Swift: The App Tracking Transparency APIs on iOS

Feb 2, 2021 • Robert Ecker

This article explains how to use the App Tracking Transparency APIs for user tracking on iOS.

GitHub Pages and Jekyll

Jun 14, 2020 • Robert Ecker

I have recently rebuilt this website with Jekyll and it is now deployed via GitHub Pages. In this article I will tell you why I did that and show you how I did it.

How to Overcome a Bad Habit

Jul 2, 2019 • Robert Ecker

At least 40% of the things we do in our daily lives are habits. We don’t control them consciously. We just do what we are used to do. From an evolutionary perspective this is a valuable strategy. We have to spend less time on thinking and making decisions and can...

What Improvisational Theatre Told Me About Leadership

Jul 1, 2019 • Robert Ecker

Improvisational theatre is a special form of theatre where the actors have no storybook and therefore have no idea what will happen at the stage. The story is created spontaneously by the actors. There are no requisites. Every item that is needed for the story has to be imagined. When...

How One Word Changed My Life

Jun 28, 2019 • Robert Ecker

How often did you say, “yes, but” today? If you are like most people in the Western culture, then I guess you said it quite often. We like to say it because it helps us to stay in our comfort zones. When we say “Yes, but” then what we basically...

The Problem With High Test Coverage

Nov 21, 2017 • Robert Ecker

Last week I attended Dan North’s workshop “Testing Faster”. Dan North is the originator of the term Behavior Driven Development (BDD). The whole workshop was amazing but there was one thing which really surprised me. Since BDD is basically another way of Test Driven Development (TDD), I would have expected...

A Good Manager is Like a Gardener

Aug 10, 2017 • Robert Ecker

Since I attended a Management 3.0 workshop a couple of weeks ago there is one thing that I cannot get out of my mind. It was a simple metaphor: A good manager is like a gardener. Imagine a garden full of vegetables, fruits and other plants. The gardener’s job is...

Give Up Perfection!

Jul 4, 2017 • Robert Ecker

I wanted to write about that topic for weeks or maybe even months. But I never started. Until now! Something was holding me back from writing this article. It was almost like a fear. Maybe the fear of not being good enough. I was not sure what exactly to write...

How to Build a Twitter Bot with Python

May 24, 2017 • Robert Ecker

I have built a Twitter bot which searches Twitter for tweets about software craftsmanship and retweets them if they are interesting. In this tutorial I will tell you how you can easily build your own Twitter bot with Python and run it on a Raspberry Pi or any other Unix...

The Power of Fluid Teams

Feb 23, 2017 • Robert Ecker

Do you know this exciting feeling when you work on your own side project? The incredible motivation when you work on it and this magical feeling when you publish it! What is the difference between those kind of projects and the projects you are working on at work? I think...

First Anniversary of the Team Coder

Sep 9, 2016 • Robert Ecker

Today is a very special day for me! Exactly one year ago I published my first article on this blog! Today is the first anniversary of team-coder.com so I decided to write a short article about the things I have learned within the last year and the things I have...

Code Reviews in Trunk Based Development

Aug 11, 2016 • Robert Ecker

A few months ago I published a blog post about my team’s transition from Git Flow to trunk based development. We have found a way to get our code into the master branch very quickly. At the same time we are always ready to release our master with confidence which...

Improving Skills with a Pet Project

Jun 6, 2016 • Robert Ecker

I bought my first Smartphone in 2011. It was an HTC Desire with Android running on it. A few weeks earlier I had started to learn Java so since Android apps can also be developed with Java I had to create an app for that great device! Now, five years...

From Git Flow to Trunk Based Development

Mar 22, 2016 • Robert Ecker

I have worked with Git Flow for a few years and it helped me a lot to structure my Git branches. However, I have encountered some problems with Git Flow, most of them coming from long-living branches. The solution to solve those problems is trunk based development! It is an...

4 Simple Tricks to Avoid Merge Conflicts

Feb 15, 2016 • Robert Ecker

Git is a great tool if you have multiple developers working on the same code base. However, there is one thing which can be very annoying if your team uses Git: Merge conflicts! Two developers have changed the same part of the code and then Git doesn’t know what to...

How to Establish Coding Guidelines in Your Team

Feb 3, 2016 • Robert Ecker

Coding guidelines help software developing teams to write consistent code which is easy to read and understand for all team members. Establishing such guidelines can be problematic if it is done wrong but it will be very beneficial for the whole team if it is done the right way. In...

The SOLID Principles of Software Design by Examples

Dec 19, 2015 • Robert Ecker

SOLID is an acronym for five principles that help software developers design maintainable and extendable classes. It stands for Single responsibility, Open-closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation and Dependency inversion. The acronym was first introduced by Michael Feathers and is based on Uncle Bob’s paper Design Principles and Design Patterns.

Boosting the Quality of Team Decisions

Dec 17, 2015 • Robert Ecker

There are many ways to make decisions in a team. Most teams use always the same style to decide things. Unfortunately there is not one way which is perfect for every situation. If you choose your decision style depending on the context you will come up with much better solutions...

Mob Programming

Oct 20, 2015 • Robert Ecker

Mob Programming is like Pair Programming but even more amazing! Instead of two people working together you have a whole team “working at the same time, in the same space, at the same computer, on the same thing” (http://mobprogramming.org).

The Team Coder: A modern software developer

Sep 9, 2015 • Robert Ecker

Coding in a team requires more than just coding skills. A modern software developer is not only a programmer but also an architect, communicator, teacher and learner. There are many tools and practices that help developers to work effectively in a team and to create code that is maintainable and...