Intro to Software Team

We design software - specifically for use by Terrapin Works, friends of Terrapin Works, and Terrapin Works Customers. But our main goal is to help each other to become better software developers and managers and to build awesome things in the process!

An increasing number Terrapin Works design projects need development of software - beyond electronics and embedded systems - but software developed in a number of domains, including web development and advanced data processing.

Terrapin Works has been around for a while and the existence of the software team within that is much shorter. Terrapin Works began as a place for people to pay for 3D prints, then we started doing design projects (where a client could get a product designed in CAD for them as well as printed for them). Design projects became more complex until eventually TW realized that they needed to dedicate some staff to full-time software development, not only for client projects but also for building tools that the team can use internally.

1. Dozuki - What you’re looking at right now! It’s where we’ll be documenting everything that we do and store all of our knowledge so that nothing gets lost in the organization
2. GitLab - Has all our repositories. You'll quickly get used to storing getting and updating your projects here. We use it for: version control, code reviews, and for project management (think Jira or sprint boards)

Old tools we used to use: Jira, Confluence, BitBucket.

These are constantly changing and evolving, but here are the main ones we use and recommend downloading so you can hit the ground running on any project that you might get put on.

1. Package Manager: Homebrew (Mac), Chocolatey (Windows)
2. Git (duh) If you have a Mac, you have to install the XCode developer tools first
3. Visual Studio Code "IDE" for most projects. It has some plugins we'd recommend downloading: Python, Docker
4. Docker to run all of our major apps in containers. Windows users will have to upgrade their windows installation first.
5. PuTTY ssh client (or similar) So that you can connect to AWS and Raspberry Pis
6. Slack - the desktop app will send you notifications. Also recommend Slack on your phone, but that’s optional

1. React: Developer tools for Chrome

Now that you’re all caught up on software team basics, here are some additional guides to help you get Truly Onboarded into our processes & stuff before you get into a project

[links to be added]

• Intro to Git
• Intro to Project Tracking in GitLab
• Project Procedures and Sprint-Level Workflow