Mermaid: Helping Documentation Catch Up with Development

Brian Buchta Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Programming 1 Comment

Documentation is an integral part of any development process and can take significant time and effort to write. Additionally, even if we write quality documentation, oftentimes it fails to evolve as development best practices change and can quickly become outdated. Mermaid aims to fix this so-called “Doc-Rot” by creating a quick and easy way to create detailed diagrams that can evolve alongside code development.

Today, we will be going over Mermaid and, more specifically, how it can be used to both create and maintain complex documentation using diagrams.

What is Mainframe Modernization & How Can My Business Benefit From It?

Keyhole Software All Industries, COBOL, Keyhole, Manufacturing, Modernization, Spring, Supply Chain & Logistics, Videos Leave a Comment

Attention: This article was published over 2 years ago, and the information provided may be aged or outdated. While some topics are evergreen, technology moves fast, so please keep that in mind as you read the post.Mainframes have long powered critical financial transactions and government operations. However, across the U.S., particularly in Kansas, these systems are showing their age. The …

Introduction to Web Apps with Next.js

Introduction to Web Apps with Next.js

Bob Palmer Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript, React 1 Comment

In this post, I am going to demonstrate how to set up a simple Next.js web application. Next.js is a heavily opinionated JavaScript framework, in that it has a lot of conventions and recommended tools built into its design.

We’ll use Next.js version 14.2.2 to set up the groundwork for a simple web application. By “web application,” I mean an application that is designed primarily to collect input from a user in a web browser and return some output generated from that input.

Can AI Write Code

Can AI Write Code Now?

Joel Buckingham Articles, Artificial Intelligence, Development Technologies & Tools Leave a Comment

The topic of AI seems to be everywhere lately. At this point, I’ve consumed many hours of content regarding what it is and how it’s going to change the world… whether we want it to or not. However, I haven’t actually developed much code with it.

I’ve been writing code in some form since the early 2000s, but I have almost no practical experience with AI as used for development. Sure, I understand the basics, and I have a personal subscription to Chat GPT. But besides a couple of fun pictures that I’ve created of two of my past dogs that were never alive at the same time, I’ve not had much experience using it for code.

In this article, I’m going to test Chat GPT to see how much I can accomplish while writing as little actual code as possible.

Dockerizing an MSSQL Server (header image)

Dockerizing an MSSQL Server: Unlocking Flexibility

Alex Cassells Articles, Databases, Development Technologies & Tools, Docker, SQL, SQL Server, Tutorial Leave a Comment

Docker is a pretty magical tool that streamlines server and environment setup while helping to eliminate the operating system and software version variables. It’s one of the best ways to mitigate the classic ‘Works on my machine!’ obstacle many developers run into when sharing or promoting their code.

When a lot of people think of Docker, the last thing they think of is Microsoft or Windows. It took many years for Docker to even officially support Windows. As a .NET developer, I always wanted the stability that Docker offers, and today, I can have it. In the post below, I’ll dive into how to dockerize an MSSQL Server.