DEV Community: Exceed Team

AI & a quiet revolution

Exceed Team — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 09:57:00 +0000

"We're on a path to build AI that can interpret images as reliably as humans can," predicts professor Pieter Abbeel, an expert in robotics and AI research from the University of California, Berkeley.

For the last 50-60 years, people completely got used to the fact that physically strong robots work in factories — e.g., making cars and electronics.

Artificial intelligence development had a breakthrough during 1990s-2000s, and today we confidently live in the age of big data and neural networks.

Contemporary AI systems can see, learn, access situations, make decisions, and react.

What fields are going to be the first to change in 2022 and the upcoming years?

"The three big ones I anticipate are warehouse pick and pack operations, recycling sortation, and crop harvesting/care," says professor Abbeel.

The capabilities of AI keep extending further, thanks to IT science areas like Computer Vision and Deep Learning.

In other words, we are witnessing a quiet and mostly invisible revolution.

Good or bad, the future will tell. But one thing is certain: robotics and AI have been gradually changing our lives and will continue to do so.

Accessibility: Why care?

Exceed Team — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 15:12:00 +0000

Convenient layouts.

Right-sized elements.

Predictable updates.

Contrast colors.

Clear button icons and names.

Intuitive navigation.

Voice- or gesture-driven control.

Does this list sound like luxury? Well, it shouldn't. Such features will make the web/app experience much better for so many users.

For example, Dutch people did a little research about it and found out (not surprising at all, really) that 43% of users apply at least one accessibility feature for their convenience.

These features are:

Adjust text size – 32.62 %
Dark mode – 26.79%
Zoom – 7 %
Bold text – 6.86 %
Shake to undo – 6.14 %
Speak selection – 4.19 %
Reduce transparency – 3.41 %

Accessibility for content, software, and interfaces is a critical issue nowadays. It affects every one of us at some point of our lives. This is the main reason why you should think about your product's accessibility today.

Read more about accessibility audits, rules, and tips in our blog post

December 11 is App Day ❖

Exceed Team — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 15:27:32 +0000

Which apps we used most in 2021 vs 2020? Let’s find out!

As the survey by App Annie reports, in 2021 users worldwide:
★ spent most the money on streaming apps like YouTube and TikTok
★ massively downloaded video editors like CapCut
★ shared most content via Instagram and TikTok
★ were active on dating apps like Tinder and Bumble
★ participated in lots of Zoom calls

Comparing iOS and Android app users, the survey noted that the first group spent the most money during the year: 65% vs 35%. This isn’t surprising if you ever studied consumer spending statistics: iOS users tend to be the paying audience, especially when it comes to games.

➥ This year’s overall spending on apps is over $135 billion — by 25% more than in 2020

The most downloaded app in 2021:
❖ on AppStore — TikTok
❖ on GooglePlay — Facebook

What’s your favorite app?

Is my Data Safe with SaaS?

Exceed Team — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 13:36:19 +0000

Do you want to build a SaaS solution as a developer? Or are you planning to become a vendor for other companies? Either way, you should study all risks, and especially data safety ones.

With traditional software, it’s up to users to make their network secure.

SaaS integration means that a software vendor and cloud provider become responsible for data protection.

What challenges you may face:

Security monitoring.
Data encryption.
Key management.
Data privacy.
Data residency.
IAM (Identity and Access Management).
Incident response.
Integration with other security environments in a company.
Additional expenses (e.g., third-party tools to compensate risks) increasing SaaS development cost.
Poor communication with B2B SaaS technical experts leaves unanswered questions or misunderstandings.

Knowing what kinds of weak spots may occur, you are ready to strengthen them and prevent security risks.

Now you’ve become more prepared to apply SaaS.

Read more about SaaS implementation and monetization in our article here

What is "staff augmentation"?

Exceed Team — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 15:22:12 +0000

In a nutshell: Staff/Team Augmentation is when a specialist is recruited for a particular project while being officially employed at another company

Wins for devs:
★ tons of new experience with people and technologies
★ interesting projects
★ (often) higher rates

Wins for companies:
★ spending less on additional costs

In-house teams... or?

Exceed Team — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 14:57:47 +0000

What do you think are the best ways to hire/be hired as a software developer?

➊ Augmentation (employed at a company while working for another)
➋ In-house (employed and working for the same company)
➌ Remote (officially employed and working from home)
➍ Freelance (working without being employed at any company officially)

Why a developer needs Kubernetes

Exceed Team — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 11:27:09 +0000

So, let's say you use Docker, package applications into Docker images, and deploy to production. This works if you have a simple application and you are delighted with how it works. But this is not enough if the requirements for your applications are higher than usual.
For example:

Fault tolerance.
Resource limits.
Scalability.
Combining applications into groups.
Collecting metrics and logs.
Security and access control.
Simple integration with different solutions.
Launching applications on a schedule.

Among all options suitable to solve this tasks, Kubernetes stays the best choice.
It is an open-source orchestration system for managing a cluster of containers.More about how it works you can learn here.

Kubernetes also have some useful components such as DNS for Services and Pods, Cluster level log, The package manager- Helm that ease and make the work with Kubernetes more interesting.

Share your experience of working with Kubernetes in comments. Have you ever faced with troubles and found another better solutions?

Features of E-learning app in 2020–2021

Exceed Team — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 12:01:41 +0000

“E-learning” became one of the most popular words in 2020, though this phenomenon has appeared a long time ago. It is an approach to education that offers anyone to study from any place, on any device, and anytime.
Today this field is very profitable for creating a startup. According to Forbes data, the digital education market will increase to $325 billion by 2025. However, we can see that the demand for e-learning apps and platforms will grow because of COVID situation worldwide.
At Exceed Team we build such platforms for business owners from scratch. One of the most important stages before development is to analyse the market and set goals. Here’s the list of features that continue appearing in e-learning apps and for sure keep popular for the next year:

Personalized Learning
Mobile Learning
Microlearning
Use of AR and VR
Artificial Intelligence as Tutors
Increase in Big Data Analytics
Gamification

We will write a post about why we need gamification in digital education later. Now you can read the original article to learn more about building an e-learning app and starting business in this profitable niche.

Ruby vs Python. Short comparison

Exceed Team — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 12:42:38 +0000

Today we can call Python and Ruby two of high-level languages of the latest generation. They are both well structured, straightforward, and provide a developer the opportunity to do quickly development instead of syntax complexity and strict hierarchy.
We wrote a short article to compare Ruby and Python by philosophy, typical projects, use cases, libraries, reusability and advantages.

Read the original source of our Ruby and Python comparison and leave your comments under this post.

5 reasons why developers love React Native

Exceed Team — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 11:58:36 +0000

React Native has been named a breakthrough in the development of app cross-platform. Specialists consider it to have one of the highest rates of creating a great user experience.
Here are some reasons why developers choose React Native:

Simple And Easy to Work with
Contains Changes Preview.
Can also use third-party plugins.
Live reloading function.
Great community.

For these and many other reasons, developers love React Native.

It’s a short summary of our new article about hiring a React Native developer.
In the original source you may learn more reasons to consider React Native cool. Check out the article and leave comments here.