It has come to our attention that our company was highlighted on the leaders’ list on Clutch as one of Illinois’ top software development companies.

For context, Clutch is a B2B reviews and ratings platform based in Washington, DC. They evaluate solutions companies based on the quality of their work and client reviews. Their review process is reliable and transparent, and we are grateful to those of our clients who have taken the time to provide feedback.

Take a look below at what they had to say about our services:

“Their response time is amazing. They get back to us right away and resolve any issues immediately. If they don’t know the answer right away, they look into it and get back to me as soon as possible.” – Project Manager, Medical Certification Company

“The team works within their timelines and delivers great, high-quality products. One contact from my side works with the developers, and she loves them.” – Founder & CEO, A07 Online Media LLC

The team at Loadsys Solutions is extremely grateful for this amazing award. We are especially thankful to our clients for their support and trust. This recognition and the wonderful reviews are the yardsticks of our success and we will continue to work hard to provide top-notch services to our clients.

To learn more about our company, you can visit our Clutch profile. We have a lot to offer to make sure your next project goes smoothly and as planned. Send us a message today!

Serverless computing lets businesses build agile applications that can easily adapt according to a company’s IT demand and needs. Providers of serverless computing offer pay-as-you-go services, and the platform is great for creating and hosting backend systems that handle mini-programs, web apps, containers, orchestration layers, Artificial Intelligence models, as well as various Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs). Serverless computing can act like Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform and serverless providers take care of all system infrastructure management, all operation and maintenance (O&M) needs while giving clients the freedom to build, develop, and deploy systems and applications without having to worry about hardware, software, networking, or data orchestration needs.

Is serverless computing right for your business? Well, that depends. As with everything in business, it’s best to look at the risk-reward ratio as well as the return on investment (ROI) when deciding whether or not to implement new technology. Since the serverless providers have made these platforms quick to set up, simple to scale, and easy to turn on and turn off, serverless is usually a cost-effective way to reduce IT expenses. Serverless computing can also cut down on capital expenditure because, whereas the purchase of new servers can be considered a capital expenditure or a CapEx expense, cloud costs can be treated as operating expenses or an OpEx. The latter is usually treated more favorably as a tax expense, therefore there might not be direct revenue generation but there could be simple bottom-line improvement with a serverless computing implementation when growing an IT estate.

Standard Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tasks can also be simplified, while time and energy can be saved when an ETL job run encounters data issues, as they often do. Should particular files not be ready for extraction, the system can trigger an alert that informs any necessary department or individual that there are data issues. The ETL run could be put on hold or even shut down until all required data is ready to be imported. Event-based computing even allows developers to write code that updates compute and storage needs on a serverless system, thereby optimizing a workflow.

On the risk side of the ledger, going serverless means giving up a certain element of control over a company’s IT estate. Although, in general, cloud computing environments are highly secure, any company that falls victim to a cyberattack must coordinate all responses through the cloud provider who hosts the serverless environment. Since the actual servers and infrastructure are owned by the cloud provider, they will be the ones leading the cyberattack response and they will be the ones ultimately responsible for getting the attack under control. Also, serverless computing providers often rely on open-source libraries, but this software tends to be less secure than commercial software.

Today, companies as distinctive as Slack, HomeAway, GreenQ, and Coca-Cola are all successfully utilizing serverless computing platforms to handle such divergent things as chatbot applications, real-time traveler recommendation systems, Internet of Things (IoT) systems that collect key metrics from garbage trucks to improve waste management pickup and delivery, as well as payment processing systems to buy a coke.

Serverless computing can give companies more control over their infrastructure spending. It also can reduce operations and maintenance expenses, increase a system’s reliability, and allow instant scalability to ensure customers won’t be frustrated by a lack of access. Above all else, a technology that allows developers time to focus on the one thing they do best – coding – should be embraced and heralded.

In order for the transformation to be a success, the organization needs to come up with processes that will help to overcome conflict related to the digital vision. While this will certainly have technical aspects to it, the solutions must also include:

Creating a List of Digital Vision Goals

Conflicts on the digital vision of an organization often come down to various people or teams not accurately understanding the actual goals. For example, one team may be looking at their specific needs as the goal of a digital transformation. Instead, the actual digital vision should be focused on the needs of the business. What specific IT departments want in this process will simply be processes or procedures that are in place to help support the digital vision.

Create a list of goals for a digital vision right from the beginning so that there is no confusion. Some examples of vision goals that organizations have for a digital transformation include:

• Digital Security Compliance – A significant security breach can result in a loss of trust by customers, fines from governmental agencies, and other significant financial loss. Digital security should almost always be a key aspect of any digital vision.
• Agile Software Development – Your developers are almost certainly being asked to produce more apps faster than ever. Using Agile methodologies can help them to prioritize work based on business need.
• Cost Reductions – Reducing expenses is almost always an important part of a digital vision. This can be done through cloud migrations and other advancements.
• Improved Customer Experience – Creating a portal that your customers can use is a great way to improve their experience. A digital vision will often include specific details about how to improve the customer’s overall experience.
• 3rd party software to fit your needs – Software, such as Smart Field Forms are great ways to digitize workflows.  Or custom solutions leveraging cloud products.

Of course, these are relatively generic goals. A company will need to evaluate their own specific goals based on the industry they are in, their current technical configuration, and many other factors. Keeping the focus on the long term, ‘big picture’ goals will help to guide the entire digital transformation effort.

Designate a Digital Transformation Leader

While most decisions throughout a digital transformation will be made by teams of people, it is important to have someone who can make final decisions. Ideally this will be someone who either has experience with digital transformations or has a strong technical background as well as an understanding of the business.

Some companies will list the chief information officer as this individual. While this can certainly be a good option for mid-sized companies, larger organizations may want to choose someone who can focus their time on this project. The digital transformation leader should be intimately involved with the process so they don’t need to be brought up to speed whenever a decision has to be made. In addition, this person should not be a part of any specific team so that their decisions are not biased.

Create a Strategic Roadmap

Along with the digital vision for the organization, creating a strategic roadmap is also something that should be done early on in the process. In many cases, the obstacles in creating a digital vision will be similar to those of a roadmap. Getting everyone on the same page with this step will help to facilitate the rest of the transformation.

Developing a comprehensive strategic roadmap will provide guidance for various teams to take over the coming months. While it is good to have something written up, it is also important to remain flexible so teams can make adjustments as needed based on the rapidly changing environment.

Setting up Redux with React could feel like a very confusing and complicated process. There are many packages to install and writing quite a bit of boiler plate code is needed to get redux to do anything. That’s where Redux Toolkit steps in.

Redux Toolkit very is simple to setup, it provides immutable update logic and warnings if your state mutates outside the state. The toolkit allows to merge the state object many levels deep through a proxy by just assigning a value to an object. You no longer need to use spread operator to merge the objects:

Before:

state = {
  user: {
    firstName: 'User',
    lastName: 'Last',
    ...newUser,
  groups: {
    sales: true,
    hr: false,
    admin: false,
    ...newUser.groups
  }
}

After:

state = _.deepMerge(state, newUser);

Redux Toolkit provides a very useful feature that allows to create the whole state management in one call and keep all of the logic and actions in the same place. There is no need to separate actions and reducers into separate files.

Instead of:

const increment = createAction('INCREMENT')
const decrement = createAction('DECREMENT')

const reducer = createReducer(0, {
  [increment]: state => state + 1,
  [decrement]: state => state - 1
})

Now we can do:

const counterSlice = createSlice({
  name: 'counter',
  initialState: 0,
  reducers: {
    increment: state => state + 1,
    decrement: state => state - 1
  }
})

const {
  increment,
  decrement
} = counterSlice.actions;

const reducer = counterSice.reducer;

createSlice allows us to configure all the actions as functions and define actions as functions and control types of passed functions, which is a must when working with Typescript. With Redux Toolkit, we can create  a completely type safe state and actions.

Here is an example:

import { createSlice, PayloadAction } from 'redux-starter-kit';
import { CompanyParams } from '../../schema/company';
import * as StateHelpers from '../../redux/stateHelpers';
import _ from 'lodash';

interface CompaniesState {
  companiesStatus: StateHelpers.StateStatusProps,
  activeCompanyId: string,
  companies: CompanyParams[],
}

const initialState: CompaniesState = {
  companiesStatus: null,
  activeCompanyId: null,
  companies: [],
};

const findIndex = (companies: CompanyParams[], searchId: string) => {
  return _.findIndex(companies, company => {
    return company.id === searchId;
  });
};

const companies = createSlice({
  name: 'companies',
  initialState: initialState,
  reducers: {
    updateStatus(state, action: PayloadAction<Partial<StateHelpers.StateStatusProps>>) {
      state.companiesStatus = StateHelpers.updateStatus(state.companiesStatus, action.payload);
    },

    saveCompanies(state, action: PayloadAction<CompanyParams[]>) {
        state.companies = action.payload;
        state.companiesStatus = StateHelpers.updateStatus(state.companiesStatus, {status: StateHelpers.StateStatuses.FETCHED});
    },

    saveCompany(state, action: PayloadAction<CompanyParams>) {
      const company = action.payload;
      const index = findIndex(state.companies, company.id);
      const companies = _.cloneDeep(state.companies);
      if (index >= 0) {
          if (!_.isEmpty(company.deleted)) {
              companies.splice(index, 1);
          } else {
              companies[index] = company;
          }
          state.companies = companies;
      }
      else if (company.id && _.isEmpty(company.deleted)) {
          companies.unshift(company);
          state.companies = companies;
      }
    },
    updateCompany(state, action: PayloadAction<Partial<CompanyParams>>) {
      const company = action.payload;
      const index = findIndex(state.companies, company.id);
      const companies = _.cloneDeep(state.companies);
      if (index >= 0) {
          companies[index] = {...companies[index], ...company};
          state.companies = companies;
      }
    },
    selectCompany(state, action: any) {
      state.activeCompanyId = action.payload;
    }
  }
});

export const {
  updateStatus,
  saveCompanies,
  saveCompany,
  updateCompany,
  selectCompany,
} = companies.actions

export default companies.reducer;

Redux Toolkit is very opinionated framework forcing developers to follow the guidelines and write the code in a similar manner thus simplifying maintenance and training. The Typescript support helps to minimize errors and testing by enforcing concrete types.

Contact us today for any React, React Native, or Redux support.

Language

The beauty of a cross-platform development framework is the ability to develop for both Android and iOS using a single language. React Native relies on JavaScript to build apps, which makes it easy for companies to transition their development teams to work with React Native. It’s also a plus for web developers who can start using React Native without learning a new language. Flutter, on the other hand, uses a language called Dart. Although Dart isn’t widely used outside of the Flutter framework, it’s easy to learn and supports many of the familiar object-oriented concepts seen in other languages. Dart also is opinionated, meaning that it provides rules on how an app needs to be structured where React Native allows a developer to design the application how he or she chooses which is sometimes difficult for future developers maintaining the application.

Performance 

There hasn’t been much definitive testing to compare performance between apps developed on these two platforms, but developers agree that Flutter is likely to outperform React Native in most areas due to the way the framework Is designed. When you use Flutter, your Dart code is compiled directly to native machine code that can be executed by the CPU. React Native works differently, relying on JavaScript as a sort of “middle man” to connect with native components. Eliminating that JavaScript bridge results in a real performance boost for Flutter apps.

Developer Productivity 

When you choose a framework, you want to make sure you can build apps quickly and efficiently. React Native has the benefit of being able to use Hooks–special functions that allow you to “hook” into the React state and other features without creating a class. Using Hooks simplifies the React component lifecycle and results in less code. React Native also has a hot reload feature which saves developers a significant amount of time when they’re testing UI changes. Flutter may not have Hooks available for use, but it does have the hot reload feature, and most developers have found that getting started with the platform is a breeze.

UI Components

At first glance, React Native appears to be the winner in the area of UI components, with a vast number of UI components available for developers. However, this advantage is partly due to the fact that React Native has been around much longer than Flutter. It’s also worth noting that many of these UI components come from third-party libraries. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, there’s always the possibility of bugs or glitches when dealing with third-party components. Flutter, by comparison, may have a smaller number of components overall, but it comes with plenty of handy widgets that are already built into the framework–no need to rely on third-party libraries.

User Community

Community support is key when you’re working with a new technology and trying to solve problems with your code. React Native has been in existence for several years now, so it’s built up a sizable user community during that time. Flutter’s user community isn’t quite as large, but at the pace it’s growing, it’s due to catch up and possibly surpass React Native’s community in the not-too-distant future. With large global companies such as Tencent and Alibaba adopting Flutter for their mobile app development, you can be confident that the support community will continue to thrive.

The Verdict

Both Flutter and React Native have their own pros and cons, and your choice of framework might depend on whether you’re thinking in the moment or taking the long view. At the moment, React Native is the more mature product: There’s more documentation, libraries and components available, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s backed by Facebook. In addition, with the recent addition of hooks, React Native has gotten much less complex than it was in the past.  Flutter, however, may be a “younger” framework, but its long-term potential is unmatched. It’s backed by Google, it has better performance with complex apps and it compiles directly into native code. In fact, many industry insiders call Flutter the future of mobile development. In addition, Flutter apps are more uniform and easier to maintain making long term support much less complex.  

We don’t have a crystal ball to predict what lies ahead in the development scene–we’ll just have to wait and see how the future unfolds.  In either case, over the past few years, cross platform frameworks have become very stable and reliable. It no longer makes sense to use native language code to complete 99% of mobile applications. 

Need react native development or flutter development for your mobile app?  Contact us today!