenTelemetry Framework, which is an observability framework for cloud-native software and a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs.
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Paying Open Source Contributors with Puneet Lath
Hosted by Charles Lowell and Taras Mankovski
Puneet Lath, Director of Research and Development at Expensify, talks about the unique way their company is open-sourcing the front end of their product itself.
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Product Roadmaps and Tooling Planning with Steve Pereira
Hosted by Charles Lowell and Taras Mankovski
Steve Pereira—the founder of Visible—talks about how his unique approach to mapping helps customers get products out of the door fast and efficiently.
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Data, Trust, and Transparency: A COVID-19 Vaccine Story
Hosted by Charles Lowell and Taras Mankovski
Data is at the center of everything we do. Yet, how can we trust it in a world where more "organic" food is consumed than produced? In this episode, Jason Kelley—the Global General Manager for Blockchain Services at IBM—talks about how data trust and transparency are applied to COVID-19 vaccines.
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Type systems with ReasonML London organizer Marcel Cutts and Shane Wilson
Hosted by Charles Lowell
"Java has done an excellent job at ruining types for everyone for quite a while—explains Marcel after describing the tech pub scene in London—but it's important to know there's more than one kind of type system." Along with Shane, they outline what's exciting about ReasonML and their experience with new languages and tools around types.
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Intro to Rush.js with co-author Pete Gonzales
Hosted by Charles Lowell, Taras Mankovski
Monorepos are the new muse of library maintainers, but what happens when your project grows past 100 packages in the same repo? What about thousands? Rush.js was created for those cases, and Pete—who started the project while working at Microsoft—is here to tell us about it.
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