New stack, full stack.

In the past month I've been busy rebuilding the LightApp stack from scratch.
LightApp is a very cool startup in the industrial energy management field.
The product's essence is collecting data from various sources (Sensors, meters, production databases) of huge factories and analysing it to find ways to improve their effectiveness and reduce their costs and carbon footprint.
Previous product was built over LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/PHP/MySql), using the webii PHP framework, and had a lot of limitations - One example was heavy relying on SQL to perform statistical analysis, which was costly and shown poor performance and response time.

We've decided to rebuild the client (Not the database) with node.js, and after less than a month (We're a team of two) we've managed to almost completely finish our rewrite.
For UI we've decided to use bootstrap and amcharts, and manage the data ourselves (Rather than use a framework like angular or backbone).
Over the server side, express was used for main routing, mysql for database connection, and nunjucks for server side HTML.

The application doesn't have too many end users (Expecting few hundreds during 2014), but each user is performing heavy statistical analysis operations (Like a distribution of hourly data per category over a period of 6 months) - Which should be done really fast, and it is. Querying large data sets and crunching them in node is amazingly fast, but in the near future we will move our data to mongo, which can perform this analysis even faster.

Developing the whole stack in Javascript is fun - Though the language has a lot of limitations, it's fun to use, easy to debug and test, and, for our use, proves to be cost effective. Node.js asynchronous programming mode takes some time getting used to, but if you've dealt with AJAX on the client side, you'll be quite familiar with it.

I would highly recommend every programmer to try writing a full stack JS application. It's amazing how Javascript has evolved in the recent years.

Rewrite your Product, and live to tell about it

In every organisation life, there comes a time when its product is due to a big overhaul.
From dated GUI to dying Database, a Business Logic layer that's filled with patches, or even personal changes ('The only girl that knew that code has left...').
So now the company gives you, her beloved manager, a clean slate to rewrite the product.

Supposedly a dream come true, right?
In a past post, I've discussed the new system dilemma, a situation where you're already knee deep inside the rewrite, and pressure is rising.

This post should help you avoid that terrible situation.

The most important rule when writing a product from scratch is deciding what it's NOT going to do in phase one (See time frame in the second rule). Trying to match all the features the old system supports (Sometimes while it's still being developed by tier 4) will result in an endless effort.
Focus, and be transparent with what you'll deliver and what you won't. Put an emphasis on what your rewrite brings to the table that the old stack doesn't.

The second most important rule is DON'T LINGER. 3 months. Show something (Even a playable mockup) after 1 month. Show progress every week.
Three months is a long time, and mind that things can change, but it's a short enough time frame that things won't turn completely around.

When phase one is near the end, you can "Let the company in" and plan the next stages.

Focus and Agility bring results. Go for it!