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Pecha Kucha
A few months ago a part of our company participated in a Hackathon in Mexico City. Prior to kicking off the actual hackathon itself, we had a group Pecha Kucha afternoon. Martin wrote about selecting the right library, Pablo about the highs and lows of development, my topic was the history of our tools.
If you've ever wrenched before, you'll likely recognize a handful of these. I'll back up for a minute and point out the obvious before I draw a parallel with our stack: most of these tools are a standardized size. Wrenches are in metric implements, that bottom bracket wrench is based on an industry standard, in short they are created with other parts and tools in mind. This is possible because all manufacturers have decided that for the most part standardization makes life easier for us all. This also allows for easy customization.
Do you know someone who has built their own computer? How about that guy in your neighborhood who has a cool hot rod? If you're a cyclist, you probably ride with someone who at minimum has changed the handlebar tape or gotten a new saddle. Customization of a car may seem incredibly complex if you've never turned a wrench in your life, but usually it's not terribly different than building a lego (albeit without instructions). Framework and parts compatibility are the keys.
Software development is the same way. It's absolutely possible to create code from the circuit up, but more often than not code is reused across applications. Lengthy intro over, I want to move to JHipster for a minute. JHipster is the beginning of many projects at Lagarsoft.
First, what is JHipster?
To keep it succinct, it's an application generator. It helps generate, develop and deploy Spring Boot + Angular / React / Vue web applications using Spring Boot as the primary backend framework and Angular, React, or Vue for the front end.
Why do we use JHipster?
The primary reason is that it's easy to bootstrap a new project with lots of features built in. JHipster is a portmanteau of Java and Hipster. The reason for Hipster in the name is that originally the framework was designed to include all the modern and hype tools available at the time. For proofs of concept, demos, prototypes, or other web applications we need to get up and running quickly, it's a lifesaver.
Beyond making it easy to bootstrap a project, JHipster allows easy user management, support exists for most platforms (AWS, Azure, Cloud Foundry, Google Cloud Platform, Heroku, and OpenShift), and there is a huge user base. The strong development community can't be understated here as it implies stability and lots of support when issues are encountered or you need to find developer assistance. From our point of view, the wide adoption also means it's an appropriate technology to deploy to our customers (you can check out a list of companies using JHipster here).
In summation, I'll go back to the introduction about turning wrenches. It's possible to build anything from scratch, but why bother when someone offers a kit? JHipster is that kit with lots of options to work from and allows us to move almost instantly to feature development.
How can I learn more about JHipster?
One of the reasons I chose to write this blog is that we believe anyone can write code, all it takes is a computer and internet connection. If you want to learn more about JHipster or how you can use it to easily create web applications, you can check out these tutorials.