AcumatiCaresIn this episode, we have Cesar Betances, a Senior Technical Consultant who works with our Acumatica ISVs on Mobile Development. He shares his deep knowledge and best practices with our Developer MVPs.
Coffee & Code
A Series of Video Podcasts for Developers by Developers
As you may glean from the title Coffee & Code is meant to be a casual conversation among developers around various topics, where we share developer practices, experiences, and miscellaneous knowledge. The general format we will be following is our guests will introduce themselves and the topic at hand – followed by a discussion with questions from our live audience of Acumatica Developer MVPs.
Coffee & Code Episodes
To view the recorded episodes, scroll-down and simply click on the ''More Info" button for each episode to watch and view related content.
2022
May 18, 2022
Episode 11, Mobile Development
May 18, 2022
March 31, 2022
Episode 10, Developer Tools
March 31, 2022
In this episode, we have Sergey Nikomarov, a Senior Developer on our Platform Engineering team along with some of our Acumatica Developer MVPs talking about their favorite developer tools. We also shared some tips around debugging and useful settings in Visual Studio were also covered.
Below the embedded video recording, you will find a comprehensive list of links to many of the tools that were discussed in the episode.
Enjoy and happy coding!
Developer Tools & Visual Studio Features discussed in the episode are enumerated below
- IntelliCode – an ML based code completion and refactorings https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/
- Old but useful Code Snippets feature https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/code-snippets?view=vs-2022
- Customizable coloring schema https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-change-fonts-and-colors-in-visual-studio?view=vs-2022
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts. I’m going to describe few examples https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/default-keyboard-shortcuts-in-visual-studio?view=vs-2022
- Code diagnostics and refactorings.
- There are free popular projects with a lot of diagnostics:
- Diagnostics can be also used in Rider code editor https://www.jetbrains.com/help/rider/Using_NET_Compiler_Analyzers.html
- Multiple carets feature – allow to select occurrences of some text and edit them all at once, very useful for refactoring and edit of big chunks of API that follows a specific naming schema.
https://www.meziantou.net/visual-studio-tips-and-tricks-multi-line-and-multi-cursor-editing.htm - Visual Studio provides good debugging experience
- You can step into source code during debug with Symbol Servers feature
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/debugging-external-sources-with-visual-studio/ - You can configure Jet Brains decompiler as a symbol server
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/decompiler/Using_product_as_a_Symbol_Server.html - There are some plugins to improve attaching to a process experience like Debug Attach Manager
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ViktarKarpach.DebugAttachManager2022
- You can step into source code during debug with Symbol Servers feature
- Other VS Features
- Ability to run external tools
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstudio/visual-studio-2010/hy2sthf1(v=vs.100)?redirectedfrom=MSDN - Live Share feature for cooperative development and debug
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/live-share/ - Git version control system support. Doing simple stuff via UI.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/version-control/git-with-visual-studio?view=vs-2022
- Ability to run external tools
- VS is a platform for customizations. There is also a convenient extensions gallery – VS marketplace. Naming a few more VS extensions here:
- Resharper, the most popular VS extension
https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/ - Extensions that Sergey Nikomarav uses:
- Atomineer Documentation for a clever generation of XML comments in code.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Atomineer.AtomineerProDocumentationTrial2022
Alternative – GhostDoc
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sergeb.GhostDoc - Match margin to display selected text occurrences on the scrollbar
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualStudioPlatformTeam.MatchMargin2022 - Code Align to do vertical alignment of code, useful when there are multiple assignment statements in code
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cpmcgrath.Codealignment - File Icons to add icons for more file formats
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.FileIcons - Open in VS Code
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MadsKristensen.OpeninVisualStudioCode
Open in Notepad++
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=coding-with-calvin.OpenInNotepadPP2022 - ResX manager – for work with .Net resx resource files
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TomEnglert.ResXManager
- Atomineer Documentation for a clever generation of XML comments in code.
- Resharper, the most popular VS extension
Other Developer Tools:
- SQL Server Management Studio – use to access MS SQL databases. I actually use two versions of SSMS because the capability to debug SQL transactions was removed from the latest SSMS 18
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms?view=sql-server-ver15 - Lightweight code editors – VS Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/) and Notepad++ (https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/).
- ngrok tool for simple configuration of network tunnels to a local developer instance. Useful during the work with mobile version of Acumatica
https://ngrok.com/ - Some tools to draw diagrams:
- draw.io for simple diagrams https://www.draw.io/
- plantuml.com for more advanced UML-like diagrams https://plantuml.com/
- Pixie – a tiny color picker to pick a color of any pixel on your screen http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.php
- Nimble text – a really flexible text generator that generates a text from the given data placed into the provided template. Can be used for SQL commands generation (multiple insert commands) or C# API generation (for example if you need to add a lot of properties/field that differ only by name)
https://nimbletext.com/ - Postman to debug REST APIs.
https://www.postman.com/ - Telerik JustDecompile
https://www.telerik.com/products/decompiler.aspx - JSON FORMATTER
https://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/# - Attach To All The Things
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=thebread.AttachToAllTheThings
2021
December 28, 2021
Episode 9, Ali Jani - Chief Product Officer
December 28, 2021
In this episode, Ali joins us to provide an executive perspective and answer questions from our group of Developer MVPs. He shares how he transitioned from writing code early on in his life and how he transitioned from starting a number of businesses to his role at Acumatica.
Whether you are a developer or not, you will not want to miss this episode!
Enjoy and happy coding!
November 30, 2021
Episode 8, Developer Learning & Practices - Robert Waite
November 30, 2021
This is the 8th episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica developers by Acumatica Developers!
In this episode, we have Robert Waite a Developer MVP who was this past year’s Acumatica Developer of the Year with us sharing his secrets to his success – specifically around developer learning and practices he uses to stay on top of the Developer game.
Enjoy the episode and happy coding!
Below are a few links you should find useful that Robert mentioned in our discussion:
- Services such as Pluralsight and Udemy are good gotos for non Acumatica related development study material.
- Pluralsight https://app.pluralsight.com/library/
- Udemy https://www.udemy.com/
- ANKI geru Derek Banas a polyglot programmer that does YouTube videos.
- Another great resource but this guy has a focus on Med School. The content is still useful to developers or anyone wanting to learn more about ANKI
- This is a very powerful course on the subject of learning.
- ANKI website where you can download the application.
October 13, 2021
Episode 7, Acumatica Surveys Open-Source Project
October 13, 2021
This is the 7th episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica developers by Acumatica Developers!
In this episode, we have the Acumatica Surveys Team with us discussing our open-source project. We also have Derrick Elledge, VP of Operations at Power Storage Solutions join us to provide us with the customer perspective who reached out to us and started us on this journey. He was the original driving force whose need for a solution for surveying employees became critical when the Covid-19 Pandemic hit a year and a half ago.
This project is near and dear to my heart along with the people who contributed to the project. It is my hope that a large number of Acumatica Developers take the time to watch this edition of Coffee & Code.
Enjoy the episode and happy coding!
August 30, 2021
Episode 6, Hackathon 2021 Winning Team
August 30, 2021
This is the 6th episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica developers by Acumatica Developers! In this episode, we have the winning team from the Acumatica Hackathon with us to discuss their solution and their hackathon experience along with some of our Developer MVPs who participated.
July 27, 2021
Episode 5, Developer Best Practices - Gabriel Michaud
July 27, 2021
This is the 5th episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica developers by Acumatica Developers!
In this episode, we have Gabriel Michaud one of our outstanding Developer MVPs from Velixo with us discussing developer best practices – offering general advice for developers who wish to raise the developer game and become the best developers they can be.
June 3, 2021
Episode 4, Acumatica Developer Challenges & Lessons Learned - Kyle Vanderstoep
June 3, 2021
This is our 4th episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica developers by Acumatica Developers!
In this episode, we invited one of our newest Acumatica Developer MVPs, Kyle Vanderstoep to join us to discuss one of his recent development projects, where he shares his challenges and lessons learned. We focus much of the episode on U/I design and integration.
May 3, 2021
Episode 3, Acumatica Technology Futures - Ajoy Krishnamoorthy
May 3, 2021
This is our 3rd episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica Developers by Acumatica Developers!
In this episode, we invited Ajoy Krishnamoorthy to join us to discuss Acumatica’s future technology direction and what you can expect from us in the next few years.
To watch the recorded episode, simply click the play icon below:
March 31 2021
Episode 2, SSL/TLS Security - Steven Houglum
March 31 2021
In our second episode of Coffee & Code, we explore with Steven Houglum, SSL/TLS Security – securing an Acumatica ERP Web Instance used primarily for demos with an SSL or more accurately a TLS certificate. This is important because many services require an HTTPS connection to work. All REST/SOAP/OData API communication should always be conducted over HTTPS. Many of the Tax packages and the Outlook add-in require HTTPS.
The discussion starts by reviewing what TLS (SSL) is and then the use of Powershell to configure an Acumatica ERP instance for HTTPS. Previous instructions on “how to” set this up are simply inadequate as the standards tighten and all modern browsers follow. To automate the process and reduce the number of steps to achieve the goal, a PowerShell script was created. This script is reviewed and discussed in the episode.
We hope you enjoy the discussion.
March 2, 2021
Episode 1, Developer Processes - Sergey Marenich
March 2, 2021
We are pleased to announce our very first episode of Coffee & Code – a monthly video podcast for Acumatica developers by Acumatica Developers!
As you may glean from the title, Coffee & Code is meant to be a casual conversation among developers around various topics, where we share developer practices, experiences, miscellaneous knowledge.
The general format we will be following is our guests will introduce themselves and the topic at hand – followed by a discussion with questions from our live audience of Acumatica Developer MVPs.
We plan to produce a monthly episode, where we invite Acumatica Developers – Internal and External as well as host some of our Technical Executives as well on a roughly quarterly basis.
In our first episode, we explore with long-time developer, Sergey Marenich, Acumatica’s Developer & Engineering Processes. Sergey is a long-time developer here at Acumatica – one of the original core developers, who has been around about 14 years.
To watch the recorded episode, simply click the play icon below:
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