Perpetual Development: 4 Reasons Why You Should Consider Continuous Integration

Perpetual Development: 4 Reasons Why You Should Consider Continuous Integration

When it comes to software and web development, the conventional wisdom usually goes like this. Each team, or each member depending on the size and complexity of the software in question, work on their codes and continually test their own codes until whatever feature they were supposed to be working on actually works and submit their codes to their manager. Once every member have submitted their codes, all of them gets integrated and run for a final test, where there’s probably at least a 50% chance that that particular software is going to break. Why? That’s because integration error is the bane for any software and web developers.

The problem with that development practice is that it neglects to account for the other codes and features that makes up the entirety of the codebase. In software development, this is perfectly fine as having several standalone teams taking full responsibility of their own codes is much more preferable than having one single large team responsible for the entire codebase. In fact, the micro frontends approach to web development is built on this very same principle. The problem lies in the possibility that those codes might not play well with each other, leading to errors and faults occurring during integration. One of the more novel ways of avoiding this is with the practice of what is called continuous integration.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Continuous integration (CI) is exactly what it says in the title, it is basically a development process in which the integration process perpetually happens every time small alterations and/or additions are made to the codebase. ThoughtWorks’ Martin Fowler defines the process as “a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily – leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Many teams find that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop cohesive software more rapidly”. As you might’ve guessed, this development process brings with it several benefits compared to the standard development process, such as:

  • Less debugging and troubleshooting.

Instead of implementing changes thousands of lines of code at the same time, CI breaks that down into much smaller steps, with only several lines of code changes and additions being integrated at a time but performed several times during the day. The benefit is two-fold, you have less risk of encountering any errors and when you do run into one, finding out what went wrong is much easier as you don’t have to perform the sisyphean task of checking over several thousands of lines of code.

  • It’s integrated in an agnostic environment

Software development can be somewhat esoteric. There are weird instances in which a code may work just fine in one environment but fail once it’s moved to a different one. With a centralized CI server, tests and integration can be run in an environment mimicking a real world setting so that when your boss tells you that your code doesn’t work when he tested it, you can confidently tell them that the problem is on their end and not on your code.

  • Reduce conflict between teams and/or members

In the standard development practice, the first thing that always happens whenever integration errors occur is mudslinging. If their code runs well in isolation, it’s not like anyone is going to voluntarily sacrifice themselves to the altar which would eventually result in mudslinging, only passive-aggressively. I’ve actually seen this happens once so using a completely unbiased third party like a CI server for independent review could keep this internal conflict from happening.

  • Keeps the sanctity of your code

The CI server will only merge the changes and additions into the existing codebase if, and only if said changes pass the prerequisite tests. There is absolutely nothing worse than deploying a set of broken codes and having to rollback updates because of that. Take a look at this case with the video game Sea of Thieves. They took down the server for the game to implement an update for the game, and after several hours of players reporting problems with the update, they took down the server again for an emergency maintenance. That still didn’t fix things and they took down the server again for the third time in 24 hours for another maintenance and even then, the game is still apparently suffering from certain issues.

It used to be that updates are implemented rather infrequently, but if you’ve ever paid any attention to how often a mobile app gets updated in the past few years the you should’ve noticed already how often small updates and bugfixes are deployed. The same thing applies to websites. Now that static websites are nearing the point of extinction, web apps with varying levels of interactivity is the norm. Even browser games are now massively popular, with hits like Agar.io, Slither.io, 2048 etc beginning their life as a web app before being launched as a native mobile app. While major updates to a web app is still relatively infrequent, perpetual improvements are always happening in the background, making practices like continuous integration a necessity for web developers around the world.

 

Budget-Saving SEO Ideas for Your Business

Budget Saving SEO Ideas for Your Business

Most business owners who have been in the business world for a long time are already familiar with the importance of having a website and using SEO services for their business. Small or big businesses still need SEO, especially now that technology has always been developed, almost everything is digital. That being said, sometimes starting a small business may be tough for some small business owners. One of the common and obvious reasons why that is hard is that of course, the difficulty in budgeting. The cost for promoting a business itself may take up some time and a lot of money, coupled with the cost of tax. For that reason, we wrote this article to give you simple SEO tips and ideas on how to cut corners to save your small business budgets. Below are the tips you can do for budget saving SEO campaign (some are even free!).

Use Social Media

Using social media as a tool for promoting your business and interacting with your customers or potential customers is the right step to take and definitely free! You don’t need to be on every platform, adjust your business type and needs to the suitable social media platforms. Choose carefully, the right business should be on the right social media platforms. For example, if you own fashion clothing line, the most suitable social media platform would be Instagram. Make sure you keep up to date with the trends and keep engaging well with customers. If you have followers above 10.000, you should have some of your workers to manage your social media business profile, so that if there are many inquiries, you can answer all of them without problems. Staying in touch with your followers is also important; therefore, make sure it is not only one or two persons managing the social media, as it would be too much to handle.

Get listed in online directories

If you are a local business, then it is important for your business detailed information to get listed across numerous online directories and local search portals. This way, people can find your business online. There are local listings that you can claim, such as Google listing, Yahoo, Bing as well as Yelp. There are also online directories that offer you free listing services, and even though they offer paid listing services, the price is more affordable!

Blog writing for SEO

Another free but effective SEO process is through blog writing. Basically, you write relevant articles with your business to be posted on, let’s say, Blogspot and WordPress and stuff one keyword for the services or products you offer in each article, but don’t stuff so many keywords in one article. Make sure you write relevant articles and use relevant tags too. If you write high quality and relevant articles, it will improve the chance for your business to be more recognised and boost your business online visibility, which can result in enhancing your brand awareness.

Do some “make overs” on your website

Yes, websites also need make overs. It is not only in the form of web design, but also your content. Make sure your website’s content is relevant and written in high quality. Also, make it mobile-friendly, so that your visitors can access your website on the go easily. You can also place a keyword on your content, but over-optimise your keywords by inserting multiple keywords at once. Just one or two is enough.

Keep informed and updated with online reviews

When you own a business, it is important for you to monitor how your business is doing based on customers’ online reviews. Online reviews can help you increase your brand awareness, but watch out for negative reviews! The increase in brand awareness can mean two things: your business is popular for its credibility and your business has a bad reputation. Of course you’d want the former, right? Therefore, in order to tackle this problem, you can start responding to every review on your business profile. Even if you have some negative reviews, responding well and accepting changes for the better will earn your business some positive vibes. The key point in handling negative reviews is that you respond well on every complaints delivered to you.

That’s how you can still do SEO for your business on a budget! Before you hire an SEO company when your business is well-balanced, make sure you do these tips. Therefore, you are already on the right path when it is time to really hire an SEO company. If you are still looking for an SEO company to do SEO services for your website, you can contact us for more information.