About the Author
John Hoestje

John Hoestje

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John Hoestje is an experienced Software Architect and Developer with 10+ years in IT. His area of expertise is the architecture and development of applications and systems utilizing Java, .NET and JavaScript technologies.

Multiple Emulators with VS Code

Multiple Emulators with VS Code

John Hoestje Articles, Programming, Tutorial 2 Comments

Recently, I was joking with some team members, trying my best to get someone to develop a VS Code plugin for me that would allow VS Code to simultaneously connect to multiple Android emulators.

I was working on some font sizing issues in Flutter and needed to test the changes on multiple device viewport sizes. Needless to say, it was taking too much time to ramp various Android emulators up and down.

Later that day, I decided to start playing with the debugger and emulator options, with no expectations of finding anything substantial. Sometimes throwing something against the wall to see if it sticks provides the best surprises!

Increasing Emotional Intelligence As Remote Developers

John Hoestje Articles, Consulting, Soft Skills 1 Comment

As software developers in 100% remote work environments, we now have additional challenges stemming from the loss of face-to-face communication. In many situations, this can lead to harmful trends in coworker interactions—less job satisfaction, co-worker interactions, and overall team success. One way to combat this negative side effect of remote work is to increase Emotional Intelligence as an individual software developer.

In this blog, we discuss how interactions between software developers are affected by Emotional Intelligence (EQ). In addition to the basic components of EQ, we discuss suggestions for improving Emotional Intelligence in common interactions experienced by software developers. 

How and Why to Containerize Your Development

John Hoestje Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Docker, Opinion, Python, Tutorial Leave a Comment

This is a tutorial for how to use the VS Code Remote-Containers extension to containerize your development environment. First, I will discuss my reasons for separating my programming environment and why virtual machines didn’t work. Then, I’ll show a simple example using a containerized Python development environment. Finally, I’ll give you my reasons why containerizing the development environment fits what I’m looking for in a solution.

Picking A Graph Database: ArangoDB, Neo4j, or OrientDB

John Hoestje Articles, Databases, Opinion, Programming Leave a Comment

TL;DR

– Spoiler alert! Graph databases are a great option for storing complex and highly connected data.
– In this post, I compare the benefits and risks of graph databases ArangoDB, Neo4j, and OrientDB for a client project.
– Due to the combination of performance and cost, I chose ArangoDB for my client’s needs.

Why Event Storming?

John Hoestje Articles, Opinion, Project Management Leave a Comment

My last Event Storming blog was like a stew I made by throwing in everything from the fridge and pantry. Maybe the stew was okay, but most of the individual ingredients got lost in the mix.

This time, I’m including the points to back my position as to why you should start using Event Storming now. Although, in my opinion, choosing Event Storming doesn’t take a lot of convincing to make it sound more appealing than other techniques.

So why should Event Storming be used in place of other more established domain modeling processes?

While it isn’t beneficial to always try out the latest and greatest whiz-bang gadgets, not keeping tabs on emerging and promising trends can prevent your team from becoming more efficient…