Caktus Blog

Part two of six in the 2017 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, highlighting the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team’s shortlist.

Part one of six in the 2017 edition of our annual PyCon Must-See Series, highlighting the talks our staff especially loved at PyCon. While there were many great talks, this is our team’s shortlist.

Subtests are the best

Testing our code is important. Because developers write bugs, it’s valuable to catch and correct them before the code gets to production so our apps work as they should. Specifically, we want tests that are DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), thorough, and readable. Though there are many ways to try to accomplish these goals, subtests make each of them easier. If you’re not using subtests in your test classes, you probably should be.

Caktus attended PyCon 2017 in Portland from May 18-21. It was the first PyCon for some, while others were PyCon veterans. All of us were looking forward to the opportunity to hear some great talks and make or renew connections in the Python community.

When considering a website upgrade, many business stakeholders probably think about the frontend, i.e., how the website looks or the features users interact with. Perhaps less often considered is the importance of upgrading the backend; that is, the databases, applications, and servers powering all the behind-the-scenes activity. Infrastructure support and upgrades are necessary but often performed as a separate project from any improvements to design or user experience, rather than as part of a holistic update project.

Back in March, the organizers from the Women in Tech summit asked if I’d like to collaborate on a panel on diversity in technology at their Philadelphia summit. Back in October, I had created a panel on “Staying a Women in Tech” and was excited for the opportunity to speak on such a significant topic in my hometown of Philadelphia. I was introduced to Brigitte Daniel, who had submitted this new panel, and we began putting the panel plans together. Brigitte would moderate the discussion and I would be a panelist along with three other dynamic women in tech: Elise Wei, Jumoke Dada and Gulrukh Ahanger.

We’re proud to announce that Caktus has become a certified Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner in recognition of the depth and breadth of our AWS expertise. Since AWS became an option for fast, flexible, and low cost infrastructure, we’ve used it to build scalable web or cloud apps for our clients. We’ve used AWS services for computing, networking, storage, databases, security, application services and security for 10 clients over the last few years (and that’s not including the projects we do for fun or as part of ShipIt Day projects).

This year marks 10 years of building sharp web apps at Caktus Group. We’re honored by the trust our clients have put in us; it has enabled Caktus to grow from a team of 3 Python developers to an organization of 31 people and supported our efforts to give back to the local and open source communities.

In January of 2016, Caktus transitioned from a general Agile development environment to a more focused Scrum environment. Part of this transition entailed moving from a targeted budget allocation approach per project, to a self-organizing, goal-based team structure with no obvious provision for tight, consistent control over project budgets.

Once per quarter, Caktus employees have the opportunity to take a day away from client work to focus on learning or refreshing skills, testing out ideas, or working on open source contributions. The Q2 2017 ShipIt Day work included building apps, updating open source projects, trying out new tools, and more. Keep reading for the details.