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Aaron Diffenderfer

Aaron is a consultant with Keyhole Software with 15+ years in the software industry. He has worked with a variety of languages all the way from archaic ones like SmallTalk (one of his favorites) and COBOL (the language of the dark ages before dirt existed) to the more modern world of Java and C#. His current focus is on the latest and greatest with JavaScript, Angular, and SPAs. With various companies in other lives, he has also been a corporate trainer and professor and even is an official inventor with a patent.

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM): A Recipe for Software Success

SBOMs: A Recipe for Software Success

Aaron Diffenderfer Articles, Programming, Security Leave a Comment

While working with a client a few years ago, I was introduced to the concept of a Software Bill of Materials, colloquially known as an SBOM. It didn’t take long before I recognized its immense value and importance in improving security and integrity in software development. Hopefully, over the next few minutes as you read this blog, you’ll start to see that as well.

The topic of SBOMs has become more and more popular over the past several years and is increasingly critical in this technology-driven world. We’ve all heard of numerous enterprise-level data attacks, exposures, and leaks in recent years, and almost all are caused by some sort of security vulnerability. Many of these incidents could have been realized and possibly even mitigated before disaster struck if an SBOM had been in play.

What’s On First: The Case For Accessibility-First Programming

Aaron Diffenderfer Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Opinion, Programming Leave a Comment

When you think of common programming techniques and processes, what comes to mind first? Perhaps it’s test-driven development, writing an automated test to start your development cycle and putting testing at the forefront instead of the typical afterthought. Or maybe you thought of behavior driven development with stakeholders collaborating and defining the software behavior upfront thus mitigating the ambiguities from some requirements. But what if I told you that while testing and behavior are important, accessibility should be one of the first development considerations?

Maybe the whole concept of accessibility is nothing new to you, and you’re already accounting for it in all aspects of the development process. But, if you’re like most developers (myself occasionally included), accessibility along with unit testing are the two things you often save to the very, very, very end, or perhaps you save them for the newbies to worry about in a future sprint – neither of which is ideal. While it may not be quite as important in some industries as it is in others like government (where Section 508 is federal law regarding accessibility), addressing it should be in the forefront of your thought process, your code, and your testing.

The Wonderful Wide World of webpack: Unpacking Awesomeness

Aaron Diffenderfer Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript Leave a Comment

In the past couple of years, webpack has come a long way. It continues to rapidly evolve and revolutionize the way we bundle JavaScript and more. For some of us that have been doing development for more than a few years, seeing an amazing tool like webpack and all of its abilities is mind-blowing. If only it had come into existence a bit sooner…

If you’re like me, you may have stumbled across webpack, hearing about its gazillion configuration options, along with a bunch of plugins, numerous ways to optimize your bundle, and more. So much that it all makes your head spin and you begin to feel overwhelmed as you attempt to make sense of it. That’s honestly how my journey began with Webpack.

My first exposure to it…Ejecting the webpack.config.js file from an AngularCLI project just to see what the all the hype was about and to see what I had been missing out on the past few years. After getting past the initial shock of the number of lines of code and the seemingly large structure (how I felt after my first few glances, having to shield my eyes and take a few deep breaths), I started to see many of the benefits. This continued as I read through the webpack documentation, various blogs, and StackOverflow (every developer’s most-accessed site) and as I began trying out a variety of configurations for some actual projects.

As I discovered, webpack can be used with zero config or configured literally in 8,675,309 ways, plus or minus a handful. And there about just as many blogs that cover all of the variations and flavors.

In this post, however, the goal is to highlight some tips & tricks along with features I’ve found to be particularly useful and reasons why you should be using webpack – if you haven’t already started…

Got Swagger? (i.e. How I Got My Swagger on and How You Can Too)

Aaron Diffenderfer Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Programming, Tutorial Leave a Comment

Most developers attempt to ignore and put off documentation as long as possible during the development process. However, the return on investment is worth the time and effort — far more than most of us realize. This is particularly true with API documentation. 

Working with a recent client, I had the opportunity to use Swagger to document APIs and provide structure around the development process. During daily standups, I may have been known to say that my task for the day was to “get my Swagger on.” 

In this post, I want to walk you through my journey with Swagger along with general thoughts, tips, and tricks that I’ve learned along the way so that you too can “get your Swagger on.” Let’s get started…