Learn about the handiest python 3 features we appreciate here at Uplift. Going from python 3 through python 3.8.

Disclaimer: I run Uplift, a software consultancy specializing in building quality projects or providing staff augmentation in fin-tech, health-tech and ed-tech. This blog post is for you if you want to delegate work and want the best people for the job. Every startup needs a freelancer. Why? Let's put it another way: at some point or other, every startup has hired a freelancer (because they needed one). Also, every startup founder is a freelancer because they work for free (a joke 😃😆). Think

Well, almost :-) As of October 22nd we expect it will be. A lot of open-source projects release whenever suitable (which is perfectly ok) but the Electron development team has stated they intend to release consistently every 12 weeks (so a release every alternate Chromium version). Check out the release timeline [https://electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/electron-timelines]. As Electron is a developer platform and has a lot of dependency on Chromium, that makes sense, and that time-frame can be prett

As a very self-driven person, it hasn't been my modus operandi to seek out guidance or people to model after. Since 2014, I quit the full-time employment scene and decided to do my own thing. I haven't looked back since, but it does get lonely and disorienting being out on your own. Over the years, I began seeking out advice and looking to people for options on the self-employment path. Through this, I've come to appreciate the importance of great mentors and role models. What does "mentor"

We just launched our first React Native application for a client this week! Shout out to Dasy Labs [https://www.dasylabs.com] for trusting us with their project. The app [https://www.dasy.io] is live on the App Store [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dasy/id1164735758?ls=1&mt=8] and Play Store [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dasy], so you can check it out for yourself. Overall our experience with React Native was a positive one, but there were a few bumps along the road. Pai

You built your first app on Heroku and want to set up a custom domain. Everything is going well until you realize you need to serve your website over https. Unfortunately Heroku does not integrate with LE (yet) so you'll have to do some manual labor. Lucky for you, it's easy to do so! How Let's Encrypt Verifies Your Domain LE will make a GET request to an endpoint like https://YOURDOMAIN.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/KEY. It will expect this endpoint to respond with KEY.TOKEN. The response bo

Here at Uplift Agency we use components to structure the web applications we build for our clients. It is working out very well for us so I wanted to take a moment to share some of the benefits of this approach. This article won't get very technical (subscribe for future articles that will go into the nitty gritty). The path to components Component based layouts have been around for a long time, but they haven't caught on in the web community until recently. If we look at the history of web dev

The world of JavaScript is moving so very fast these days, that it's hard to keep up. So, both as a business and an engineer: what's worthy of your time and resources? This article is here to tell you: consider React. Why React, React Native, and Redux As we learned React, React Native and Redux, we put together a list of free resources we found helpful. These may help you get started with React as well. React has really matured into a clear winner [https://medium.com/javascript-and-opinions/

Did you know you can have a secure, HTTPS-only server configured in just 10 minutes? Thanks to Let's Encrypt [https://letsencrypt.org/], everyone can have free SSL certificates... forever! They can automatically renew, as well. Let's Encrypt makes it relatively easy, but there are still a few gotchas to keep in mind. However, once you have it down, you'll never build another website that accepts HTTP connections! In fact, my websites (including this one and my personal site) have become HTTPS