Codeship's Favorite New Tech in 2016

Last year, we paused from our regularly scheduled blogging to reflect on what shiny new technology had caught the eyes at Codeship in 2015. If you do something once, that makes it traditional, right? So let's talk about the tech we fell in love with this trip around the sun.

In 2016, Codeshippers welcomed technology even deeper into our lives. Yes, there were still the workhorses used daily on the job (cough, Docker, cough), but suddenly we're realizing that things like electronic-toothbrush-subscription services are part of our routines. When did that happen? 2016.

Sanja Bonic, Technical Writer

Golang without any external libraries, because the standard packager is just so good. And D3.js because...visualizations.

Kelly Bowker, Product Manager

Pixel, the phone by Google. The camera is great for capturing my various baked goods and my daughter as she grows. Plus, the Google assistant is great for me to set a timer, send a text, set a reminder, or look up a substitution for a recipe if my hands are messy.

Lilli Clark, Marketing Specialist

Does Birchbox count? If yes, then BIRCHBOX.

Laura Frank, Senior Software Engineer

I am fascinated with self-healing management systems, like SwarmKit and InfraKit from Docker.

Docker 1.12 shipped with the capability to run in Swarm Mode built-in, meaning that you can run services on a distributed cluster of nodes just with Docker alone. The container becomes just an implementation detail, and as an engineer, you can focus more on building software and worry less about the devops plumbing needed to keep the services running.

InfraKit is a similar management tool but on the base-infrastructure level. You can declare what you expect your infrastructure to look like and then let InfraKit ensure that the actual infrastructure state matches your specifications.

Ethan Jones, Sales Engineer

Definitely the discovery/advancement of gene-editing tools like TALENs and CRISPR. Worldwide, four out of the top 10 causes of death are cancers, which is what these are being developed for on the immediate horizon, and all except for a couple of the rest of the top 10 causes of death have eventual applications. The impact on other debilitating long-term conditions like ALS and Alzheimers is huge as well.

Compared to context-based illnesses like malaria or (in the majority of cases) lifestyle-based illness like diabetes or heart disease, most cancers and long-term genetic disorders are not preventable and therefore represent one of the largest barriers to a worldwide quality of life increase.

Secondarily, they’re learning how to turn captured Co2 in to limestone, which could be huge if it can be done at any real scale.

Roman Kuba, Senior Software Engineer

My favorite technology update of 2016 was Yarn; the npm package manager that we waited for it seems!

I also followed Jest a little. I haven't had time to play around with it much yet, but it will happen soon. It has great potential to become the default JS testrunner.

Last year, I mentioned Vue and predicted its adoption to pick up in 2016 like crazy. So far, so good:

…and we thought 2015 was an explosive year! pic.twitter.com/Dn1UsDQRgw

— Vue.js (@vuejs) December 19, 2016

Wilson Lee, Marketing Intern

Quip is a toothbrush subscription service that delivers you a new electronic head every three months.

All the toothbrushes look super classy and are electronic, and their whole thing is making sure you brush for two minutes...30 seconds in each quadrant of your mouth. I love it, personally!

Marko Locher, Head of Customer Success

My favorite tech of 2016 is still Let's Encrypt. They launched in 2015 (and were on my list last year as well), but they made huge progress this year and are now at a point where services like Zendesk use Let's Encrypt to provide custom SSL certificates for their users free of charge.

And another "old" tool that makes this year's list for me is Docker. While I've been working with it for a while now, I finally started to use it more and more; instead of installing tools directly on my computer, I abstract them using a Docker container. It takes a bit to get used to this workflow, but it means fewer random tools rotting away on my Mac.

Kurt Lojka, Account Specialist

My favorite tech/subscription of 2016 (at least I discovered it only now) is Grammarly. It helps me to improve my written English communication. This is so important for a member of a distributed team, as writing is the main way of communicating with my team members and clients.

I'm also a huge fan of Heroku's dataclips and Google spreadsheets and Zapier, BUT those are discoveries from previous years.

Dana Magnuson, Data Analyst Intern

My favorite tech of 2016 is a recent addition to my home, Google Chromecast. Yes, I know I'm late on the trend but I finally got sick of hooking up my laptop to my TV, so I gave in and I can now watch Netflix, HBO, HGTV, FX, etc. on my TV. It's all controlled from my phone so I never have to worry about losing the remote.

Additionally, in the beginning of the year, I definitely utilized flight comparison sites quite a bit while I was living abroad. For me, the best one was StudentUniverse. Unfortunately you do have to be a student to book through the site (or know one, I guess), but it saved me a LOT of money even compared to other comparison sites.

Tyler Pierce, Business Development Representative

My favorite tech of the year was without a doubt Spotify. I love that they can spin up hundreds of playlists, as well as more personalized ones to go with my daily activities.

I think they've greatly improved the premium options in 2016. Some of the features that they rolled out have got them a step ahead of the competition.

Josh Puetz, Senior Software Engineer

My favorite tech of 2016 is voice response. From Siri to Alexa, computer input via voice has come a long way and is really hitting in a big way.

I interact with my phone, computer, and home multiple time a day with just my voice. Feels like living in the future!

Jim Schley, Vice President of Sales

One app I can't live without in 2016 is Spotify, primarily thanks to their Discover Weekly personalized playlist feature. Their algorithm is pretty amazing and often has me remarking, "Spotify really gets me."

Marc Skipper, Account Associate

I just got a Nest thermostat for my house, and I love it. You can schedule/set timers for your heat. You can look at your historical usage to see which days you're using the most energy. And it learns how you do things and then reacts to your usual needs.

Neda Talebzadeh, Business Analyst

In 2016, I continued my Amazon Prime subscription; tried an Elizabeth & Clarke subscription; use ThredUp to donate/give away/trade clothes I no longer wear to declutter; borrow access to a Netflix account; subscribe to BostInno's "In the Know"; and have all my financial accounts linked to Mint.

Manuel Weiss, Co-Founder, Director of Marketing

My favorite new tech I found this year was MuseScore 2.0 as it provided me lots of fun hours! As some might know, I'm quite the hobby musician, and whenever I get the chance I either listen or create music.

MuseScore is a music score writer for Windows, OS X, and Linux, comparable to industry standards like Finale and Sibelius. It's great fun to work with as it makes it very simple to create notation of your music. It also provides the capability to do live playback of your score with lots of preinstalled instrument sounds. This makes it great to compose multi-instrument music on the spot. MuseScore is released as free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Thanks, MuseScore!

All right, you’ve read our opinions. Now tell us what we missed in the comments!