Slaying the Dragon: Tips for Legacy Application Modernization

Legacy Application Modernization

Many organizations have them: old applications written in time immemorial, poorly documented, and with nonexistent tests. Yet, they’re still responsible for holding up key parts of the production environment, even if no one understands exactly how. Venturing into the code can feel like stepping over the threshold of a dragon’s lair: make one wrong step and suddenly your world is engulfed in flames. Legacy application modernization can seem daunting. But sometimes it is necessary that we conduct development on our legacy applications, and this post will present some guidelines on how to get a handle on a legacy application modernization project and extract some value without burning the world down … Read more

The Myths of the Low Code/No Code Solutions  

Low Code/No Code Solutions

The Power Platform solutions that include Power Apps, Power Pages, and Power Automate, offer low code/no code solutions for application builds. This is fantastic when you have quick and simple implementations (like a generic form that can be quickly accessed by a wide range of users) that don’t require you to get fancy.   The low code/no code solution can be extremely useful for mid-complexity implementations as well but can struggle as complexity increases. This blog will discuss the limitations and myths surrounding low code/no code solutions and serve as a guide to highlight how Improving can help with choosing when and how to use low code/no code solutions.   Low Code/No … Read more

Power Apps vs Traditional Coding: Which is Right for You?

Power Apps vs Traditional Coding

Power Apps vs Traditional Coding: Which is Right for You? The surge in demand for digital services is undeniable, fueled partly by the continued need for goods and services during the pandemic. Now, more than ever, businesses are eager to adopt digital transformation initiatives, recognizing the crucial role technology plays in modern operations. One of those transformations includes Power Apps vs traditional coding. Digital transformation can mean different things to different stakeholders, but most can agree it entails leveraging technology to increase business output relative to its input. Usually that means increased profitability or productivity while maintaining or reducing the cost of doing business.       In the not-too-distant past, hiring professional developers … Read more

Virtual Workspaces Are Here! How Will You Use Them? 

My YouTube feed has been full of reviews of the Apple Vision Pro since it became available in the US on February 2. In one of the videos, the content creator used the Vision Pro for working on his script, and several other tasks around his house (See video). This intrigued me and I wondered what it would be like to code in a virtual environment and create virtual workspaces. I don’t have $4k lying around and the Vision Pro isn’t available in Canada yet. So, my ability to try it was rather limited.  For Christmas 2023, I bought myself a Meta Quest 3 headset. Thanks in part to our … Read more

Different Selection of .net Data Structure Has a Positive Impact on Performance 

.net Data Structure

Today, programmers often fail to consider the performance impact of certain programming choices. Computers have, and continue to, advance and their seemingly unlimited memory results in a programmer’s lack of programming considerations. In one of my recent projects, I had to search reference data from multiple large lists of data (between 500 – 4000 entries in each list) from a numeric ID field in another large list of objects. In this blog, I will explore the positive impacts a different selection of .net data structure can have on performance.    Adopting the standard naive approach of storing the reference data in a List and then using a LINQ query to … Read more