https://mecanik.dev/en/categories/programming-tutorials/Recent content in Programming Tutorials on [ MECANIK DEV ]Hugo -- gohugo.ioenCopyright © 2020-{year} by [ MECANIK DEV ]. All Rights Reserved.Sun, 06 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/salesforce-integration/Sun, 06 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/salesforce-integration/A salesforce integration almost never fails on protocol. Authenticating is a solved problem and posting a record is a solved problem. What ends projects is the daily request allocation and the shape of the data model, both usually discovered about three weeks after go-live, when the nightly job starts returning errors and nobody can say why it worked in testing. The pattern is consistent enough to predict. A developer builds against a Developer Edition org, everything passes, the client signs off.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/wordpress-plugin-development/Sat, 05 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/wordpress-plugin-development/Most WordPress plugin development follows the same arc. Somebody needs a booking form, a feed importer or an extra field at checkout, a developer writes it, it works, everyone moves on. Two years later the site is stuck on an old version of WordPress because nobody is confident that plugin will survive an update, and whoever wrote it has gone. The cause is rarely that core moves too fast. WordPress is conservative about breaking things, and plenty of well written plugins from five years ago still run unchanged on WordPress 7.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/postmortem/Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/postmortem/A postmortem is easy to hold and hard to make useful. The meeting happens, a document is written, four action items are recorded, and six months later the same failure occurs and somebody finds the old document while searching for something else. The word “blameless” gets most of the attention in discussions of this, and it is genuinely important, but it is not where the failure is. Plenty of organisations run scrupulously blameless reviews that change nothing, because the review was treated as the deliverable rather than as the thing that produces one.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/technical-documentation/Sat, 29 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/technical-documentation/Technical documentation fails in a specific and predictable way. Somebody writes a great deal of it during a quiet fortnight, the system changes, nobody updates it, and within a year the document is confidently wrong. At that point it is worse than nothing, because a reader who trusts it acts on information that no longer holds. The usual response is a push to write more, which accelerates the same failure. The useful response is to write less and choose what, because the constraint is not authoring effort.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/developer-onboarding/Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/developer-onboarding/Developer onboarding is usually measured in how long the induction takes, which is the wrong end of the problem. The number that matters is how long before a new engineer can change something and be confident they have not broken anything else, and in most teams that is measured in months rather than days. The delay is rarely about the person. It is about how much of the system exists only in other people’s heads, and how much of the first fortnight is spent extracting it one interruption at a time.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-escrow/Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-escrow/Software escrow exists to answer a reasonable fear: the supplier who built and runs your critical system goes out of business, and you are left with something you depend on and cannot maintain. An escrow agreement puts the source code with a third party who releases it to you if that happens. The fear is legitimate. The instrument is frequently misunderstood, and the gap between the two produces agreements that cost money every year and would not help on the day they were needed.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/fixed-price-contract-vs-time-and-materials/Thu, 27 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/fixed-price-contract-vs-time-and-materials/The choice between a fixed price contract and time and materials is usually framed as a choice about risk, which is correct, and then immediately mishandled, because both sides assume the risk goes away rather than moving. It does not go away. In a fixed price arrangement the supplier carries the risk of the estimate being wrong, and prices that risk into the number. In time and materials the client carries it.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/api-versioning/Tue, 25 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/api-versioning/API versioning arguments usually start at the wrong end, with where the version number goes. That is the least consequential decision in the whole subject. What matters is which changes require a new version at all, and most teams get that wrong in the direction of complacency: they ship something they believe is additive, and a client breaks. The useful mental model is that your API is a promise about what a caller can rely on.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-rfp/Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-rfp/A software RFP is supposed to make suppliers comparable. Most achieve the opposite, because they specify a solution in enough detail to constrain the answer while leaving out the information anybody would need to price it. The result is five quotes spanning an order of magnitude, all technically responsive, none of them measuring the same thing. The usual diagnosis is that suppliers are being evasive. Occasionally true. Far more often the document asked for a number that could not be produced from what it contained, and each supplier filled the gaps with different assumptions.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-maintenance-cost/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-maintenance-cost/Software maintenance cost is the number that turns a successful project into a difficult conversation eighteen months later. The build was budgeted, approved and delivered. What happens after it goes live was described as “support” and given a figure somebody guessed at, and that figure was almost always too small. The reason is structural rather than careless. A build has a scope you can price. Maintenance has no scope, because it is defined by things that have not happened yet: a library with a vulnerability, a supplier changing an API, a user hitting a case nobody anticipated.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/technical-due-diligence/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/technical-due-diligence/Technical due diligence is not a code quality competition, and teams preparing for one usually spend their time on the wrong thing. Nobody buying a company is grading your abstractions. They are trying to work out what it will cost to own this system, and how badly it can go wrong after the money changes hands. That reframing matters because it changes what you should fix first. Ugly code that works, is understood by the team and can be changed safely is a minor finding.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/database-performance-slow-queries/Sun, 23 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/database-performance-slow-queries/Database performance work usually begins with someone proposing a bigger instance, and it usually ends with the discovery that one query was doing a sequential scan over four million rows on every page load. The hardware was never the constraint. The plan was. That pattern is consistent enough to be worth stating as a default assumption. When an application is slow and the database is busy, the cause is almost always a small number of specific queries, not a general shortage of capacity, and scaling up hides the problem for exactly as long as it takes the table to grow again.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-testing-strategies/Sat, 22 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/software-testing-strategies/Software testing strategies are usually described in terms of coverage, and coverage is the least informative number in the whole discipline. A codebase at ninety per cent can ship a bug on its most-used path, because coverage measures which lines executed during a test run, not whether anything meaningful was asserted about them. The teams that trust their suite are not the ones with the highest percentage. They are the ones whose tests fail when something is genuinely broken and stay quiet otherwise, which turns out to be a much harder property to buy.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/fintech-software-development-uk/Sat, 22 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/fintech-software-development-uk/Fintech software development is priced and scheduled like ordinary software development right up until somebody asks who is authorised to hold the money. At that point the project stops being an engineering exercise and becomes a regulatory one with an engineering component, and the timeline you had in mind stops being achievable. The technology is rarely the hard part. Moving money is a solved problem with mature providers. What lengthens a fintech build is the authorisation position, the audit obligations, and the fact that several architectural decisions are made for you by whoever holds the licence.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/mvp-software-development-scope-cost-timeline/Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/mvp-software-development-scope-cost-timeline/MVP software development goes wrong at the scoping meeting, not during the build. Somebody says “minimum viable product”, everybody nods, and then the feature list arrives containing user accounts, an admin panel, billing, notifications, a dashboard and a mobile app. That is not a minimum viable product. That is a product, and it will take three times as long as the number in your head. The word doing the damage is “viable”.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/custom-api-development-cost/Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/custom-api-development-cost/Anyone estimating custom API development cost from the number of endpoints is going to be wrong, usually by a factor of three. Endpoints are the cheapest part. A dozen of them, reading and writing data you already hold, is a fortnight’s work for a competent backend developer. What costs money is everything that turns those endpoints into something another company will build their business on: authentication that survives a security review, versioning that lets you change your mind later, documentation good enough that nobody emails you, and the operational apparatus that tells you which customer is having a bad morning.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-modernisation-services-choosing-a-vendor/Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-modernisation-services-choosing-a-vendor/Buying COBOL modernisation services is unlike buying any other kind of software work. The system in question has been running for thirty or forty years, nobody currently employed fully understands it, and the consequences of getting it wrong are measured in regulatory reporting failures rather than missed sprints. Meanwhile the proposals on your desk all promise the same outcome at wildly different prices. This guide sets out what a serious engagement actually contains, how the vendor types differ, and which questions separate a bid built on evidence from one built on optimism.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/hire-cpp-developer-rates-specialisms-vetting/Sun, 02 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/hire-cpp-developer-rates-specialisms-vetting/The decision to hire a C++ developer usually arrives with a specific problem attached. Something has to be fast, or has to run on hardware, or has to interface with a library that only ships a native interface. What follows is a hiring process that treats C++ as a single skill, and that assumption is the source of most disappointing outcomes. C++ is not one job. A brilliant games engine programmer can be genuinely unproductive on embedded firmware, and a low-latency trading specialist may have never shipped a graphical application in their life.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/third-party-api-integration-cost-failure-modes/Sun, 02 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/third-party-api-integration-cost-failure-modes/Third-party API integration is the most consistently underestimated work in commercial software. The documentation reads clearly, the vendor publishes a client library, and someone says two weeks. Six weeks later the team is still arguing about what should happen when a webhook arrives twice for an order that was already refunded. The gap is not incompetence. It is that the interesting part of an integration is never the request and the response.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/hire-qt-developer-skills-rates-licensing/Sat, 01 Aug 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/hire-qt-developer-skills-rates-licensing/Companies that need to hire a Qt developer are usually building something that has to run on a machine rather than in a browser: an instrument panel, a diagnostic tool, a control application for hardware nobody else supports. The candidate pool is a fraction of the size of the web market, the vocabulary is different, and the usual hiring shortcuts do not work. A recruiter filtering on “C++” will hand you people who have never written a line of QML.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/mainframe-migration-tools-what-works/Sat, 01 Aug 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/mainframe-migration-tools-what-works/Every mainframe migration begins with someone searching for mainframe migration tools, and every vendor demonstration that follows looks remarkably convincing. A few thousand lines of COBOL go in, readable Java comes out, the test suite passes, and the slide deck promises seventy or eighty per cent automation. The demonstration is usually honest. It is also usually run against code that behaves nothing like yours. This guide describes the categories of tooling that actually exist, what each one genuinely does well, and the specific places where each tends to fail on real workloads.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/legacy-software-modernisation-rewrite-vs-refactor/Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/legacy-software-modernisation-rewrite-vs-refactor/Deciding when to modernise a legacy software system is one of the most consequential architectural decisions an enterprise engineering team faces in 2026. Outdated systems limit feature development, introduce security vulnerabilities, and increase hosting costs due to inefficient resource usage. However, completely rewriting a system from scratch introduces major business risks, including data loss and workflow disruption. CTOs must therefore weigh whether refactoring existing code or rewriting the system yields the highest ROI.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/reduce-llm-latency-prompt-caching/Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/reduce-llm-latency-prompt-caching/Reducing LLM latency is one of the most critical challenges for engineers building responsive AI applications. While Large Language Models (LLMs) keep growing in capability, their token-by-token generation can create frustrating bottlenecks for end users, and long wait times lead directly to lower engagement and application dropouts. Optimising your inference pipelines for speed is therefore a core developer requirement. This guide outlines how to configure prompt caching, implement response streaming, structure edge network routing, and use serverless configurations to cut processing delays.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cross-platform-desktop-apps-with-qt-qml-2026/Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cross-platform-desktop-apps-with-qt-qml-2026/Building one desktop application that runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux from a single codebase is exactly what Qt was designed for. In 2026, Qt remains one of the strongest choices for building cross-platform desktop apps and embedded software, especially where performance, a native feel, and long-term maintainability matter. This guide covers how Qt approaches cross-platform development and how to choose between its two UI technologies. TL;DR Qt lets you build one C++ codebase that compiles to native applications on Windows, macOS, Linux, and embedded targets It offers two UI technologies: Qt Widgets (classic desktop UIs) and Qt Quick/QML (fluid, modern, animated UIs) Compared with web-based wrappers, Qt delivers native performance and a smaller footprint, at the cost of C++ expertise Choose Widgets for traditional, form-heavy desktop tools and QML for touch-friendly, animated, or highly custom interfaces Why Qt for Cross-Platform Desktop AppsQt’s core promise is one codebase, multiple native targets.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/qt-5-to-qt-6-migration-guide/Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/qt-5-to-qt-6-migration-guide/Qt 6 is a major version, and migrating a real Qt 5 application to it is more than a recompile. The framework was modularised, the build system shifted toward CMake, some APIs were removed or replaced, and modules moved around. None of it is insurmountable, but a successful migration is planned, not stumbled into. This guide covers what changed and how to approach the move in 2026. TL;DR Qt 6 is a major release with breaking changes: a modularised structure, CMake as the primary build system, removed and replaced APIs, and relocated modules The build-system move from qmake to CMake is often the biggest single piece of work Migrate incrementally where possible, using the compatibility helpers Qt provides, and rely on your test suite to catch regressions With Qt 5 past its active support, staying on it is an accumulating risk, so plan the move deliberately Why Migrate to Qt 6Qt 5 has reached the end of its active support life, so new features, fixes, and (crucially) security updates flow to Qt 6.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/mainframe-modernisation-rewrite-refactor-replatform/Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/mainframe-modernisation-rewrite-refactor-replatform/Mainframe modernisation is rarely a single decision. It is a choice between several distinct strategies, each with a very different cost, timeline, and risk profile, and the right answer depends on your business goals rather than on technology preference. Choosing “rewrite everything” when a replatform would do, or “lift and shift” when the real problem is unmaintainable code, is how modernisation programmes waste millions. This guide compares the main modernisation strategies, when each makes sense, and how to choose.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-migration-cost-timeline-and-risk-uk-guide/Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-migration-cost-timeline-and-risk-uk-guide/“How much will it cost to move off COBOL?” is the first question every board asks, and the honest answer is that it depends on more than the size of the codebase. This guide breaks down what actually drives the cost of a COBOL migration in the UK, realistic budget and timeline ranges, and the risks that turn a well-planned project into an overrun. TL;DR A mid-size UK COBOL migration typically costs £200,000 to £800,000 and takes one to two years; full mainframe decommissions run into the millions and multiple years Cost is driven far more by codebase complexity, undocumented business logic, and data access redesign than by raw line count The choice of target language and migration approach materially changes the budget The most common reason projects overrun is underestimating scope, especially undocumented business rules and the data access layer What Actually Drives COBOL Migration CostLine count is the headline number, but it is a weak predictor on its own.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-rust-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-rust-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Rust is an increasingly popular COBOL migration target for organisations that want both memory safety and high performance without a garbage collector. For safety-critical and performance-sensitive systems, its guarantees are compelling: whole classes of memory bugs are caught at compile time, and the resulting binaries are fast and predictable. Rust is also the most demanding target on this list, because its ownership and borrowing model is fundamentally different from COBOL’s flat data model.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-go-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Sat, 04 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-go-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Go is a pragmatic COBOL migration target when simplicity, fast builds, and easy deployment matter more than a large enterprise framework ecosystem. It compiles to a single static binary with no runtime dependencies, it runs anywhere, and its built-in concurrency model is a natural fit for modernising COBOL batch processing into parallel workloads. This guide explains what a COBOL to Go migration actually involves, the approaches available to UK enterprises, what it costs, and the one precision issue you must plan for up front.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-java-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Sat, 04 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-java-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Java is the most common destination for enterprise COBOL migration, and it is easy to see why. It is mature, strongly typed, backed by an enormous library ecosystem, and supported by one of the deepest developer hiring pools in the UK. For organisations running critical COBOL on IBM mainframes, Java offers a route to a modern platform without abandoning the enterprise-grade rigour those systems demand. This guide explains what a COBOL to Java migration actually involves, the approaches available to UK enterprises, what it costs, and how to manage the risk.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-csharp-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Fri, 03 Jul 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-csharp-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/COBOL still underpins a vast amount of the software running in UK banks, insurers, public sector bodies, and large retailers. Much of it processes money, and much of it has been running since long before the developers maintaining it today joined the organisation. As COBOL expertise retires out of the workforce, the pressure to modernise grows every year, and a COBOL to C# migration is one of the routes UK organisations most often consider.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/the-software-development-life-cycle-explained-in-2026/Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/the-software-development-life-cycle-explained-in-2026/The software development life cycle, usually shortened to SDLC, is the structured process teams follow to take software from an idea to a working, maintained product. Understanding it matters whether you build software or commission it, because the quality of the process largely determines the quality, cost, and timeliness of the result. This guide explains the software development life cycle clearly: each phase and what happens in it, the difference between Agile and Waterfall approaches, where projects typically go wrong, and how a good process keeps cost and risk under control.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/what-is-software-development-a-2026-guide/Sun, 28 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/what-is-software-development-a-2026-guide/What is software development? At its simplest, software development is the process of designing, building, testing, and maintaining the programs that run on computers, phones, servers, and devices. It is how an idea becomes a working application. But that one-line definition hides a great deal, and if you are a business owner commissioning software, or someone considering the field, the detail is what matters. This guide explains what software development actually involves in 2026, the main types, the languages and roles behind it, and how the work moves from concept to launch.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/rest-api-vs-graphql-which-to-choose-for-your-project-in-2026/Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/rest-api-vs-graphql-which-to-choose-for-your-project-in-2026/Search interest in “REST vs GraphQL” has remained consistently high throughout the 2020s, with the debate gaining renewed urgency as more teams build frontend-heavy products with complex data requirements. GraphQL has been in production since Facebook open-sourced it in 2015 and is now mature, well-tooled, and genuinely adopted at scale. Yet REST remains the dominant choice for new APIs in 2026, and not without reason. The question is not which one is theoretically better but which one fits your project.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/what-is-technical-debt-a-guide-for-uk-engineering-teams/Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/what-is-technical-debt-a-guide-for-uk-engineering-teams/Searches for “technical debt” have grown by over 35% in the past two years, driven in large part by UK engineering teams inheriting legacy systems built under deadline pressure and now struggling to maintain or extend them. The term gets used loosely in Jira backlogs and sprint retrospectives, but most developers have never seen a precise definition, let alone a systematic strategy for dealing with it. This guide covers what technical debt actually is, where it comes from, how to measure it, and the practical strategies that work in real UK product teams.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/how-to-hire-a-software-developer-in-the-uk-in-2026/Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/how-to-hire-a-software-developer-in-the-uk-in-2026/Searches for “hire software developer UK” increased 28% between 2024 and 2025, and demand shows no sign of slowing. The UK software development market remains candidate-short at senior level, with experienced engineers in high demand across fintech, healthtech, and SaaS. For a business or startup looking to hire directly, without going through an agency, the process requires more upfront work but gives you better outcomes: you define the brief precisely, you assess candidates yourself, and you build a direct relationship that an intermediary would otherwise own.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/ci-cd-pipeline-best-practices-for-uk-development-teams-in-2026/Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/ci-cd-pipeline-best-practices-for-uk-development-teams-in-2026/Interest in CI/CD automation has grown consistently over the past three years, and search volume for “CI/CD pipeline setup” rose 34% in 2025 alone. Despite that, the majority of UK development agencies still deploy via manual SSH sessions or ad-hoc scripts. That gap represents a significant competitive disadvantage: teams with mature CI/CD pipelines ship roughly five times more frequently and catch bugs at a stage where fixes are ten times cheaper than post-deployment remediation.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/gdpr-technical-compliance-for-uk-developers-in-2026/Wed, 24 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/gdpr-technical-compliance-for-uk-developers-in-2026/ICO enforcement action against UK organisations rose sharply in 2024 and 2025, with fines totalling over £12 million across the two years for failures in technical security measures. The pattern in ICO enforcement notices is consistent: organisations that suffered a breach and could not demonstrate that they had implemented appropriate technical controls faced the harshest outcomes. For developers, this is a direct professional concern. The decisions you make about encryption, logging, access control, and data retention are the technical controls that determine whether an organisation can defend itself before the ICO.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/how-to-build-a-web-app-in-2026-the-uk-developers-guide/Tue, 23 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/how-to-build-a-web-app-in-2026-the-uk-developers-guide/Search interest in “how to build a web app” has grown 40% in the past two years, and the searches are getting more specific: people are not just asking whether it is possible, they want to know how long it takes, what it costs, and what to do first. In 2026, the tooling available to a small team or solo developer is genuinely extraordinary, but the abundance of choice also means more ways to pick the wrong thing early and pay for it later.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/node.js-vs-python-which-backend-language-to-choose-in-2026/Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/node.js-vs-python-which-backend-language-to-choose-in-2026/Search interest in “Node.js vs Python” has grown roughly 25% year-on-year and shows no signs of levelling off. That is not surprising: both ecosystems have matured considerably, both have first-class async support, and neither is going anywhere. What has shifted in 2026 is the weight that AI and machine learning integration now places on the decision. For a lot of teams, that single factor is enough to settle the argument.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/ai-code-review-how-to-automate-quality-control-in-2026/Mon, 22 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/ai-code-review-how-to-automate-quality-control-in-2026/AI code review has moved from experimental to production-standard in 2026. Development teams that once debated whether AI could reliably review code are now debating which tool to use and how deeply to integrate it. The quality of AI-generated code review has improved to the point where, for many categories of finding, it outperforms a tired human reviewer working under time pressure. This guide explains how AI code review works, what it reliably catches, how to integrate it into a real CI/CD pipeline, and how the leading tools compare.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-python-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/Sun, 21 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-python-migration-a-uk-enterprise-guide/COBOL powers an estimated hundreds of billions of lines of code still running in global financial systems, government infrastructure, and enterprise backends. In the UK, many of those systems are running in banks, insurance companies, public sector organisations, and large retailers. The developers who wrote them are retiring. The organisations running them are feeling the pressure. Python has become the migration target of choice for most COBOL modernisation projects, and for good reason.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/outsourcing-software-development-to-a-uk-company-what-to-know/Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/outsourcing-software-development-to-a-uk-company-what-to-know/Outsourcing software development has grown significantly as a search topic in the UK, with “outsourcing software development” up 70% and “software development outsourcing” up 60% over the past three months. UK businesses are actively looking for external development capacity, but many are uncertain whether to engage a UK-based company or go offshore. This guide sets out the practical case for both approaches and helps you make a decision based on your actual requirements rather than assumptions about cost.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/backend-development-in-2026-technologies-costs-and-uk-hiring-guide/Sat, 20 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/backend-development-in-2026-technologies-costs-and-uk-hiring-guide/Backend development search interest has grown 80% to 110% across UK keyword data in the past three months, appearing in both software development and web development research categories. That dual presence tells you something important: backend skills are now in demand from businesses that have historically focused on frontend and design, as well as from the developer community itself. This guide covers the backend technology landscape in 2026, what skills and experience to look for when hiring, what it costs, and how to structure your team around backend requirements.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/python-web-framework-comparison-2026-django-vs-flask-vs-fastapi/Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/python-web-framework-comparison-2026-django-vs-flask-vs-fastapi/Search interest in “python web framework” has grown 190% in the UK over the past three months, making it one of the fastest-rising technical queries of 2026. The reason is straightforward: Python has become the dominant language for AI integration, data processing, and rapid API development, and teams are reassessing which framework fits their current stack. This guide compares Django, Flask, and FastAPI in depth, covering performance, ecosystem, learning curve, and which one you should choose depending on what you are actually building.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/custom-software-development-uk-the-complete-buyers-guide/Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/custom-software-development-uk-the-complete-buyers-guide/Custom software development in the UK is experiencing a significant uptick in 2026. Search interest for “custom software development” is up 40%, “bespoke software development” is up 30%, and queries for a “custom software development company” have grown 110%. Businesses are actively looking for specialist partners because off-the-shelf software is increasingly failing to meet their operational needs. This guide gives you an honest, practical framework for commissioning custom software in the UK: what it costs, how long it takes, and how to avoid the mistakes that turn a good idea into an expensive problem.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/ai-software-development-a-uk-business-guide-for-2026/Thu, 18 Jun 2026 07:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/ai-software-development-a-uk-business-guide-for-2026/AI software development is not a future trend for UK businesses; it is already the baseline. Search interest in the term has grown 30% in the past three months, and interest in “AI software development company” is up 60%. The businesses that understand this shift now will have a significant head start over those still deciding whether to engage. This guide explains what AI software development actually means in practice, what it changes about how software gets built, and what UK businesses should look for when choosing a partner to help them do it.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-c++-migration/Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/cobol-to-c++-migration/A COBOL to C++ migration is one of the most impactful modernization projects an organization can take on, and also one of the most underserved. There are still roughly 220 billion lines of COBOL running in production today. Banks process trillions of dollars through it. Governments run pension systems, tax collection, and healthcare on it. Airlines book flights with it. And every year, the people who know how to maintain that code get closer to retirement, with almost nobody coming up behind them.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/c++-vs-rust-memory-safety-practical-examples-with-modern-c++/Sun, 15 Feb 2026 20:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/c++-vs-rust-memory-safety-practical-examples-with-modern-c++/The memory safety discussion between C++ and Rust has become one of the most active topics in software engineering. Government agencies have weighed in, conference talks are dedicated to it, and opinions run strong on both sides. Let me be upfront: Rust is an excellent language. Its ownership model and borrow checker are genuinely innovative, and they catch entire categories of bugs at compile time. If you’re starting a new project and Rust fits your team and ecosystem, that’s a great choice.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/tiny-bpe-trainer-a-fast-and-lightweight-bpe-trainer-in-c++/Thu, 07 Aug 2025 20:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/tiny-bpe-trainer-a-fast-and-lightweight-bpe-trainer-in-c++/Introducing Tiny BPE TrainerMost modern NLP models today from GPT to RoBERTa, rely on subword tokenization using Byte Pair Encoding (BPE). But what if you want to train your own vocabulary in pure C++? Meet Tiny BPE Trainer - a blazing-fast, header-only BPE trainer written in modern C++17/20, with zero dependencies, full UTF-8 support, and HuggingFace-compatible output (vocab.txt, merges.txt). Why Another BPE Trainer?Because existing options are often: Python-only, with heavy runtime dependencies (Rust, Protobuf, etc.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/a-fast-utf-8-aware-c++-tokenizer-for-nlp-ml/Wed, 06 Aug 2025 06:00:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/a-fast-utf-8-aware-c++-tokenizer-for-nlp-ml/Introducing Modern Text TokenizerModern natural language processing (NLP) models like BERT, DistilBERT, and other transformer-based architectures rely heavily on effective tokenization. But C++ developers often face limited options like bloated dependencies, poor Unicode support, or lack of compatibility with vocab-based encoders. That’s why I created Modern Text Tokenizer - a blazing-fast, header-only C++ tokenizer that’s UTF-8 aware, zero-dependency, and ML-ready out of the box. What Makes It Unique? Zero Dependencies – No Boost, no ICU, no external libs.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/learn-programming-fundamentals-choosing-the-right-language/Sat, 15 Apr 2023 18:24:00 +0100https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/learn-programming-fundamentals-choosing-the-right-language/Embarking on a journey into the world of programming can be both exciting and overwhelming. With countless programming languages to choose from, it’s essential to pick the right one that aligns with your goals and aspirations. In this article, we will explore the factors to consider when choosing your first programming language and provide examples of code in popular languages to help illustrate the differences between them. Factors to Consider When Choosing a Programming Language Career Goals: If you plan to pursue a career in software development, it’s essential to research which programming languages are in demand for the industries you’re interested in.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/c++-data-types-to-.net/Fri, 26 Feb 2021 15:40:24 +0600https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/c++-data-types-to-.net/If you are playing around with .NET and you come from a C/C++ background like myself, you will quickly notice the data types are different. This post covers most common data types from C/C++ to .NET (C#) for your convenience in development. When you search for a data type just hit CTRL + F and the browser will help you find it on this page. Special thanks to kbrryder @ codeproject.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/how-to-write-mini-dump-on-software-crash/Thu, 24 Sep 2020 15:40:24 +0600https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/how-to-write-mini-dump-on-software-crash/Sorry for not writing anything interesting this month so far, it’s been a very hectic month. Today I saw a question on Stack Overflow regarding debugging. The user was trying to let Visual Studio run in debug mode with his application to see when and why it crashes. That’s not a solution because there are functions in place for these situations in Windows API. More simply put, you can make your software write a Mini Dump upon crash and then you can just open it inside Visual Studio (or whatever debugger you want) and see exactly where it crashed.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/convert-dos-and-nt-paths-using-rtl-functions/Thu, 13 Aug 2020 15:40:24 +0600https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/convert-dos-and-nt-paths-using-rtl-functions/If you are here reading this post, it means you are looking for a way to convert your DOS and/or NT paths for your software. Rest assured that this is what you will learn here today! The problem with Windows paths are clear; it’s so confusing. Let me repeat that, so confusing. This becomes a problem when you are working on your amazing piece of software and you need to convert DOS and NT paths.https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/runtime-encrypted-strings-part-1/Sun, 24 May 2020 15:40:24 +0600https://mecanik.dev/en/posts/runtime-encrypted-strings-part-1/Runtime Encrypted StringsToday we will go through the basics of runtime encrypted strings, why do we need to encrypt our strings and learn how to create our own. In this article you will understand and learn: What is runtime encryption and decryption Why do you need to encrypt your strings See how anybody can see your sensitive data Create your own custom encryption What is runtime encryption and decryptionThis refers to data encrypted and/or decrypted during the runtime of a program (software, application).