Generative AI: Programmable Reasoning Machines of the Future
These days Generative AI is being employed for everything from interpretation and summarisation of text to problem solving with a conversational natural language interface. What sort of conceptual model should we have in mind when thinking about LLM systems? Continue reading
Challenge Accepted: Our Weekly Looker Challenge
We wanted to improve our stakeholdersā Looker skills Here at FreeAgent we use Looker as our business intelligence tool. Itās used by over 150 stakeholders across the organisation, of which over 100 are active on a monthly basis. To unlock Lookerās full potential, weād like those stakeholders to be better equipped to explore the data using Lookerās range of features, rather than simply viewing a chart that somebody else has… Continue reading
Readable Dates in Rails
I was playing around in Swift recently, and wanted a reference to 'one day ago'. This is simple enough in human terms: if it's 9:30 on the 18th of September, 'one day ago' means 9:30 on the 17th of September. The Swift code to do this looks like this: Calendar.current.date( byAdding: .day, value: -1, to: Date.now ) ...and that's just a bit much, isn't it? First we need to access Calendar.current, a singleton… Continue reading
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Meet our women in engineering (Part 2)
The second of an occasional series, where we ask some of our women in engineering to share their experiences of working at FreeAgent: What was your career journey like before coming to FreeAgent? My academic background is in the Humanities, but I spent years working in web publishing. This work wasnāt particularly techy, as I was using a CMS to publish content to sites. I was curious about the stuff… Continue reading
Meet our women in engineering
In the first of an occasional series, we asked some of our women in engineering to share their experiences of working at FreeAgent: What was your career journey like before coming to FreeAgent? I'm a career switcher, from children's book publishing to software development. My first tech job in 2015 was a junior-friendly place where I learned TSQL on the job. Then, my second dev job was back in publishing,… Continue reading
The Data Science Internship Chronicles: A Starfleet-worthy Tale of Numeric Exploration
In the vast expanse of the universe, I, a humble data science intern, set out on a mission to improve a classification model. As I delved deeper into the data, I encountered anomalies and outliers that threatened to disrupt my analysis. But with the guidance of my mentors and the help of advanced data tools, I navigated through the stars and uncovered the hidden patterns that led to breakthrough insights.… Continue reading
Mindfulness with GitHub
I was a researcher in chemistry in my previous career, so I have a habit of labelling everything. It is important in chemistry to be organised; you donāt want to mix unknown liquids in unlabeled beakers. Can you guess why? BOOM! I apply this habit in every area of my life. Now, everything has a place and is clearly labelled. I have a place for vertically striped socks and a… Continue reading
How we hire in engineering
Applying for a new job can be daunting, especially when youāre not sure what the recruitment process is. At FreeAgent we try to be as open as possible about how we hire and make sure there are no surprises, so that you can be well prepared. Application ā Our application process is simple: just upload your CV and cover letter, and answer a few questions about why you are interested… Continue reading
Type checking in Ruby – Part 1
Over the course of a career in software engineering, we learn to love elements of our tooling and dislike others - thatās perfectly natural. As requirements change, including our own need to improve as engineers, so does what appeals to us when reaching for a new framework, language or library. A common path for lots of engineers will have been to learn something like C or C++, both strongly typed… Continue reading
My experience as an Analytics Intern
I was really excited to begin interning at FreeAgent and after 9 weeks in the Data Analytics team I feel Iāve learnt a lot about working in a team inside a company, and about the culture here. I thought I would write a bit about how it was getting set up, working on my project and communicating my findings to the rest of the company. Onboarding/set-up There were a lot… Continue reading