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Board Chairman

Gorilla Logic celebrates 15 years of extraordinary Agile software development. CEO Stu Stern shares his startup experience.

<h4>Happy 15th Birthday Gorilla Logic!</h4><p>On the one hand, I’m proud to hit the milestone. On the other hand, I’m thinking, “Aren’t I supposed to be a startup zillionaire by now?”</p><p>But, hey, Gorilla Logic has not only beaten the odds in becoming a successful business, we’ve outgrown the “small business” designation and have officially joined the “medium-sized enterprise” ranks. And we did it without funding. Gorilla Logic is a bootstrap, although as is so often the case with companies that manage to succeed without venture capital, that wasn’t our intention. When we launched the company in 2002, Plan A was to use other people’s money to build a high-tech empire, but we were never able to convince investors to give us a chance.</p><p><img src="https://content.gorillalogic.com/img/2017/09/Happy-Birthday-Gorilla-Logic-1.png" alt="Happy Birthday Gorilla Logic">For every company that gets funded, there are ten more who can’t raise a dime, and for every ten that do get funded, only one will succeed<strong>.</strong> A “typical” startup success story is literally one-in-a-hundred. So, to the 99% of my fellow founders out there who will fail to follow the script, allow me to offer a story you might find even more inspirational.</p><p>It’s a story where you and your best friend quit your high-paying jobs, cut your living expenses dramatically and literally bet your homes on being able to pursue your passions and build a business together. You think it’s going to be relatively straightforward to raise money for your Big Idea, but quickly learn it’s every bit as hard as everyone said it would be.</p><p>You have your moments of doubt and even contemplate returning to corporate-dom, but your partner continually renews your faith and convinces you to keep going. Still, your savings begin to run alarmingly low, and you start looking for little ideas to make a little money. Eventually, a few of those little ideas form the basis of a small, but profitable business.</p><p>You surround yourself with talented and tenacious people with complementary skills and temperaments. Such a group of high-powered individuals is inevitably going to experience some clashes of ideas and egos, but you provide effective leadership and the team coalesces around a common goal, forming an enduring partnership of equals.</p><p>Together, you take risks, but they’re always risks you can survive losing because ultimately you’re determined to live to fight another day. Of course you make mistakes, but you keep your eyes wide open and course correct quickly enough to stay afloat and try a different tack.</p><p>And then one day, you realize you’ve established a truly sustainable business. After some additional risk-taking and mistake-making, you even figure out how to scale it. Your company’s fifteenth anniversary arrives, and you realize you’re a “medium-sized enterprise.” Nobody’s going to make a movie about you. Harvard Business Review isn’t going to do a case study. But you’re a freakin’ medium-sized enterprise. And every bit as proud as the zillionaires.</p>

Happy 15th Birthday Gorilla Logic!

How did Gorilla Logic become "Gorilla Logic?" Learn about the origin of our company's name. 

<h3>Have you ever wondered what’s behind the Gorilla Logic name? Here’s the scoop straight from CEO and co-founder <a href="/about-us/">Stu Stern</a>.&nbsp;</h3><p>As our many customers know, Gorilla Logic specializes in the highest-quality talent, and over the years our consultants have appropriately come to be known as “gorillas”. The name and this connotation, however, were more fortuitous than deliberate. The company was originally founded in 2002 to create software tools and initially only offered consulting services as a way to generate the&nbsp;revenue necessary to bootstrap the business. It wasn’t until a few years later that we officially made the pivot and consulting became our primary focus.</p><p>But back in 2002, after we’d just quit our jobs at Sun Microsystems, my partners and I considered and rejected dozens of names (primarily because the domains were already taken). I finally coined the name Gorilla Logic, but it didn’t originally arise in my mind as some metaphor for powerful geeks. The name instead arose from my passion for music.&nbsp;</p><p>I remember well the moment I was driving on I-25 near Denver and listening to the album <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ondpLxoRJuk" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >G-Sides by the Gorillaz</a>. I started thinking about “gorilla names” and upon reaching home I resignedly typed “who is <a href="/">gorillalogic.com</a>” into a terminal window, fully expecting the domain to already belong to someone else. To my happy surprise, it was indeed available, and I registered it on the spot.</p><p>After fourteen years (and two more great Gorillaz albums), the name has served us well, with the phrase “That was very gorilla-like of you” being the highest praise you can confer on anybody who works here.</p><p>—</p><p>To read more about CEO and co-founder Stu Stern please see his LinkedIn <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stustern" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >here</a>. Have any questions about onshoring, nearshoring or hiring a gorilla? Don’t hesitate to <a href="/contact-us/">contact us</a>.&nbsp;</p>

Gorilla Logic: Origin of the Name

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Stu Stern.jpeg

Co-Founder & Board Member

To learn more about machine learning, I have been trying to teach my computer to play Gin Rummy through some great frameworks and high-powered cpus.

<p>I&#8217;ve been trying to teach my computer to play <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_rummy" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >Gin Rummy</a>. Actually, it&#8217;s a<a href="https://github.com/edschwarz/gummynet/blob/master/README.md" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank" rel="noopener" > simplified version of rummy </a>that uses 7-card hands to simply race to &#8220;gin&#8221;. For the rules, see below. My hope is to learn more about machine learning, a long-time interest of mine that has recently become accessible to duffers like myself through some great frameworks and high-powered CPUs.</p>
<p>I decided to try Gin Rummy because I was inspired by <a href="#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alpha Go</a>. This has sent me down the path of Reinforcement Learning, where rather than learning patterns from examples, the machine learns behavior through a system of rewards and penalties meant to express the objective of the learning. The machine&#8217;s learning algorithm is one which maximizes the reward. I have been using RL4J, part of the deeplearning4j family recently made part of the <a href="https://www.eclipse.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >Eclipse Foundation</a>.</p>
<p>As it is Springtime and thus a season of optimism and generation, I will say here that I hope to write a few blog posts on this topic over the warm weather. I&#8217;ll postpone the details until <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/hope-thing-feathers-254" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >those thing-with-feathers posts</a>; here I will just offer a couple of high-level observations.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>First Observation</h2>
<p>The first is that machine learning is still very general-purpose &#8211; meaning that you have a lot of work to do to get it ready to do what you actually want. Some problems, like image classification, are well-trod pathways with a lot of tools and code either already-working or at least formerly-working. Others &#8211; like card games &#8211; don&#8217;t necessarily have the same amount of support. A lot of work went into wrestling my problem into a form that seemed like it ought to be machine-learnable.</p>
<p>I started by building a simulator that could operate my simplified Gin Rummy game, with pluggable Strategy components for each player. Then I wrapped a Neural Network in such a strategy. This was great for playing Gin Rummy, but learning was a different matter: in this situation I needed a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process" target="_blank" rel="noopener" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >Markov Decision Process</a>, where somehow a &#8220;State&#8221; would be managed by an external learning engine which would invoke my code after a decision had been made, to assess the associated reward/penalty. Let&#8217;s just say it took a lot of testing to get it right.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Second Observation</h2>
<p>The second is that when things don&#8217;t work &#8211; in other words, the kind of learning you are looking for is just not happening &#8211; there are between 2 and 2.8 zillion parameters that can be adjusted to change how the Neural Network works, how the learning works, or both. There are a plethora of different types of Networks, each with its own 0.7-1.2 zillion parameters. Without guidance, it can really be hard to even know what questions to ask.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h2>Third Observation</h2>
<p>The third is that it&#8217;s a hilly solution space out there, with more local minima than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You can stoically wait for your stochastic learning injection to blind-man&#8217;s-bluff it&#8217;s way out if you like, but I prefer to get these things addressed while I am still living &#8211; so I resorted to a genetic algorithm, spinning up hundreds of models at a time, training them for a while, and selecting the ones that exhibited significant improvement. This was probably the biggest hands-on breakthrough I have achieved so far &#8211; combining ML/NN with genetic algorithms to more effectively explore the solution space.</p>
<p>Post is too long already, so I will just leave you with my fourth observation &#8211; I wish my stuff ran faster.</p>

Learning Machine Learning with Gin Rummy

This post explores 3 IT software outsourcing trends for 2017-2018.

<p>2016 was a volatile year for everything, it seems. While the galaxy of human attention continues to reorganize around the supermassive black hole of the internet, dark webs are also exerting influence that we are only now discovering. Sometimes it seems that polarization permeates every pore, meanness dominates every mode of discourse – and that’s just deciding which news to read.</p><h4>Which leads me to ask, <a href="/blog/3-outsourcing-software-trends-for-2016-2017/">as I did a year ago</a> – what hope do we really have of anticipating trends and shifts in the future of outsourced software development? Even if we could, would they be interesting?</h4><p>Focusing on the positive, and confident that no one actually read last year’s post except the folks in our marketing department, I have selected three things I feel like talking about in the world where I work – building software for businesses.</p><h3><strong>More Cloud</strong> – the Albatross of Hardware</h3><p>Speaking of supermassive black holes, AWS continues to make it seem silly for companies without truly massive computing needs – like, telco or NSA-level – to ever buy a shared computer. To switch metaphors, the war is over, now it’s time to win the peace, by which I mean help resettle the millions of lines of business logic and zettabytes of enterprise data that remain stranded in data centers and colos around the world.</p><p>AWS and Azure seem destined to extend their twin-titan duopoly, as they convert ever-larger parts of the IT function into a monthly invoice. AWS is delivering this model for high-level services like Redshift, a cloud-native data warehouse that makes building your own – even atop AWS instances – sort of like raising sheep to make your own clothes.</p><p>The raw economics will make “lift and shift” a nice niche over the next couple of years. Look to see this facilitated by financial products like wholesale cloud capacity as an asset – inventory for resale, or for financial engineering purposes.</p><p>It will take a longer software refresh cycle to see enterprises finally abandoning the low-level instances-snapshots-and-volumes pastures and moving up the cloud stack in large numbers. Virtualization is still in the 100-flowers age: there isn’t consensus on the patterns that will end up dominating.</p><h3><strong>More Data</strong> – Party like it’s 1999.</h3><p>More Cloud makes More Data possible. We should be living the golden age of data mining, chomping through seams of detail-rich information and pitching up diamonds of insight by the cartload. After all, anyone with a laptop and a credit card can rent enough horsepower to start searching Mars for more human faces.</p><p>But the data millennium has not yet arrived – although the rise of auto-targeted ad networks with real-time bidding may seem like a sign of impending apocalypse. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/chase-ads-youtube-fake-news-offensive-videos.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >Chase’s discovery that 5,000 sites work</a> as well as 400,000 seems to imply that there is still some room for optimization.</p><p>It’s like Java and Linux in 1999 – it’s clear that some kind of revolution is underway, but what will become the new paradigm is still unclear. AWS and Azure have an impressive array of building block choices, but there’s still a good chance that by the time you get them put together another approach will be all the rage. And you’ll be able to complete the implementation while you’re waiting for that query to run. &nbsp;</p><h3><strong>Less </strong><a href="/application-security/"><strong>Security</strong></a> – oh, sorry – did I mean <strong>privacy</strong>?</h3><p>From black-hat hacking to it’s-perfectly-legal little-list-making by every acronym from NSA to ISP to ACA, every electron you push through your Wifi is ripe for the picking. Not only that, but the next generation of devices isn’t waiting for you to expose yourself – Alexa and Hey Google and Siri are listening every second, your phone is blasting your whereabouts to friends, fans, marketers, and pranksters worldwide, and now your thermostats, garage-door-motor, and baby’s Legos have all become double agents.</p><p>This will drive the trend toward less-revealing cyberwear – trading off some of the ultra-convenience on offer for a bit less unwanted companionship. Incognito browsing, Tor-for-the-hardcore, and a no-cookie diet are becoming mainstream and will continue to do so. Since relying on a password now seems like leaving your car unlocked, two-factor authentication and password managers will become nail-salon chatter. Not in 2018, but in another, happier future, your home technology will be set up by a licensed worker obeying some simple, standard, basic techniques to keep you secure and private – like your plumber. Hope it doesn’t start leaking on the weekend.</p><p><i>A word of caution when making predictions: Looking back on last year’s U.S. political pontification, I would remind the folks in our marketing department that predictions from 2016 often do not pan out.&nbsp;</i></p><p>—</p>

3 IT Software Trends for 2017-2018

This article is for the day-to-day private or small-business email user, or someone who needs to use email for work and is concerned about email security.

<h4>Let’s get this out of the way first:</h4><p>– If your email is being specifically targeted by determined hackers, you need to spend some money on some serious <a href="/application-security/">security consulting</a>. Do it now. Don’t rely on some junk you read in some blog post.</p><p>– If your employer or client tells you&nbsp;you&nbsp;must adhere to their security and e-mail policies, please do.</p><p>This article is for the day-to-day private or small-business email user, or someone who needs to use email for work, sometimes on the go. There are a few quick and easy ways to keep the run-of-the-mill hackers out of your email.</p><p>These Tips, by the way, apply regardless of where you are – at home or at Starbucks. You should ABSOLUTELY keep your home WIFI encrypted, password protected – all grist for another article. But the reality is that home networks become much less secure over time&nbsp;since their low-level technologies require extra skills to keep them locked and monitored.&nbsp;</p><p>That’s why the only realistic approach is to assume that you are ALWAYS on a completely insecure network.</p><h3>So now to the top-5!</h3><h4>1. Always use webmail/HTTPS to run your email&nbsp;</h4><p>Fortunately, HTTPS, if implemented correctly, is very powerful. It encrypts your traffic strongly before it ever leaves your computer, including everything after the sitename-and-port in your URL, and decrypts it only at the website’s servers. So it is pretty safe even on an insecure network.</p><p>This can be a big challenge for folks who are used to running a big local email client using POP or IMAP. It is definitely possible to use these protocols securely, but it’s more configuration for you to maintain and keep up. So make the move!</p><h4>2. Always use a big-time commercial provider</h4><p>HTTPS is implemented pretty well at big-time cloud-mail providers like Gmail, apple, outlook, etc., and in up-to-date versions of big-time browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.&nbsp;</p><h4>3. Use two-factor identification</h4><p>One of the biggest risks as an email user is that someone will hack your account by getting your password. Two-factor auth helps a lot, and IMHO is less of a hassle than good password hygiene.&nbsp;</p><h4>4. Keep your browser, OS, and virus-protection on auto-update</h4><p>The second biggest risk, as an email user, is your device will be compromised by malware. If that happens, it doesn’t matter how secure the network is or isn’t.&nbsp;“Safe computing” practices like not clicking on Phishing emails are important, but not really reliable – everyone makes a mistake sometime.</p><p>Virus scanners are the best defense – this includes virus-scanning your device at startup and then in “live-protect” mode. But even Virus Scanners are porous. You need the combined power of the security teams at your OS, browser and virus-protection to stay on top of the latest threats, and get their patches to you as quickly as possible.</p><p>Finally:&nbsp;</p><h4>5. Just watch what you say, OK?&nbsp;</h4><p>However secure your email is, you often have no idea what the situation is at the other end! In other words, ultimately it’s not a problem with a technical solution.&nbsp;</p><p>—</p><p>To read more by Gorilla Ed Schwarz please see <a href="/author/ed-schwarz/">here</a>. If you have any questions about nearshoring or onshoring your software development don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment below. Don’t forget to <a href="http://go.gorillalogic.com/subscribe-to-our-blog" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >subscribe to our blog</a>.</p>

5 Tips to Stop Hackers from Reading Your Email

Below are seven common app development mistakes that can plague both new and experienced mobile application development companies.

<p><i>Although we first published this article in 2015, it’s important to remember the tips outlined below if you want your mobile app to be successful.&nbsp;</i></p><p>It’s easy to get excited about a new mobile application development project. While the initial buzz is great for motiving the team, rushing into app development without proper planning can cause many shortcomings in the final product. Below are seven common app development mistakes that can plague both new and experienced mobile app development companies.</p><h2>Not Differentiating the Mobile App From the Website</h2><p>Websites are compatible across a broad range of devices, allowing near universal access to content. They are immediately accessible and don’t require the user to download or install any software. In most cases, websites are less costly to develop than native apps.</p><p>That being said, native apps do offer compelling advantages compared to websites. Apps can access device hardware such as recording devices, accelerometers and cameras. They can offer enhanced customization of the UI, and allow offline usage so web connectivity isn’t always required.</p><p>Before you begin your app development project, make sure you leverage the advantages of native apps to deliver an experience a website cannot provide.</p><h2>Having a Poorly Defined Monetization Strategy</h2><p>If a goal of your app is to generate revenue, make sure you identify your monetization strategy early in the dev process. Ad revenue, paid subscriptions, in-app purchases and freemium strategies are all valid methods for generating revenue. Identifying the monetization strategy early allows proper integration of the revenue model into the app. Changes to the revenue model during or after app development can add significant costs to the development and result in awkward execution.</p><h2>Choosing the Wrong Platform for your App Development</h2><p>The iOS and Android platforms are the dominant mobile app platforms and together capture over 95% of the smartphone market share. However, the two platforms are not equal. The Android platform has significant market share advantages through most of Europe and Asia, while North American market share is equally split between the two. While iOS has a smaller user base, surveys show significantly higher lifetime revenue and higher average revenue per user for iOS apps compared to Android apps. Make sure you know your market and choose your platform accordingly.</p><h2>Trying to Make the App Do Too Much</h2><p>Technological advancements continue to expand what apps can do. However, just because the ability to do something exists, doesn’t mean you should do it. Define the core purpose(s) of your app and make sure it handles those tasks perfectly. Adding unnecessary functionality can add unwanted complexity to the app and take away from the user experience. Make sure there is a clear net benefit before adding more options or functionality to your app.</p><h2>Assuming Everyone Uses Apps the Same Way</h2><p>Gender, age, education and technical literacy all influence how people interact with technology. Do not make the mistake of assuming that everyone will interact with the app the same way you do. While a super-user may make use of all available gesture inputs and keyboard shortcuts, a novice user requires a more intuitive way to interact with the app. Ensure you accommodate your anticipated user base and try to account for how different people are likely to interact with the app. Excellent analytic software is available that tracks how users interact with an app. If possible, try to collect some beta stage user data and use this feedback to improve the usability of the app.</p><h2>Releasing the App Before It’s Ready</h2><p>The app marketplace is very crowded and users can be quite fickle. Releasing an app before it’s been thoroughly debugged is sure way to elicit poor product ratings and negative feedback. Even if you do manage to fix all the bugs in subsequent releases, the negative halo from poor review is hard to shed.</p><h2>Failing to Develop a Marketing Plan</h2><p>The Google Play store and Apple iTunes store each offer over 1 million apps. How are you going to get your app noticed? Even the most fantastic, life-changing app will be relegated to obscurity without a proper marketing plan. Web marketing, cross-promotion, affiliate marketing and app-store optimization are some things to consider when marketing your app. Take time to develop a marketing plan to ensure your target audience finds your app.</p><p>App development can be an immensely rewarding experience. Bringing an app to market, growing the user base and receiving positive accolades are professionally and financially satisfying experiences. Whether you create your own apps or outsource to a mobile app dev company, avoid the common pitfalls and you can increase your odds of success with your next app.</p><p>To read more about app development and mistakes often made in the process please see the article by <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238849" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >enterpreneur.com</a> and <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/04/11/mobile-app-design-tips/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >mashable.com</a>.</p><p>—</p><p>Have any questions about onshoring or nearshoring your software development? Don’t hesitate to <a href="/contact-us/">contact us</a> and follow us on social media by clicking below.</p>

7 Mistakes Often Made in App Development

This post explores 3 IT software outsourcing trends for 2016-2017.

<p>2016 has been a volatile year for software development. New languages, libraries, devices, frameworks and tools seem to pop up every day, resulting in an unstable surface which can provoke molto agita. I can barely keep lunch down from day to day, I tell ya.</p><p>As 2017 approaches and technology plays an increasingly creepy co-dependent role in business and our personal lives, what hope do we really have of anticipating trends and shifts in the future of outsourced software development? Even if we could, would they be interesting, or depressing?</p><p>Focusing on the positive, and confident that few will look back at this at all if it’s completely wrong, I have selected&nbsp;three things currently grabbing me in my business – things I feel like talking about.</p><h2>Data Analytics</h2><p><a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/mobile-white-paper-c11-520862.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >In 2015,</a> the amount of data spit up and by digital devices, including smartphones and computers, and then just as relentlessly sucked back up by others, reached 3 billion GB. There used to be a name for numbers that large, but they are becoming obsolete before anyone can memorize them.&nbsp;Most of this data continues to be unanalyzed, mercifully. But you can bet some enterprise somewhere is going to declare it “highly useful in understanding how to manage workflows, increase productivity and reduce expenditures”, especially since the cost of doing so continues to drop faster than a North Korean satellite.</p><p>In 2016-2017, Data Analytics will continue to be just finding its feet in what will be the dominant concern of huge parts of the industry in just a few years. Innovation in this area is happening all over the world, and connecting the technical talent needed to manipulate with the vision to interpret is what will make this field deliver on its promises.</p><h2>IoT Development- Internet of Things</h2><p>IoT has been termed the next “mega-trend”, “third-wave of the internet” and even “the next industrial revolution”. Fortunately, I don’t hang out with folks who use those phrases a whole lot. But basically, the idea is pretty compelling – who knows you better than your possessions? And what could they do to make them more cherished in your life than to have them ready at any moment to report on the latest news flash – about you! &nbsp;IoT can mean anything from cars with built-in sensors, industrial equipment, smart bracelets, smart thermostats or to homes with remote monitoring.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/mobile-white-paper-c11-520862.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >Cisco</a> estimates there are currently 10 billion connection devices in the world and we can expect that number to exceed 50 billion by 2020. More vertigo for an old finger-counter like me – but at least it’s just a factor of five.</p><p>Speaking of stupid numbers, the IoT and M2M (machine to machine) market are expected to reach $1.5 billion by the end of 2016 with nearly $6 trillion spent on IoT solutions over the next five years. <a href="/blog/best-practices/3-it-outsourcing-trends-to-watch-in-2016-2017/">Jay Wallingford’s</a> previous post talked about the need to outsource much of this development due to the lack of skilled tech workers at home. Another key driver will be the need to leverage specialized tools and methodologies to provide the same kind of reliability we expect in the RoT (Reality of Things) in the software realm.</p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="https://content.gorillalogic.com/img/2016/06/imac-apple-mockup-app-38544-large-1.jpeg" target="_blank" rel="noopener" ><img src="https://content.gorillalogic.com/img/2016/06/imac-apple-mockup-app-38544-large-1-300x199.jpeg" alt="3 Outsourcing Software Trends for 2016-2017" srcset="https://content.gorillalogic.com/img/2016/06/imac-apple-mockup-app-38544-large-1-300x199.jpeg 300w, https://content.gorillalogic.com/img/2016/06/imac-apple-mockup-app-38544-large-1-768x510.jpeg 768w, https://content.gorillalogic.com/img/2016/06/imac-apple-mockup-app-38544-large-1.jpeg 890w" sizes="100vw" width="424"></a></p><h2>Security</h2><p>So in 6 months or so, when you have 50 billion IoT devices spewing personal data about you in the trillions of petabytes per picosecond or whatever it is, an important challenge will be the counter-intuitive need to prevent people from seeing or using all that data.</p><p>Risks are expected to increase dramatically as the kind of stuff we have been discussing creeps inexorably into consumer products. <a href="http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3291817" target="_blank" rel="noopener" >Gartner</a> estimates that over 25% of security attacks in 2020 will involve connections to IoT – can’t wait! Not like the good old days, when you could practice safe computing by not clicking on suspicious emails and using upper and lower case in your password! Now, your wristwatch is your enemy, your thermostat is a spy, and your car is “phoning home” every 5 minutes to complain about your braking.</p><p>While you as an individual may not be able to stop the Masters of the IoT from knowing all about you, you as an IT professional can expect lots of opportunity in 2017 and beyond helping those Masters keep everything safe and compliant. In the coming years, companies must begin hiring security experts able to handle vulnerabilities in IoT data and provide multi-layer protection. Those organizations capable of improving network segmentation capabilities and digital walls will see future competitive advantages.</p><p>Now, pardon me while I voice-command my Echo to shuffle Benny Goodman from Amazon Prime. 😉</p><p>—</p><p>Although the future is impossible to predict, we believe these three trends will play a major role in development to come. Whether you are looking for an onshore or <a href="/nearshoring">nearshore development</a> team, Gorilla Logic can provide you with talented developers skilled in all of the latest technologies, trends and devices to help your company be successful. Please feel free to <a href="/contact-us/">contact us</a> with any questions and find out how we can help you with your outsourcing needs.</p><p>To read more about best practices, outsourcing and software trends stay tuned for future blog posts and follow us on LinkedIn<br><br><br><br><a href="http://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/2059590/fa673c57-ac38-4852-9c38-72c4cb74431a" target="_blank" rel="noopener" ><img src="https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/2059590/fa673c57-ac38-4852-9c38-72c4cb74431a.png" alt="GorillaLogic_LinkedIn"></a><br>&nbsp;</p>

3 Outsourcing Software Trends for 2016-2017

Before you invest your time and energy into learning new programming languages, make sure you ask yourself a few important questions.

<p>As the programming landscape continues to evolve, new languages emerge to replace the incumbents. Once dominant platforms shrink from prominence, and older languages are relegated to legacy status.</p>
<p>Given the dynamic nature of programming technology, what languages should you learn first? What languages should you avoid? While many websites focus on the “best” programming languages to learn, very few suggest which languages are best left unlearned. While there is no universal list of “Languages to Avoid,” depending upon your career goals, interests and objectives, certain languages are best ignored. There are a variety of reasons you should steer clear of certain languages, as well as factors that might dissuade you from learning a certain programming language.</p>
<h2>Lack of Demand for Skilled Programmers</h2>
<p>If you’re learning a new programming language to improve your job prospects, you need to consider the market for the language or platform skills. Certain niche programming languages, like Lisp or Prolog, serve very small market segments. This limits the demand for programmers with these language skills.</p>
<h2>The Language Strengths Don’t Align With Your Interests</h2>
<p>If you are seeking to develop web or native apps, then you would be wasting your time learning languages like VBA or Fortran. Make sure you choose a language that will allow you to do what you want to do. Learning Swift for iOS development, or Java for Android development, is a much quicker path to bringing your app idea to fruition.</p>
<h2>The Market Is Flooded With Qualified Programmers</h2>
<p>Because of the simplicity of some languages, there are very few barriers to becoming a programmer on those languages or platforms. Entry-level programming languages, like Python or Visual Basic, have a large pool of qualified programmers competing for available programming jobs. The abundant supply of programmers means fierce competition and lower pay for jobs requiring these skills.</p>
<h2>Programming Language Obsolescence</h2>
<p>Certain languages, such as BASIC or Cobol, are nearing the end of their lifecycle. Very few new development projects require proficiency with these languages, and the number of legacy systems relying on these languages continues to decrease as companies adopt new systems.</p>
<h2>Level of Programming Proficiency</h2>
<p>Many of today’s popular programming languages have evolved from simpler languages. If you are new to programming, it’s worth investing some time to develop a solid foundation with one or more basic programming languages before proceeding to learn more advanced languages. For example, someone with limited programming knowledge would do well to avoid JavaScript without first developing a good understanding of HTTP.</p>
<h2>Your Skill Set Inventory</h2>
<p>As you continue to add new programming languages to your repertoire, consider how the languages relate to each other. Some languages naturally complement each other and knowledge of complementary languages allows you to do things you couldn’t do with a single language. A good example is a web developer learning PHP, Ruby, SQL and Java. This portfolio of programming skills equips them for virtually any web development assignment. Selecting languages based on synergies results in a more valuable skill set compared to learning lots of disparate languages.</p>
<p>All that being said, it’s still worth pointing out that learning a new language is never a bad thing. While every language has its nuances, all programming languages have common themes. Programming logic and methods tend to carry over between languages, so learning one language will help with learning subsequent programming languages.</p>
<p>Before you set out to learn a new programming language, take a moment to examine your reasons for learning the language in the first place. After going over the job prospects, the demand for language proficiency, and whether or not the language is on its way out the door, you can either continue with your education or choose a different, more suitable language.</p>
<p>As you continue your evolution as a programmer, it’s important to be fully prepared when upgrading your language skills and adding new languages</p>


The Programming Languages You Shouldn’t Learn

A successful onshore or offshore model relies on multiple uncontrolled variables. Minimizing those variables and finding a common ground based on respect is the key.

<p>The <a href="/nearshoring">Nearshore</a> Americas conference in Mexico City was a great opportunity to talk to the wisest people in the onshore/offshore debate – folks who are living it on the ground from both “shores”. A lot of folks touched on the challenges of meshing <a href="/leverage-agile-teams/">modern software development</a> – I’ll call it “agile” so we sort of know what I’m talking about – in a cross-border model.</p><p>The model has not always been a success when executed with cross-border teams. Significantly, teams and organizations which were very productive with onshore-distributed agile often – very often – saw significant velocity hits when delivering with offshore teams or even mixed on/off.</p><p>Thinking about this leads me back to one of my favorite truisms: that harnessing technology for useful purposes in today’s world is only partly about creating software, and creating software is only partly about engineering. Technology deliveries have become social projects, and successful projects work as social units as much if not more than as lines on a project plan.</p><p>A successful agile delivery involves creating a social unit called a team, where everyone feels that they are contributing. But what that really means in practice – what constitutes a positive contribution, vs. a negative one – is not the same in all contexts, in all cultures, in all circumstances.</p><p>For example, just about everyone-everywhere agrees that managing risk is important. Many, especially in the Agile community, would agree that it’s everyone’s role to look out for unforeseen risks. Some practitioners I have worked with would say that it’s a positive contribution to call attention to problems in the delivery quickly and early, in the daily standup or Sprint Planning. Others might say it is a negative contribution to characterize the work of teammates as presenting a risk, in front of the entire group – and it’s negative for the entire team.</p><p>For many really talented deliveries, in big parts of this wonderful world we live in, the “others” would be correct. A different kind of practice, where project assessments could be made collectively and critiques presented indirectly, might achieve a more cohesive team and better results. This doesn’t mean that personnel issues don’t exist, that risks should be soft-pedaled – but their intersection with the social project of delivering technology is not the same in all places and contexts.</p><p>Sometimes “reality” pushes these issues into everyone’s face. It’s a reality that different legal systems, labor regulations/expectations, and tax regimes can force some differences in how people in different countries can participate. That’s a genuine problem that doesn’t go away simply with good intentions. The social project of delivering technology value in the US has a lot of implicit reliance on a shared set of assumptions about things like the enforceability of contracts and protection for intellectual property.&nbsp; When people feel that they cannot accurately gauge some of these risks, the tendency is to rely on top-down controls that make things less agile; when the controls distinguish between the folks on the team based on their location, things become even more challenging.</p><p>Teams need to build ways of interacting that can work around these top-down challenges. For the social group to deliver effectively they need to not just socialize but cooperate – the real magic – and that requires trust. There is no substitute for real-time interactions, and they need to happen on-demand, not as part of a top-down structure. Real, respectful, trusting relationships can go a long way to mitigating friction caused by top-down “reality”.</p><p>Fundamental is that face-time is important. At least voice-time.&nbsp; The need for spontaneity makes desktop teleconferencing – group and one-on-one, open all day (like an office door) – a critical tool for distributed agile teams. It’s best when it’s integrated with chat so that the same spontaneity can spread across a wider communication range. Lots of stuff starts with a chat, escalates to a call, and ends up dragging in another participant or two, and then it’s back to work, using chat to clarify if needed. We use Skype, there are many others.</p><p>It also means that a large workday overlap is actually really critical to making the social project work. Folks in media and finance have made 3-hour and 5-hour timezone differences work for decades, by sharing the time-shift burden, but getting that to work on a large scale across 10 or 14 hours is a significant stress on the social fabric.</p><p>If you want to have success in working with an Agile approach – co-located, distributed, or global – you need to start from the premise that everyone has something to contribute and no one has a monopoly on innovation. This doesn’t really help you decide what your team dynamic and practices will be; but it does help orient them toward respect for all, which is the closest to a universal I have found so far.</p>

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