Luke Hamilton

We used CircleCI in conjunction with GitHub to achieve an integrated version control system continuous integration setup. CircleCI automatically runs our builds in a clean Docker container or virtual machine on every commit allowing us to stay on stop of any regressions as they arise. Additionally the notification system keeps our team up to date when issues do arise so we can get them fixed quickly. It even integrates with Slack to further reduce the friction in staying up to date with the status of our builds. With the automated deployment system once a build passes we can have it automatically deployed to our production environment so we can make sure our users always have the latest and greatest features.

#StackDecisionsLaunch

We used CircleCI in conjunction with GitHub to achieve an integrated version control system continuous integration setup. CircleCI automatically runs our builds in a clean Docker container or virtual machine on every commit allowing us to stay on stop of any regressions as they arise. Additionally the notification system keeps our team up to date when issues do arise so we can get them fixed quickly. It even integrates with Slack to further reduce the friction in staying up to date with the status of our builds. With the automated deployment system once a build passes we can have it automatically deployed to our production environment so we can make sure our users always have the latest and greatest features.

#StackDecisionsLaunch

We used CircleCI in conjunction with GitHub to achieve an integrated version control system continuous integration setup. CircleCI automatically runs our builds in a clean Docker container or virtual machine on every commit allowing us to stay on stop of any regressions as they arise. Additionally the notification system keeps our team up to date when issues do arise so we can get them fixed quickly. It even integrates with Slack to further reduce the friction in staying up to date with the status of our builds. With the automated deployment system once a build passes we can have it automatically deployed to our production environment so we can make sure our users always have the latest and greatest features.

#StackDecisionsLaunch

We used Zeplin and React Storybook together to speed up development and collaboration across the company when building Stack Decisions. #StackDecisionsLaunch

We used Zeplin to handoff designs and style guides from the design team to engineering. Because Zeplin automatically generates accurate specs, assets and code snippets from designs we were able to stay on the same page as a team and save time in development. Additionally the friction in communication between the design and development teams is greatly reduced as Zeplin will notify us when designs are updated.

We used React Storybook in a similar fashion to create a library of shared components. It allows us to organize our components into a library, view the different states of each component, and interactively develop and test components. Because React Storybook runs outside of our main application it allows us to develop UI components in isolation, which can improve component reuse, testability, and development speed. We were able to build quickly without having to worry about application-specific dependencies.

At StackShare we were discussing how to increase the retention of our newly signed up users. We hypothesized that if we made certain changes to the emails in our on-boarding process we could increase our retention and activation of users.

We decided to use sendwithus because it offered us the ability to A/B test our transactional emails. We also utilized the sendwithus analytics dashboard to gain real time insight into the performance of our email campaigns. Furthermore sendwithus has a Rails gem that allowed us to easily integrate the product into our application. We were also able to integrate sendwithus with our SendGrid account. #ABTestingAnalytics #TransactionalEmail

At StackShare we wanted to better understand how are users were interacting with the products that we were building. We decided to use FullStory to record our users' sessions to see the real user experiences that were occurring. This helped us to debug a multitude of front end exceptions that were difficult to find and reproduce. Additionally because we were already using Segment, integrating FullStory was as simple as clicking a button.

I used Prisma for creating a ready-to-use GraphQL API in front of my PostgreSQL database. It allowed me to get up and running very quickly because I didn’t need to worry about writing the logic that interacts with the database. You simply define your data model using the GraphQL schema definition language and then use the Prisma CLI tool to deploy your changes. Based on your data model Prisma will generate a ready-to-use GraphQL API with CRUD functionality. Additionally the API includes filtering, sorting and pagination out of the box. You can then use Prisma Cloud to manage your data.