Clearcode Beer & Bacon Meetup – 4th Edition

After an extended pause, the Clearcode team was back together for the 4th edition of its Beer & Bacon Meetup, an informal gathering designed to bring everyone together, present useful knowledge on a range of subjects and promote professional development.

In keeping with tradition, Clearcode’s CEO Maciej Zawadziński led off with a lightening talk, followed by presentations from several other members of the Clearcode team.

Cookie Syncing – A Matter of Identity

by Maciej Zawadziński, Clearcode CEO

In a humorous yet informative introductory lightning talk, Clearcode’s CEO outlined the process of cookie syncing – the method by which 1st party and 3rd party cookies are used to track web traffic and share information about users across Data Management Platforms (DMP’s).

The usefulness of cookie syncing is clear when it comes to building databases and targeting potential customers and it plays an integral part in the efficiency of web analytics.

Dealing with Difficult Customers – Do they really hate us?

by Krzysztof Węgliński, MDT Project Manager

Anyone working with clients on a daily basis has had the unpleasant experience of dealing with the ire of an unhappy customer. Emails full of frustrated rants and accusations can cause real headaches for everyone involved.

With this in mind, Krzysztof used his presentation to explain some of the possible reasons for these outbursts and present practical ways of handling them.

Very often clients react negatively to difficult situations because they feel their basic needs are not being met. These basic needs encompass many different areas ranging from financial security – a given in the business world, to the more intrinsic such as self-esteem and self-fulfillment.

By recognizing and respecting these basic needs, it is possible to not only diffuse potentially explosive situations but also to build better customer relations and create a greater atmosphere of trust, something that is a top priority for us here at Clearcode.

Krzysztof also emphasized how important it is not to use absolute words such as: never, always, forever and the necessity of avoiding the word “but” when communicating with clients.

Thanks to these tips, we are now better equipped to support customers in their business endeavors.

Kill Them All – Mutation Testing

by Krzysztof Menżyk, Technical Leader

Everyone knows that testing code is an essential part of software development. But tests themselves very often have bugs. In his presentation, Krzysztof demonstrated how to use mutants to verify the effectiveness of software tests.

Too often tests yield positive results but fail to provide 100% coverage, giving a false sense of success. By first running mutants through the test, it is possible to guarantee greater effectiveness. Some mutation operators include: binary arithmetic, boolean substitution, conditional boundaries, negated conditionals, and return values.

And although mutant testing can be costly and time-consuming and sometimes yields false positives, its advantages are clear: verifying real test coverage and eliminating unneccesary code.

Of course operations of this complexity require an automation tool to speed up the process. Depending on your coding language, there are several tools available for downloading:

PHP
Humbug
https://github.com/padraic/humbug

Python
MutPy
https://github.com/bayandin/mutpy

Cosmic Ray
http://cosmic-ray.readthedocs.org/

JavaScript
Grunt-mutation-testing
https://github.com/jimivdw/grunt-mutation-testing

Geo-Herding –
A Brief Overview of Geo-Targeting

By Grzegorz Śliwiński, Michał Rychlik, Michał Pawłowski

Matching customers with products and services is at the heart of business. This process can be made easier with Geo-Targeting. By using physical location when sorting information it is possible to more precisely target potential customers and provide advertising that may be more useful and appealing to them.

In their presentation, three members of the Clearcode team gave an overview of the code involved in using geo-tracking. And while the concept of GeoHash may be already familiar to many, it remains limited in many ways, especially when it comes to calculating the actual distance between two points.

With this in mind, the Clearcode team presented their work on refining the algorithms used to make their results more precise and in turn more effective for marketing purposes.

Do these topics interest you? Would you like a chance to learn more?

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