Insights | Monadical

ARTICLE

Conversations are the New Oil

Strategic considerations for protecting communication assets through systematic safeguards.

WEBINAR

Building AI-Powered Operational Assistants

From Simple Automation to Strategic Implementation

ARTICLE

Mindfulness in Typescript code branching. Exhaustiveness, pattern matching, and side effects

1/2: “Exhaustive absurd”, Or how to if/else

ARTICLE

Don't Give Big Tech Your Papaya

A strategic guide on how to avoid becoming beholden to big tech while still reaping the benefits

ARTICLE

So you want to build a social network?

Here's what I've discovered about how online communities build trust or don't.

ARTICLE

Mastering Project Estimation

Strategies for developing a framework around accurate project timeline estimations.

ARTICLE

Typescript Validators Jamboree

A Fair(ly cruel) Review of Typescript Validation Libraries

ARTICLE

Revolutionize Animation: Build a Digital Human with Large Language Models

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Next AI-Powered Avatar

PODCAST

Risk and Regulation

Max McCrea is joined by Stephanie Losi, the founder of Losi Consulting and creator of Risk Musings, to discuss regulation.

PODCAST

Internet Archiving

Max and Co-Founder Nick discuss their journeys in tech, the transformative power of open-source technology, and the ethical considerations that guide Nick's work in digital archiving.

ARTICLE

The Essential Guide to Ray.io's Anatomy

A Journey Through Ray's Capabilities in GPU Management and Scalable AI Development

REPORT

Beyond the Cutting-Edge: AI as the New Standard in Healthcare Innovation

Exploring the AI-driven technologies and strategies poised to reshape the healthcare landscape.

ARTICLE

Reflector: Elevate Communication with Our Real-Time Translation Tool

Explore Monadical's Open-Source Solution for Online Meetings.

ARTICLE

Building a Ticketing System with Solana Mobile and Metaplex Foundation Umi

Learn how to create an NFT-based application on the Solana blockchain.

ARTICLE

Kraken the Code: How to Build a Talking Avatar

Create your own conversational avatar with Azure Cognitive, LangChain, and OpenAI.

ARTICLE

The AI Evolution: Transforming Zulip Bots, Part 3

Discover how AI reshapes chat automation in Zulip bots

ARTICLE

How to Make LLMs Speak Your Language

A Review of the Top Tools for Generating Structured Output.

ARTICLE

Property-Based Testing for Temporal Graph Storage

A motley of functional techniques to allow isomorphic and deterministic graph generation.

ARTICLE

From Chaos to Cohesion: Architecting Your Own Monorepo

Build a simple monorepo using GitHub Actions as a CI/CD tool.

ARTICLE

Beauty Really Is Skin-Deep?

Introducing the Minecraft Skins Generator.

ARTICLE

Morpheus: A Dream Machine for AI Art Generation

Giving you the power to create stunning and beautiful generative art.

ARTICLE

Integrating AI Models into Zulip Chatbots Using FastAPI: Part 2

Learn how to use N-tier architecture and FastAPI to build a scalable Zulip bot that can retrieve messages, links, and images from Zulip streams and topics.

ARTICLE

Digging Deeper Into Minecraft Skin Generation

Learn how to generate custom Minecraft skins from text prompts using a Stable Diffusion model.

ARTICLE

Digging into Stable Diffusion-Generated Minecraft Skins

Fine-tune a Stable Diffusion model on a Minecraft dataset and create custom Minecraft-style characters using text prompts.

ARTICLE

Demystifying Databases: Cracking the Code of Efficient Data Storage

Unlock the power of data with comprehensive insights and practical guidance on selecting the ideal database for your projects, from relational databases to cutting-edge blockchain technologies.

ARTICLE

To Fine-Tune or Not Fine-Tune: Large Language Models for AI-Driven Business Transformation

Discover the transformative power of LLMs for your business in our comprehensive roadmap, from their origins to the training processes, safety considerations, and current trends.

ARTICLE

50 Shades of Rust, or emerging Rust GUIs in a WASM world

An overview of Rust GUI libraries and frameworks, focused on WASM. Discover the latest GUI toolkit options for Rust, increase your programming skills, and create efficient WebAssembly bundles that will help you build comprehensive applications.

ARTICLE

Filters with Github Actions

In this tutorial, you will learn how to implement your version of [skip ci] of GitHub Actions to control when executing a workflow or jobs.

ARTICLE

Integrating AI models into Zulip bots using FastAPI: Part 1

Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for automating tasks and improving the efficiency of your business. In this series, we'll explore how to integrate AI models into Zulip bots using FastAPI.

ARTICLE

A pattern for strategy backtracking using Python generators

While fixing a bug that was affecting an ETL pipeline, we found a clean and simple pattern for strategy backtracking using Python Generators and generator expressions.

ARTICLE

How to mint NFTs using Solana's mobile wallet adapter

React Native is a powerful tool for developing mobile apps that make use of Solana's mobile wallet adapter. Here's how to use the tech to mint an NFT.

ARTICLE

How to build a modular arithmetic library in Python

In this tutorial, we're going to learn how to create a library for modular arithmetic, using operator overloading and redefining the built-in functions for NumPy.

ARTICLE

Ramping up on Solana Phone: Crypto for mobile

The upcoming launch of Solana Mobile has a lot of us intrigued! We run you through what this new tech is and how to get set up.

ARTICLE

How to get blog post ideas as a developer

Whenever I hit writer's block, I explore these four areas. They've never failed to help me find ideas for my next article.

ARTICLE

Python vs Javascript: Dealing with the quirks of async/await

As someone who's used to implementing asynchronous programming in JS, implementing it in Python came as a surprise. Here's what I learned.

ARTICLE

Building a FastAPI Server to Evaluate Mathematical Functions

We make an already-powerful program for plotting mathematical functions even better using three steps.

ARTICLE

How math makes matches meaningful

In this blog, we show you how finding the right algorithm can make the difference when it comes to creating meaningful, professional connections virtually.

ARTICLE

A how-to guide for OOP in Golang (for Python users)

I'll use an example scenario to demonstrate the features of the OOP model, show you how to implement the OPP model/principles in Python, and compare that to the implementation in Golang.

ARTICLE

How to setup a Wasm API for a CHIP-8 emulator

In this guide, you'll learn how to keep control over the lifecycle of the library, allow signals/commands, and callbacks – all while keeping the asynchronous style that you know and love!

ARTICLE

Technical solutions to tackle AI bias

Yes, we want more diverse workplaces but there are things on the computing side companies and developers can do to make AIs fairer.

ARTICLE

How to mint and reveal NFTs with Candy Machine V2

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a “mint and wait for reveal” Candy Machine. Doing so will allow Candy Machine users to mint “closed” NFTs and wait for them to be “revealed” at a later date, bringing elements of anticipation and excitement to their experience.

ARTICLE

The Ins and Outs of Logging in Python, Part 1

A guide to using logging in Python. The fundamental concepts are discussed and illustrated with simple examples.

ARTICLE

How to import your wallet to Solana CLI

Whether you're looking to backup your wallet or deliver NFTs, importing your wallet is a great trick to have up your sleeve.

ARTICLE

The Rust Journey, Part 0: Why Systems Software and Why Rust?

Part 0 in our series about learning and writing systems software using Rust.

ARTICLE

Operator Overloading in Python

What is operator overloading and how does it work in Python?

ARTICLE

How to Plot Mathematical Functions in 10 Lines of Python

How to build a mathematical functions plotter using Python, NumPy, SymPy, and Matplotlib.

ARTICLE

Starting and Running Your First Program on a Mainframe

How to run your first program on a mainframe using open source software.

ARTICLE

All Systems are Human Systems

All systems in the field of software engineering are built by humans, to serve human purposes, and sometimes have broad but subtle influences in society and politics. It's in all of our best interests to to understand the broader, human scope that these systems operate within.

ARTICLE

Python Packaging Guide for APT/Debian

A quick guide on how to package your Python/pip project into an apt-installable Debian package using stdeb.

ARTICLE

Learning COBOL: A Journey For The Modern Programmer

A guide to learning COBOL for the modern programmer.

ARTICLE

Some Unofficial WireGuard Documentation

Some unofficial documentation for the WireGuard VPN, including config API reference, tutorials, examples, and projects. (This is a mirror of the original on Github)

ARTICLE

Cinco Paquetes de Django Que Amamos en Monadical

Uno de los mayores atractivos de Django es su ecosistema. Si se presenta algún problema existen muchas posibilidades de que alguien en la comunidad también lo haya tenido, y fuera tan amable de abstraerlo en un paquete reutilizable y publicarlo para la comunidad. Aquí encontrará cinco paquetes muy útiles que usamos con

ARTICLE

Five Django Packages We Love at Monadical

One of the biggest draws to Django is its ecosystem. If you encounter a problem, the chances are that someone else in the community has too, and has been kind enough to abstract it into a package and release it. Here are five packages we find ourselves coming back to.

ARTICLE

Drone Web Platform

A platform for operating drones through the internet.

ARTICLE

Implementing C++ Virtual Functions in Cython

This is an extensive article that assumes Cython knowledge and describes two strategies for using C++ code from Python, requiring the implementation of virtual functions in C++ abstract classes.

ARTICLE

How to Make Library Distribution Easier

A Manylinux-Based Web Building Platform

ARTICLE

How to Build a Python Library

Share Developments and Contribute to the Community

ARTICLE

Oddslingers Open Source Announcement

The OddSlingers poker platform, built with python/django in the backend, and react/redux in the frontend, is now free and open source.

ARTICLE

Event Diven Architecture part 1

Lessons learned in building a poker platform using event-driven architecture, part one--the backend.

ARTICLE

How to Set Up a CI/CD Workflow, Part 3

CI/CD Workflow For a Flask App Using GitHub Actions and AWS ECS

ARTICLE

Why should you use an ORM (Object Relational Mapper)?

Budding web developers learning Model-View-Controller frameworks are taught that they should use an Object Relational Mapper (ORM) to interface with their databases. But the “why” is often brushed aside or omitted entirely, leaving a fledgling programmer with burning questions like ”What are ORMs, anyway?”

ARTICLE

How to Set Up a CI/CD Workflow, Part Two

In a previous article, I explained how to set up a pipeline to send images from GitHub to AWS ECR. In this article, I will focus on implementing the missing steps required for a fully functional CD pipeline.

ARTICLE

A Cheat Sheet for Using your JWT Authentication with Django

Getting DRF, SimpleJWT and Firebase to play nice.

ARTICLE

How COVID-19 will affect Outsourcing Trends

How the increase in remote work during COVID-19 will affect companies' decisions on whether to outsource.

ARTICLE

How to Migrate from Firebase to Django

Strategy and tips on how to migrate from Firebase to Django (or another SQL ORM)

ARTICLE

Drone Mapping: How to Create Your Own Terrain Surface Model

An introduction to drone mapping. How to create a terrain surface model using a mobile app, your computer or cloud service, and your own drone.

ARTICLE

Why Everyone Should Know About Docker

What is Docker and how does it work? This introduction walks you through the benefits of this core technology and shows you how to get started with it.

ARTICLE

How to set up a CI workflow

How to set up a basic CI workflow using GitHub and AWS, relying completely on managed services so you don't increase your maintenance burden.

ARTICLE

Unix System Monitoring and Diagnostic CLI Tools

An opinionated list of CLI utilities for monitoring and inspecting Linux/BSD systems.

ARTICLE

The Year of the Linux Desktop

The year of the Linux desktop has arrived. This is a guide for how to improve the Linux desktop experience.

ARTICLE

Why Open Source Projects Are Key to Innovation & Technology

Find out how open source projects are essential to innovation and the development of new technology.

ARTICLE

How to Fit All Human Knowledge in a Box

How we used the power of Cython to help streamline how knowledge can be packaged and accessed all over the world – even without the internet.

ARTICLE

How to Make Remote Work: Part Two, Zulip

How I've learned to be productive working from home. I'll write a second guide about how I think about remote work as a manager and the processes Monadical have put into place to make things work for us.

ARTICLE

How to Make Remote Work: Part One

How to build asyncronous processes that enable you to work efficiently with a distributed engineering team.

ARTICLE

A Postfix deployment postmortem: Debugging short-circuiting of mapping lookups

How we tracked down and fixed a bug caused by Postfix's type:table using the new unionmap feature.

ARTICLE

Python Performance Profiling and Optimization

Modern techniques for performance profiling & optimization of Python applications.

ARTICLE

An Introduction to HTML and CSS Anatomy

A basic introduction and glossary for people learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Intended for people just getting started with frontend development.

ARTICLE

Our Favorite Technical Blogs

A list of our favorite technical blogs by friends, prominent programmers, and other companies we follow.

ARTICLE

Monadical Applicant Study Guide

A list of documentation, resources, and example projects for potential applicants who are thinking about joining Monadical.

ARTICLE

Easier Refactoring by Avoiding DRY Patterns

A short post about a particularly nice pattern for future refactorers that breaks the Don't-Repeat-Yourself principle commonly taught to beginners.

ARTICLE

Security Breach Response Guidelines

What should you do if your company gets hacked? What are the things to avoid and what are the procedures to follow? We explore the whole process in this post.

ARTICLE

Cleaner JS Animation Architecture With Functional Declarative Patterns

As systems get more complex, they trend towards expressing more of their complexity as data. Animations can be defined in data too.

ARTICLE

Server Provisioning and the /opt Directory

An overview of how we provision and organize code and data on servers using the UNIX /opt directory.

ARTICLE

A Strategy for Linearizing Database Operations

Everyone wants their writes strictly ordered, if we can represent a list of write operations as a data structure, that gets easier.

ARTICLE

We're Building A Company, Not An ICO

A frank discussion about the benefits and pitfalls of the ICO hype, and why Monadical' vision goes far beyond short-term fundraising.

ARTICLE

The State of Poker Platforms in 2018

An overview of the all the current online Poker networks as of 2018, with pros and cons for each and a summary of features.

ARTICLE

Database Integrity Principles for Safe Systems

Design strategies and common pitfalls that come into play when designing a banking service to handle concurrent transactions in a distributed environment.

ARTICLE

The Myth of Trustlessness

The word “trustless” implies that trust has been removed from the system altogether. But in reality, systems like Bitcoin require plenty of trust, it's just less obvious.

ARTICLE

The Full-Stack Developer Checklist

A checklist of things for full-stack developers to strive to learn, spanning everything front frontend, to backend, to native development and devops.

ARTICLE

The Redux Store as the Frontend's Database

Storing data in a normalized form allows us to calculate fast indexes for lookups.

ARTICLE

An Explanation of Segwit and the Lighning Network

Segwit increases total number of bytes for each transaction (very slightly), but changes the way that block size is calculated so that the signatures don't count as much against the limit.

ARTICLE

Reconciling Templates and JS Components

The fundamental issue is that Django wants you to build up your pages using template fragments, and React wants to pull you into its world with JS components as the main building blocks.

ARTICLE

Monadical Principles Handbook

Our goal with this document is to share some of our knowledge and expertise around the process of working together as a team, in order to achieve a more efficient, happy and healthy working environment.

ARTICLE

Two Approaches to Concurrent Write-Safety in Django

When dealing with Django models accessed by multiple people, you want a way to make sure two requests don't perform writes at the same time.

ARTICLE

A Map of Computer Science Subfields

A map of all the subfields encompassed by computer science, with job titles commonly used to hire people in those areas.

ARTICLE

Redux State-Sharing Approaches

When writing an app using Redux and React, you may run into the common problem of having to share state between multiple components in your app.

ARTICLE

Downswings and the Information Game

I often hear players say, “I hate that site. It’s completely rigged. I can never win there.” Perhaps those players simply ran bad at first on that site...

Insights from the Monadical Team

Our latest thinking on AI, in your inbox.

Conversations are the New Oil

Building AI-Powered Operational Assistants

Mindfulness in Typescript code branching. Exhaustiveness, pattern matching, and side effects

Don't Give Big Tech Your Papaya

So you want to build a social network?

Mastering Project Estimation

Typescript Validators Jamboree

Revolutionize Animation: Build a Digital Human with Large Language Models

Risk and Regulation

Internet Archiving

The Essential Guide to Ray.io's Anatomy

Beyond the Cutting-Edge: AI as the New Standard in Healthcare Innovation

Reflector: Elevate Communication with Our Real-Time Translation Tool

Building a Ticketing System with Solana Mobile and Metaplex Foundation Umi

Kraken the Code: How to Build a Talking Avatar

The AI Evolution: Transforming Zulip Bots, Part 3

How to Make LLMs Speak Your Language

Property-Based Testing for Temporal Graph Storage

From Chaos to Cohesion: Architecting Your Own Monorepo

Beauty Really Is Skin-Deep?

Morpheus: A Dream Machine for AI Art Generation

Integrating AI Models into Zulip Chatbots Using FastAPI: Part 2

Digging Deeper Into Minecraft Skin Generation

Digging into Stable Diffusion-Generated Minecraft Skins

Demystifying Databases: Cracking the Code of Efficient Data Storage

To Fine-Tune or Not Fine-Tune: Large Language Models for AI-Driven Business Transformation

50 Shades of Rust, or emerging Rust GUIs in a WASM world

Filters with Github Actions

Integrating AI models into Zulip bots using FastAPI: Part 1

A pattern for strategy backtracking using Python generators

How to mint NFTs using Solana's mobile wallet adapter

How to build a modular arithmetic library in Python

Ramping up on Solana Phone: Crypto for mobile

How to get blog post ideas as a developer

Python vs Javascript: Dealing with the quirks of async/await

Building a FastAPI Server to Evaluate Mathematical Functions

How math makes matches meaningful

A how-to guide for OOP in Golang (for Python users)

How to setup a Wasm API for a CHIP-8 emulator

Technical solutions to tackle AI bias

How to mint and reveal NFTs with Candy Machine V2

The Ins and Outs of Logging in Python, Part 1

How to import your wallet to Solana CLI

The Rust Journey, Part 0: Why Systems Software and Why Rust?

Operator Overloading in Python

How to Plot Mathematical Functions in 10 Lines of Python

Starting and Running Your First Program on a Mainframe

All Systems are Human Systems

Python Packaging Guide for APT/Debian

Learning COBOL: A Journey For The Modern Programmer

Some Unofficial WireGuard Documentation

Cinco Paquetes de Django Que Amamos en Monadical

Five Django Packages We Love at Monadical

Drone Web Platform

Implementing C++ Virtual Functions in Cython

How to Make Library Distribution Easier

How to Build a Python Library

Oddslingers Open Source Announcement

Event Diven Architecture part 1

How to Set Up a CI/CD Workflow, Part 3

Why should you use an ORM (Object Relational Mapper)?

How to Set Up a CI/CD Workflow, Part Two

A Cheat Sheet for Using your JWT Authentication with Django

How COVID-19 will affect Outsourcing Trends

How to Migrate from Firebase to Django

Drone Mapping: How to Create Your Own Terrain Surface Model

Why Everyone Should Know About Docker

How to set up a CI workflow

Unix System Monitoring and Diagnostic CLI Tools

The Year of the Linux Desktop

Why Open Source Projects Are Key to Innovation & Technology

How to Fit All Human Knowledge in a Box

How to Make Remote Work: Part Two, Zulip

How to Make Remote Work: Part One

A Postfix deployment postmortem: Debugging short-circuiting of mapping lookups

Python Performance Profiling and Optimization

An Introduction to HTML and CSS Anatomy

Our Favorite Technical Blogs