Running Your Life With Emacs

Garrett Hopper Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Programming Leave a Comment

I program a lot, but I also do a lot of other things using a computer.

The problem is, I often want to use the same efficient key bindings I use while programming when I’m doing other tasks. I want to be writing an email or documentation and edit a code snippet in the same way I normally edit code. I want to manage Git repositories right from my editor without having to touch the mouse. I want to browse the web in my editor, so I can easily copy code examples and run them. I want to track my to-do lists and the amount of time spent on each task.

Imagine if there was a tool that could do all that and a ton more in an efficiently consistent way. That tool is Emacs…

The Jury is Still Out: Blockchain in Healthcare

Zach Gardner Articles, Blockchain, Healthcare, Hyperledger, Opinion 1 Comment

Blockchain has gotten the software world buzzing about its potential applications in different business areas. With the US spending 17.9% of its GDP on healthcare in 2017 per CMS, many companies are considering how to enter into a market that has such potential for growth as well as the potential to positively affect patient’s lives.

Keyhole Software stays ahead of the curve by investigating new trends in software so that when clients come to us asking for advice we can provide an informed opinion. We do not want our clients to be guinea pigs, and we help provide guidance so that the solution they choose is the best one regardless of the trends of the day.

Blockchain is something we feel could be a good fit for the right use case, which we’ve elaborated on in our Blockchain Case Study. It is, at the end of the day, just a tool, and should only be used when it is beneficial to do so. Healthcare is an incredibly complex industry, so it is important to understand what Blockchain is, what it is not, and what needs to be considered before using the technology.

The purpose of this blog post is to think through how Blockchain can be applied to healthcare software applications. This blog post does not dive into the technical implementation of Blockchain, only its application in healthcare. A technical deep dive into Blockchain can be found in our Blockchain White Paper.

AWS SNS Push Notifications

Matt McCandless Articles, AWS, Cloud, Development Technologies & Tools, Java 1 Comment

Have you ever received endless notifications from the latest application you just downloaded? For example, a bank application that tells you your balance is less than $50. It is likely a message sent directly to your phone through Apple Push Notification Service, Firebase Cloud Messaging, or some other like service.

While you can use any of these services directly, there is a lot to gain by using something like AWS SNS to manage, send, and organize your notifications.

In this post, we show an example of the Push Notification feature of Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) using Firebase to handle the iOS and Android messages. Code examples are in Java using Eclipse.

Do note that this blog is solely focused on Push Notification feature of SNS. Keep in mind that SNS can be used for email and SMS messaging, but for brevity, we will steer clear of those.

Java-Based UI Frameworks

Rik Scarborough Articles, Java, Programming 1 Comment

In today’s development environment, there is an abundance of frameworks that we can choose from for front-end or user interface (UI) work.

I was recently talking with a friend about UI development. He has also been a programmer since programming was considered an arcane art (when those of us that did it were considered like Gandalf the Grey facing the Balrog). Or maybe we just saw ourselves that way. Regardless, both of us have been Java programmers for a great deal of that time.

We both lamented the fact that it was a context switch to go from coding most of our projects in Java, then needing to switch to JavaScript for the front end.

Based on conversations I’ve seen online, several readers are warming up their keyboards to chide me for complaining about having to code in JavaScript. Keep your keys cool, both of us and our co-workers are experienced in, and happy to write in, JavaScript and any of its frameworks for our clients. But using JavaScript isn’t always the best approach.

 In this post, we introduce two frameworks that allow you to code your user interface in Java: GWT & Vaadin…

Building a Node.js Service with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and Serverless Framework

Matthew Brown Articles, AWS, Cloud, JavaScript, Node.js, Tutorial 3 Comments

My favorite new technology as a developer is serverless computing. The convenience and cost make it a very compelling choice for running options in the cloud. Especially for proof of concepts or quick ways to prove out ideas. Using serverless computing to get up and running takes very little effort and the costs of running an application in the cloud are minimal. Serverless really empowers developers to act on ideas as quickly as possible.

In this post, I’m going to briefly touch on what serverless computing is and the pros and cons of using it. Then I will build a Node.js service to do CRUD operations using AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and the Serverless Framework. You can view the finished product on Github.