Using C#, XAML + Uno Platform to Build One Codebase, Cross-Platform Apps

Rukesh Shrestha Articles, C#, Development Technologies & Tools, Mobile 1 Comment

For more than a decade, we have been developing applications with C# and XAML. Throughout that time, the pair has really only been known for Desktop (WPF) and UWP applications.

Later came Xamarin, which utilizes C# as a unified language to share between all platforms. Then Xamarin.Forms was introduced, which was different in that it utilized XAML to develop the user interface with a single codebase for cross-platform (iOS, Android, UWP).

This progression has excited all the WPF developers out there. The only remaining platform left was web development. At one time, Silverlight was the option, but it was deprecated because of heavy loading and security concerns of browser plug-in solutions.

Then came the WebAssembly [also known as Web Assembly Modules (WASM)] that web browsers can directly execute without having to parse a source file.

In this post, we will discuss how to create a rich user browser interface using the cross-platform Uno Platform and WebAssembly technology. The example application will walk through building Models, ViewModel and View under a shared project that is common to all different platform-specific projects.

Elm Language

Lou Mauget Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript, Programming, Single-Page Application Leave a Comment

This blog is about my dalliance with Elm; a purely functional, statically typed language that has type inference. It compiles to JavaScript. Functional programming is compelling, but heretofore, I’d only woven cherry-picked techniques into large object-oriented projects. In FP parlance, I’m partially applied! The times, they are a-changin’.

In this article, I’ll:
– touch on the reasoning for giving a nod to functional languages and data immutability;
– move on to Elm; a blazing-fast, statically typed, purely functional browser-side language that compiles to JavaScript and follows the principles of functional reactive programming;
– survey background items and the Elm environment;
– show a simple type-and-click application, followed by a more realistic To-do application;
– end with my impressions from functional-programming semi-outsider point-of-view.

Building a Spring Cloud Native Microservice Application on Azure, Part 1

Zach Gardner Articles, Azure, Cloud, Development Technologies & Tools, Java, Microservices, Spring Leave a Comment

The big three cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, in that order) have their various strengths and areas of expertise. Most large organizations though typically pick one cloud provider for their cloud computing needs. This works well if you’re a Java shop that’s on AWS, or a Microsoft shop on Azure. But what if you’re on a large Java project in an organization that wants to use Azure? You’re in luck.

Microsoft Azure has come a long way, and is very supportive of non-Microsoft technologies. The proof though is in the pudding. Which is where this blog post comes in. I take Josh Long’s Bootiful Microservice Services, a great starting point to get a cloud native Spring microservice application up and running, and show how it can be run on Azure.

This first blog post will be all about setting up our basic microservices by walking through the various parts of Josh’s example application, with some best practices and patterns that I’ve found to be effective. Rather than a simplistic ToDo application, we’ll be basing our application off of my favorite bagel shop in New York, Original Bagel Boss in Hicksville, to manage its orders, inventory, etc. If we can run a bagel shop on a Spring application running on Azure, and keep customers happy and full of carbohydrates, then it proves out for applications of a similar size and complexity.

We’ll be staying mostly inside the familiar Java confines, then slowly start working our way out to getting our application deployed to Azure. Then we’ll start introducing additional complexity like Spring Batch jobs, a React front end, etc. A setup this complex will show that Azure is ready for prime time when it comes to running applications in production, even if they are built on non-Microsoft technologies…

Machine Learning: The Time is Now!

David Pitt Articles, Machine Learning, React, Tutorial Leave a Comment

Machine Learning enables a system to automatically learn and progress from experience without being explicitly programmed. It’s a subset of the artificial intelligence (AI) technology space being applied and used throughout your everyday life. Think Siri, Alexa, toll booth scanners, text transcription of voicemails – these types of tools are used by just about everyone.

Image recognition and computer vision are also widely being used in production; recently just heard that Los Angeles, CA has made it illegal for law enforcement to use face recognition technology in its numerous public video cameras. The current state of the art allows real-time identification.

Interestingly, the algorithms and know-how for Machine Learning have been around for a long time. Artificial Intelligence was coined and researched as far back as the late 1950s, the advent of the digital computer, and expert systems and neural networks, that theoretically mimics how our brain learns.

The increase in Machine Learning production-ready applications started around 2012, with increased processing, bandwidth, and internet throughput power. This is important as deep learning algorithms like Neural Networks require lots of data and FPUs/GPUs to train.

In this blog, we introduce a conceptual overview of Neural Networks with a simple Neural Net code example implementation using Go. We will interact with it by building a ReactJS interface and train the Neural Network to recognize hand-drawn images of the numbers 0-9. Let’s dive in….

Keyhole Announces Platinum KCDC 2019 Sponsorship & Speakers

Keyhole Software Articles, Community, Company News, Keyhole Leave a Comment

We are pleased to announce that Keyhole Software is a Platinum Sponsor of the 2019 Kansas City Developer Conference! 2019 is Keyhole’s seventh year as a KCDC conference sponsor.

The Kansas City Developer Conference is a Kansas City-based, non-profit software developer conference. The 11th annual conference will be held from July 17-19th, 2019. Main conference days are Thursday & Friday, July 18th and 19th.

Day one of the conference, Wednesday, July 17th, will be a day of “Pre-Compilers” – optional, full-day, hands-on workshops on a specific topic. July 18th and 19th will feature one-hour breakout sessions.

KCDC breakout session topics span various languages (C#, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, Haskell, etc.), frameworks (Spring, Angular, React, Vue, etc.), cloud / DevOps, Blockchain, software methodology, software testing, data analysis / big data, user experience, and more. It’s an excellent learning opportunity right here in Kansas City.

Tickets are now on sale. Use the Keyhole promo code to get 10% off of your tickets: 10OFFKEYHOLE.