development

Two years ago, if you had asked me to build a conversational chatbot that leveraged AI, I would have been discussing hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and run it. Today, I built a prototype in one hour that cost me six cents of a SaaS service. It is astonishing to know how far this space has come in such a short timeframe. While it's rare I blog at this point, I want to share more about this experience. The approach I started with a simple Google search on conversational AI chatbots. This led me to Python, as all of the examples I found seemed to leverage it. Most examples leveraged

It has been a while since I wrote a blog post and it's an acknowledgement that I dialed back some of my normal Drupal community involvement. Between several years of maintaining and rebuilding SimplyTest.me on top of my personal and professional obligations, it was good to take a break. I have since been promoted at Acquia and invested a lot there. I’ve also enjoyed time with my family, and recently got a puppy. I feel it is now time to look ahead. State of the Project I was in the first in-person Drupal Camp in Florida a few months ago. I presented a talk evaluating the landscape of Drupal

When I took over as the project lead for SimplyTest.me, the previous lead shared three primary things with me: The system had a non-trivial amount of technical debt and was rising more with time Significant changes were coming with Drupal 8, Composer, Drush, and more His interest was elsewhere As part of my proposal, I promised to do what I could to revitalize this. While this effort has taken years, we have hit another major milestone in our journey: We launched a completely new version of SimplyTest.me. We rebuilt the system from the ground up in an effort to revitalize the project. It’s

Vacation this year has been amazing. I've caught up on some of my long-standing to do list, like launching this new nerdstein site and digging into some of the newer technology I've wanted to explore. SimplyTest has some great new contribution I am excited about. I've spent a ton of time with the kids coloring, playing, and just enjoying these moments while they are young. It is shocking how quickly they have grown. I've cooked a lot and those close know how much I enjoy doing that. I've blogged more - finally - after a long hiatus and lack of motivation. I am currently enjoying an Eight &

Let me welcome you to the new nerdstein.net. I'd like to thank Ana Laura Coto for help with the design. I'd like also thank Jonathan Daggerhart for being there when I needed an assist. I am really happy to finally share this project with the world. This has been a long time coming. Three years. Yes, you read that correctly. Three years. Why? I prioritized learning. And, I am slow and methodical. This website is a culmination of many things I learned over a three year span. But, three years?!? Yep. I have a rewarding and challenging full time job at Acquia. I have a family with two young kids

Drupal 8 introduced a lot of changes. Its usage of best-of-breed dependencies, like Symfony, represented a major shift for Drupal. Drupal 8 also moved to a more nimble release cycle with its major and minor releases, allowing a major version of core to get new features in minor releases. Between dependencies releasing updates and changes to core being more common, Drupal needed to evolve to manage change. One way this happens is through deprecations. This provides a way for Drupal to evolve, identify old code as deprecated, and offer guidance on a replacement. Deprecations were especially

Drupal 9 readiness is as easy as cleaning up deprecations for your Drupal 8 project. SimplyTest is well positioned to help with this. Deprecation ReportingYou can generate a report of the deprecations by performing the following steps: Go to simplytest.meUnder “Enter a project name:”, start typing the name of your project and select itSelect the relevant 8.x branch (not release, as this will also scan unreleased commits)Expand “Additional Options”Click “Add Additional Project”Start typing “Upgrade Status” and select itClick “Launch Sandbox”Go to “admin/reports/upgrade-status”Select your

On the evening of September 13th, SimplyTest.me launched a major new release of the product. The product release achieved three major goals:Replacement of the backend with TugboatQAA new one-click demo frameworkA new development environmentAll efforts could not have been possible without the generous sponsorship from TugboatQA (a product created by Lullabot), Centarro, and Linode. And, community time offered from Hook 42.The rest of this post outlines the release and its significance.TugboatQA BackendHow did we get here?The backend infrastructure of SimplyTest.me was one server running as a

I just closed about 100 browser tabs from an early year activity. While it’s embarrassing I left those tabs open so long (going on five months), I wanted to leave them open to reflect on what I learned. And, what a better way to reflect than a blog post.The SoapboxBear with me for a moment. I subscribe to the philosophy that DevOps represents a line of thinking and a way of working, not a technical product. Like security, when someone says, “I’ll sell you DevOps”, it’s a scam. For those “doing” it right, you need to focus on foundational concepts built into continuous learning. This ideology

Last year was spent primarily learning about SimplyTest. We did make some progress, but I think “keeping the lights on” for a system of this complexity was quite a feat after the project transfer. It’s a unique and fairly complex endeavor that bridges all elements of an open source project, a completely free service, and underlying infrastructure. I see all of the good and the bad that comes from each aspect: system maintenance, feedback from community members, customer service (Slack, Twitter, etc), system outages, and more. I recognize how valuable this service is to the community and I