/* Code-Comments */
People Side Of Software
January 25, 2020I was listening to a Changelog interview with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas which focused on the lessons they’ve learned in the twenty years…
➥Read morePostgreSQL: User vs Role
January 25, 2020I was working in Postgres recently and realized that I was confused about whether or not to use the or command. Heading to StackOverflow…
➥Read moreHandling Incompatible PostgreSQL Versions
January 24, 2020I tried to start a PostgreSQL database yesterday from the command line and I was greeted with the error: I’m not sure how, but it seems that…
➥Read moreLocate Files Quickly On Your Computer
January 23, 2020I was looking to find all instances of Postgres the other day in order to check the version. A web search led me to this article…
➥Read moreGit - Checking Out Remote Branches, Revisited
January 22, 2020Previously, I wrote about how to checkout branches from a remote when the branch is not present locally. Recently, I found a new method that…
➥Read moreWhat Is HEAD in Git?
January 21, 2020From this StackOverflow answer: I always thought HEAD~5 means GO to 5 commits before. But it doesn’t carry the GO part of the command. It…
➥Read moreUpdating A Homebrew Cask
January 21, 2020I recently started using FSNotes, an open source notes manager for MacOS and iOS. It’s been amazing seeing the work that @glushchenko is…
➥Read moreRemembering Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 20, 2020Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States. It’s a nationally recognized holiday to remember a man who did as much as anyone to…
➥Read moreGit Tips: Undo & Clean
January 19, 2020Commonly used Git commands that are worth remembering (or having a quick reference like this one for): Undo your last commit: 1 (Stack…
➥Read moreVSCode: Go To & Column Numbers
January 18, 2020When programming, many tools will specify the line and column numbers. Normally, because of Intellisense in editors, the line number is…
➥Read moreMarty Cagan on Rewrites, Headroom, And 20%-Time
January 17, 2020In 2007, Marty Cagan wrote a blog called “Engineering Wants to Rewrite!”. It’s a good example of how product and engineering can work…
➥Read moreMock API Call With Promised setTimeout
January 16, 2020I was recently working on a project where I wanted a loading state while an API resolved. Instead of testing with a live API, I wanted to be…
➥Read moreStyling Markdown Code Snippets With PrismJS
January 15, 2020There are a number of different syntax highlighters for Javascript, but the one I’ve been using lately is PrismJS (due in large part to its…
➥Read morePreaching To The Choir & Changing Perceptions
January 14, 2020Reading Paul Krugman’s recent opinion in the New York Times, “Apocalypse Becomes the New Normal” I was reminded me of The Richest Man In…
➥Read moreHighlight The Focused Element In Web Development
January 13, 2020When testing a website for its accessibility, one thing I’m often interested in looking at is what is in focus. The browser of course needs…
➥Read morePackage Discovery: react-focus-lock
January 12, 2020When it comes to getting focus on dialog boxes on the internet, there’s a lot to get right.1 At Remine, to help us get the details right, we…
➥Read moreBaked Shrimp With Feta
January 11, 2020A family favorite is a variation on David Tanis’ Baked Greek Shrimp With Tomatoes and Feta Recipe from NYTimes Cooking. It’s simple and…
➥Read moreGroup, Count, and Order A Table in Postgres
January 10, 2020I have a table that represents a many to one relationship. How, then, do I find out which of the “ones” have the most “manys”? Postgres has…
➥Read moreFixing My Embargo: Setting up a Cron Job
January 10, 2020I wrote previously about setting up a simple embargo on my Gatsby site in the past. Even when I first implemented it, however, I knew that…
➥Read moreGraphQL Fragments: Reuse and Variables
January 09, 2020After thinking more about Lee Byron’s talk and some of the uses for fragments1, I still had some questions. Specifically - how do you reuse…
➥Read moreUseful Tools For Colors
January 08, 2020I’ve been working on putting together a new theme for my website. In the process, I decided that I wanted to avoid the edges of the color…
➥Read morePackage Discovery: gray-percentage
January 07, 2020Today in package discoveries:1 gray-percentage. It’s a small utility written by Kyle Matthews (creator of Gatsby) that returns a hue of gray…
➥Read moreDon't Use `>` In Programming
January 06, 2020I don’t remember how I found Llewellyn Falco’s blog post about the use of the greater sign in programming, but I thought it was an excellent…
➥Read moreQuickly Retreive Environment Information
January 05, 2020I find myself frequently looking up which version of Node and npm I’m running. Today, a colleague showed me how to get it and lots of…
➥Read moreGraphQL Fragments
January 04, 2020Recently, I listened to a conversation on the Modern Web Podcast about GraphQL in 2019 When it comes to understanding GraphQL, several of…
➥Read moreGraphQL Resolvers: Resolving Types All The Way Down
January 03, 2020Last month I wrote about how to compose GraphQL schemas with Apollo. Today, I’ll be extending that example to investigate resolvers…
➥Read moreReading Notes: Three Big Things
January 02, 2020I recently read “Three Big Things: The Most Important Forces Shaping the World” by Morgan Housel and The Collaborative Fund. The whole thing…
➥Read moreFile Permissions In Unix
January 01, 2020When I first encountered file permissions in Unix, I was really intimidated. Why did permission 777 seem to solve all problems? What did 64…
➥Read moreRemapping My Keyboard To Work On MacOS
December 31, 2019Googling how to remap a keyboard’s keys provides a ton of answers, but most of the resouces I found suggested a software solution. While…
➥Read moreMaking Space In The Terminal: Different Strategies
December 30, 2019When a terminal window gets busy, sometimes, it’s nice to make a little breathing so that it’s easier to see what’s going on. There are a…
➥Read moreInferring Generics With Typescript
December 29, 2019Recently, I needed the ability to track which items within a collection had been selected. As I thought about the problem, it felt like a…
➥Read moreTop Three Takeaways: Lessons From Reading
December 27, 2019Reading is a very active process for me - it’s not just taking the words on the page and passing them through to my brain. I take notes…
➥Read moreCollaboration, Local Development, (Secret) Environment Variables, and NPM
December 27, 2019At Remine, we have a shared UI library, . Recently, I had the opportunity to upgrade our icon library to so that we could use their awesome…
➥Read moreHighlight Changes In Chrome
December 26, 2019When React Dev Tools v4 landed the feature to highlight updated components disappeared. It’s true that focusing only on re-renders can be…
➥Read morePerhaps
December 24, 2019In a guided meditation on Calm, Tamara Levitt relays one of my favorite parables. It’s the story of a farmer and his fortune and…
➥Read moreShell Scripting & Execution Rights
December 21, 2019I was writing a small bash script the other day when I wanted to test it. I went to try to execute the script and received a permission…
➥Read moreRedirection In Unix - AKA Angled Brackets
December 20, 2019Today I wanted to learn how to programmatically update a file with shell scripting. Turns out that there are multiple approaches and it…
➥Read moreStyled-Components, Gatsby, Plugins, And Deploying Via Netlify
December 19, 2019Recently, I decided to remove most of the inline styling I have on my website and use - a library I’ve grown very fond of. The migration…
➥Read moreTrouble Shooting Embedding Video In A Gatsby Site
December 18, 2019One of the great parts about Gatsby is its plugin ecosystem. As of this writing, there are ~1500 different plugins offering easy…
➥Read moreCode-Comments As A Progressive Web App
December 17, 2019There’s a lot to learn in terms of taking advantage of all of the features included in Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), but as it relates to…
➥Read moreExtending GraphQL Schema Definitions with Apollo
December 16, 2019When defining a GraphQL schema, it can be useful to define it in multiple files to keep it manageable. The is: So, zooming in for a moment…
➥Read moreGraphQL Aliases
December 15, 2019For a long time, my site has been fueled by a single graphql query. The site is a single page that is a running list of all my blog posts…
➥Read moreChai Testing - Expect's Optional Parameter
December 14, 2019When testing with the Chai assertion library, I like the syntax and how it reads. The example from the docs demonstrates this nicely…
➥Read moreCommon Date Math In Javascript
December 13, 2019I’m a big fan of libraries like Moment and DayJS. They make dealing dates in Javascript so much easier. Sometimes though, you just need to…
➥Read moreThe Cost Of Riskless Hiring
December 12, 2019As job descriptions become more prescriptive and HR departments try to minimize churn, the result is a narrowing definition of qualified…
➥Read moreManaging Multiple Git Configurations
December 12, 2019I recently made a small contribution to a VSCode extension on Github. In addition to evaluating the code, the maintainer, @roblourens, went…
➥Read moreReminder: Logging Into Postgres With Shell Commands
December 11, 2019PGAdmin, Dbeaver, etc. are useful GUIs for managing and reviewing Postgres databases. Sometimes, however, there’s a desire to login via the…
➥Read moreYes, No, and Reliability
December 11, 2019This passage in Ryan Singer’s book, Shape Up resonated: Stay debt-free It can be tempting to commit to making changes in response to…
➥Read moreProject Euler And Social Problem Solving
December 10, 2019Last night I participated in my first Project Euler Sprint. Until last night, all I could really say about Project Euler was that I had…
➥Read moreList Files In Git Commit
December 09, 2019In pulling together my recent post on Git Cherry Pick, I wanted to show all of the files included in a single commit. As is often the case…
➥Read moreGit Cherry Pick
December 08, 2019Yesterday, I wrote about how to pull a specific files from another branch into your branch. But what if you want to pull in all of the…
➥Read moreEasily Copy Files Between Branches
December 07, 2019Frequently, I want to pull in just a single file from another git branch. I always need to look up the specifics, so I’m documenting it to…
➥Read moreLive Debugging Of Storybook In Chrome With VSCode
December 06, 2019While Storybook is great for communicating the potential of different components, debugging issues with components can be more of a…
➥Read moreHarvey Balls And Visual Communication
December 05, 2019If you’re like me, you’ve likely never heard of a Harvey Ball - though you’d recognize them if you saw it. That’s because Harvey Balls are…
➥Read moreConditional Storybook Knobs: How To Keep Stories Clean
December 04, 2019I’m a big fan of Storybook JS. It makes sharing what’s possible with a React component trivial.1 There is a potential problem though: when…
➥Read moreDetermine Which Shell Is Currently Running
December 03, 2019If you switch between shells, it might be handy to determine which one is currently running. One way to do that is to check your process…
➥Read moreChanging the default shell to zsh
December 03, 2019By default, the shell on a Mac is . Changing this should be a simple three step process: Make sure that is installed and is an accepted…
➥Read morePackage.Json Script Management Techniques
December 02, 2019When you have a lot of scripts in your npm package, it can get overwhelming. Recently a colleague introduced a new pattern in one of our…
➥Read moreEmail Templates In Anchor Tag HRef
December 01, 2019I was looking to plan an event recently at Beermiscuous, a beer cafe in Chicago that I really like. Their event inquiry is a simple process…
➥Read morePostgres Interactive Shell, Start, Stop, And Docker
November 30, 2019Recently I was working with a Docker image of a Postgres database. Everything was going great. At one point, I wanted to investigate…
➥Read moreHTML Symbols & ASCII Characters
November 29, 2019Recently, I went on a search to find a new arrow to use on my website (I settled on which produces this: ➥). In my search, I found this…
➥Read morePostgres Return Types In Node - Parse Strings To Whatever You Want
November 28, 2019By default the returns everything from PostgreSQL as a string. Brian Carlson, the author of , provides a solution for fixing this with his…
➥Read moreShell Scripts: How To Run Them
November 27, 2019I am constantly striving to improve my understanding and comfort interacting with my terminal. I remember how excited I was when I first…
➥Read morePostgres Tuples Only
November 25, 2019If you’re just learning how to use Postgres from the terminal (as I am), sometimes you click the wrong button and don’t know what it does…
➥Read moreJSON Operators And Functions In Postgres
November 25, 2019I wrote in the past about Array Intersections in Postgres, which alluded to operators and functions available for arrays within Postgres…
➥Read moreGetting Started With Postgres on OS X with Homebrew
November 24, 2019Before you can connect to a Postgres database from the command line, it needs to be running. If it’s been a while, it’s easy to forget how…
➥Read moreExpress Router’s Route Method
November 23, 2019When it comes to RESTful APIs, there’s not a ton of availability to be creative - at least in terms of the names of the APIs. You’re going…
➥Read moreExpress Routers
November 22, 2019As apps grow, the number of routes can balloon. More than that, you may need custom middleware for certain routes and not others - whether…
➥Read moreBasic Middleware Concepts In Node
November 21, 2019Middleware is software that sits between two other pieces of software and can augment, change, modify, or even respond to data it receives…
➥Read moreRimraf To Clean Restart A Node Server
November 20, 2019One of the challenges of using to monitor changes to a node server and restart is if some changes get cached. I came across rimraf in a…
➥Read moreUsing the Node Inspector
November 19, 2019If you’re running a node application and you want to debug, but don’t want to use the debugger in your text editor, perhaps your text editor…
➥Read moreConverting Synchronous Code to Asynchronous
November 18, 2019I often find myself looking up patterns for converting synchronous code into async variants in Javascript. Whether it’s remembering how…
➥Read moreUsing Typescript Playground To Make Sense of Code
November 17, 2019I came across the following function in a codebase today and struggled to see what was happening - the combination of classes with…
➥Read moreAnalyzing Webpack Bundle Sizes
November 16, 2019One of the best parts of the javascript ecosystem is the number of packages that are readily available to expedite development. If there’s a…
➥Read moreCreating Symlinks
November 15, 2019To create a symlink, you need only one command: For example, on Ubuntu, the package for Node.js is (not ). Since typing to run node would…
➥Read moreLogging Into User On Server: Permission Denied (publickey)
November 14, 2019I recently spun up a Digital Ocean droplet and almost immediately ran into problems logging into it. For context - the steps I took were…
➥Read moreRepeat A Terminal Command In UNIX
November 13, 2019The is a quick way to repeat a command in a UNIX environment. For example, here I’m looking at a directory’s contents, then invoking it…
➥Read moreInitializing A Class
November 12, 2019Continuing the trend of learning more about Javascript classes of late, I found the following recently and thought it was quite interesting…
➥Read moreAha Moments With Classes - Part Deux
November 11, 2019Recently I wrote about my aha realization of what exactly we’re doing when we pass the props that a class constructor receives to super. In…
➥Read moreSetting Persistent Environment Variables
November 10, 2019To make an environment variable available in Bash or Zsh, save the environment to or respectively. To set the variable, open the…
➥Read moreAha Moments With Classes In Javascript
November 09, 2019When we define a class component as a derivation of a base class, this gives us access to all of the base class’s public (and protected…
➥Read moreRouting Basics With Reach Router
November 08, 2019Imagine you have a Single page application but you want to allow your users to navigate to different pages within the app. I wanted to…
➥Read moreCreating A Downloadable File
November 07, 2019I thought this was pretty cool. Imagine you want to create a file programmatically and allow a user to download it. For the sake of this…
➥Read moreProperty Accessors And Typescript
November 06, 2019Came across an interesting example of a rarely used feature (at least for me) in Javascript creating unexpected results with Typescript…
➥Read moreReact’s StrictMode
November 05, 2019As React continues to upgrade its API, there are parts the team is working to deprecate. If you want to make sure your app stays up to date…
➥Read moreUseEffect Basics
November 04, 2019The hook in React is scheduled to run after render. There are three different categories of running it: Without dependencies With no…
➥Read moreGlobal Node Package Management
November 03, 2019When it comes to global node packages, there are typically three things I want to do: See what’s installed (view globally installed node…
➥Read moreStringifying Sets
November 01, 2019In Javascript, Sets are Objects with a few special attributes. Notably, they’re iterable collections of unique elements. One of the…
➥Read moreCreating Subsets: Object.Entries, Object.fromEntries, and Sets
November 01, 2019I want to highlight one way to create a subset of data. To get us started, let’s think about a universe of data. It’s a circle. Everything…
➥Read moreStorybook Keybindings
October 31, 2019Filing this under delightful surprises. I was working with today when I stumbled into a few keybindings that I didn’t know existed before…
➥Read morePostgres: How To Query Column Labels For A Table
October 30, 2019What if, instead of a table’s data, you wanted to see the table’s metadata? That is, instead of querying all of the rows within a table…
➥Read moreCreating Objects
October 29, 2019The other day I came across a pattern for creating objects I couldn’t quite understand. The code looked a little like this: My confusion was…
➥Read morePolymorphic Presentations With Styled-Components
October 28, 2019Let’s say we’re building a simple web form with a twist: we want the submit to only appear if all of the fields are valid. In all other…
➥Read moreSetting State In React Components
October 27, 2019There are three main types of React Components. There are also (with the introduction of hooks in 16.8) three different ways to define / set…
➥Read moreConditionally Render Components in React
October 26, 2019I still remember when I first learned how to conditionally render my React components. It was a light bulb moment. I began seeing new…
➥Read moreIntersection Observer and React-Intersection-Observer
October 25, 2019I was reviewing a project recently that made use of the library and was fascinated by the simplicty of the API - particularly the hooks…
➥Read moreWriting Is Just The Beginning: The Tradeoff Between Clarity And Exploration With Writing And Conversing
October 24, 2019But you’re never going to achieve what you want to, Mr. Caro, if you don’t stop thinking with your fingers. R.P. Blackmur via ‘Working…
➥Read moreConventions For The Command Line
October 24, 2019The goal of most writing is to communicate a point to the reader. This is where conventions and rules come in handy. They create a shared…
➥Read moreGit: Adding Remotes
October 23, 2019When you pull a repository down (i.e. clone it) from a remote (like Github, Gitlab, or a private host), git will automatically add it as a…
➥Read moreNPM - Cannot read property "match" of undefined
October 22, 2019When trying to run an command, you can’t install the packages, you may get the error: While not a root-cause solution, a workaround is…
➥Read moreUseReducer With Typescript
October 21, 2019When does it make sense to use a reducer vs a simple state value with React’s Hooks? There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but the React team…
➥Read more"regeneratorRuntime is not defined"
October 20, 2019Deciding to not bootstrap my React-Playground app is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only do I have the pleasure of getting to use new…
➥Read moreNPM Install - Max Call Stack Exceed
October 19, 2019I was recently trying to switch over from a private registry default to the default one. When I tried to reinstall my dependencies, however…
➥Read moreTypescript’s Omit: Pick’s Mirror
October 18, 2019I’ve written in the past about the benefits of in writing better interfaces with Typescript. Today, I found out about ’s mirror: .1 Quick…
➥Read moreDealing With NPM Config Files
October 17, 2019When things that used to work break, I want to understand why. That was the situation recently with , the reliable workhorse behind node…
➥Read moreHow to quickly / safely keep my project up to date with branches (and avoid avoidable problems)
October 17, 2019I got into a bit of a mess earlier today when I accidentally checked out an old state of my current branch without creating a new branch for…
➥Read moreGatsby & A (Simple) Publishing Embargo
October 16, 2019Imagine you have a website, like this one, that aims to publish regularly. You’re not a big publication. You don’t have a full-time staff…
➥Read moreDRY And Styled Components
October 15, 2019A quick optimization to keep an eye out for while styling components - particularly those where they share logic - whether between…
➥Read moreESLint, Prettier, And VSCode - When They Stop Cooperating
October 14, 2019A while ago I installed the Prettier extension in VSCode and configured a few defaults in my global settings. I like having a global…
➥Read moreExporting A Named Function As Default
October 13, 2019Back in February I wrote a primer on exports and require. While the primer was helpful, one piece that never quite clicked, was how to…
➥Read moreDefault Enums And Fallbacks
October 12, 2019Working on a component that receives a prop where the status are defined by an enum (I’m working in Typescript). The problem arose when a…
➥Read moreNamed Anchors & Markdown
October 11, 2019When writing longer files in Markdown, it can be useful to create links within the document to help readers navigate. This cross referencing…
➥Read moreGitlab Description Templates
October 10, 2019We use templates to help write descriptive tickets or MRs on various projects at work. 1 Then I started working on a new project and when I…
➥Read moreSupporting Submit On Enter
October 09, 2019When asking users for their input, it’s often a pleasant user experience to allow them to submit the form by pressing “Enter”. In fact, that…
➥Read moreNotes On _What Unites Us_
October 08, 2019America has changed a lot since Dan Rather’s youth. Much of that change, though not all, has been positive - a transformation he chronicles…
➥Read moreBubbling Up Exceptions And Throwing Objects
October 08, 2019Every time I’ve thrown an error, I’ve used the object. It turns out, however, you can throw anything. I probably knew this intuitively, but…
➥Read moreAuto-Complete In HTML Forms
October 07, 2019Starting around 2015, browsers started treating the attribute on fields differently. Instead of honoring what had become a tradition of…
➥Read moreBenedict Evans On AI (Or More Accurately ML)
October 05, 2019I first came across Benedict Evans through a fascinating interview he did with Russ Roberts on EconTalk to discuss the future of cars.1 The…
➥Read moreSwapping Array Elements In Place, Destructuring, and Automatic Semicolon Insertion
October 04, 2019About a year ago, I learned about bitwise operators and using them to swap elements of a list in place. With Array Destructuring, Javascript…
➥Read moreMasking Inputs And More Ref Fun
October 03, 2019In learning about Auto-Complete In HTML Forms, I discovered that the of an makes can make a significant difference in how they are…
➥Read moreJakob’s Law of Internet User Experience
October 02, 2019Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, a consulting firm focused on user-experience, has what I think is a pretty profound observation…
➥Read moreValidating Social Security Numbers
October 01, 2019I continue to be enamored with the power of regular expressions — a feeling that only grows the more I understand them. Today, for example…
➥Read moreShowing Up: The NYTimes Editorial Board
September 30, 2019The most striking aspect of the New York Times’ Editorial Board’s recent opinion, “Why the Trump Impeachment Inquiry Is the Only Option” was…
➥Read moreShowing up and the Daffodil Principle
September 29, 2019There are days when I don’t want to show up. Days when I wish I could just jump ahead to the part where I have accomplished my goal, won the…
➥Read moreAn Unremarkable Achievement: Accomplishing Goals Through Steady Progress
September 29, 2019Yesterday I accomplished a goal I’d been working toward for close to three months: I swam an uninterrupted 200m freestyle. It wasn’t special…
➥Read moreWeb-Safe Fonts and Font Fallbacks
September 28, 2019Today, I had a colleague mention that the font we are using is “web-safe” in response to why it was so weird that it wasn’t showing up…
➥Read moreInspect A Hoverable Event
September 27, 2019Some effects only appear when you hover over them with your mouse. The problem is that in order to see the details and ensure they’re what…
➥Read moreRunning VSCode On Linux: Hitting My Watcher Limit
September 26, 2019I have been working on a Linux VM more recently, and one particularly annoying thing about it (there are a lot of little quirks that are…
➥Read moreReusing CSS With Styled Components
September 25, 2019Styled components are really nice in compartmentalizing styling and keeping it close to the components that use it. I wasn’t around for the…
➥Read moreGetting Refs To Sync With Container State
September 24, 2019I was working on a project recently which was using Refs in order to integrate with a third-party library. My mental model for refs are that…
➥Read moreAn Even More Basic React App Tutorial
September 23, 2019Recently, I walked through building a basic React App.1 In retrospect, I could make it even more basic by removing any package managers…
➥Read moreGetting a Basic React App Up And Running
September 23, 2019Update: I’ve now found an even more basic way to write a React app and I put together a tutorial in a post, An Even More Basic React App…
➥Read moreLeading Spaces & The Web
September 22, 2019One of the more frustrating little quirks about HTML is its insistence on collapsing white space. This is actually often more useful than it…
➥Read moreHTML Id Fields
September 21, 2019Ids are everywhere. But what are the rules for them? Turns out, the rules in HTML5 are pretty permissive: unique, at least one character…
➥Read moreHTML: Name vs. Id
September 20, 2019In looking into labels for web forms recently, I stumbled on a question I really didn’t know the answer to: What’s the difference between a…
➥Read moreWeb Accessibility: Form Basics: Labels
September 19, 2019For accessibility purposes all form inputs should be labelled. How do we apply a label though? There are multiple ways to add a label, but…
➥Read moreScore Dial
September 18, 2019Given a score within a range, how could we visualize that on a dial? That was what I got to work on recently and it turned out to be a ton…
➥Read moreUndo And Redo In Vim
September 17, 2019Sometimes Vim is simultaneously impossible opaque and extraordinarily intuitive. That’s the case with the undo and redo. To undo the last…
➥Read moreDisplay: None vs Visibility: Hidden
September 16, 2019When hiding elements on the client, there are multiple options. Two of the most common are through the selective toggling ofCSS properties…
➥Read moreCompression Basics: Zip, Tar, Rar, and Gz
September 15, 2019What are the differences between a , , ., and ? It turns out it’s both a lot and a little. Some basics: represents a compressed archive of…
➥Read moreREM vs EM
September 14, 2019Jeremy Church put together a nice little side by side comparison of REM and Em (and PX).1 Both REM and EM are relative units. The difference…
➥Read moreAn Anniversary Of Sorts
September 11, 2019This weekend was an anniversary of sorts for me. Exactly one year ago Saturday was my last day in a job and career I’d been building since…
➥Read morePutting Humans At The Center
September 10, 2019When I was in high school, I argued passionately in defense of determinism. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the idea of free will or want it to…
➥Read moreRoasted Cauliflower
September 09, 2019I found this insanely easy way to roast an entire Caulflower head.1 If When I do it again in the future, I’ll experiment with other spices…
➥Read moreAdding Prettier To A Project
September 07, 2019The steps to adding Prettier to a project are very simple: Install Prettier () Create a file in the root directory Add an empty object to…
➥Read moreSimulating Slow Network Connections: Firefox vs. Chromium
September 06, 2019Testing my app on a slower connection is a key part of my development cycle. That’s why when I recently found myself developing within…
➥Read moreUsing Callbacks To Reverse Data Flow In React
September 05, 2019React’s one way data flow makes it easy to reason through, but sometimes the controlling component needs to know what’s going on inside. For…
➥Read moreRegEx In Javascript Strings: Remove numeric or alphabetic characters
September 04, 2019Built into Javascript’s primitive are Regex methods such as and .1 We can use the latter to sanitize inputs. A simply way to clean a phone…
➥Read moreNPM Link
September 03, 2019Unless you’re working on a mono-repo, it’s fairly common that in the process of making changes to a code base, you’ll actually need to…
➥Read moreError Handling: App can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software
September 01, 2019Recently upgraded an application and got this warning In the past, I used to be able to “right” click on the app, but Apple’s UI makes it…
➥Read morePassing Test Variables To GraphiQL
August 31, 2019Previously, I wrote about writing a GraphQL query that takes variables. I was using this to programmatically create posts. In returning to…
➥Read moreImport Aliases in Gatsby
August 30, 2019I wanted to be able to import JSX elements I defined in a Gatsby project into markdown files. Very quickly I got tired of writing out the…
➥Read moreHEIC To JPG And The Cost Of Free
August 29, 2019Apple’s Live Photos are a fun way to add a little twist to photos you snap on your phone. Empowering this feature is a file format called…
➥Read moreHarissa Grilled Eggplant
August 28, 2019One of our family’s favorite recipes is a Harissa Grilled Eggplant from Goop.1 It’s quick, full of flavor, and relatively healthy. Where the…
➥Read moreRESTful APIs: Put Vs. Patch
August 27, 2019I routinely find myself looking up the differences between the HTTP methods (aka verbs) and . While there’s plenty of nuance, some of which…
➥Read moreDefining Idempotent
August 26, 2019Idempotent is a word that gets thrown out a lot within computing but that I continually forget what it means. From Wordnik, the definition…
➥Read moreServer-Side Pagination With Limit/Offset
August 25, 2019How do you limit the number of rows returned from a query? Let’s consider a basic example with a members table. You’re building a front end…
➥Read moreNode Out Of Memory: Force Feeding Node More Memory
August 24, 2019It’s not uncommon for larger apps to exceed the default memory allocated to Node. When this happens, you’ll get an errory alerting you that…
➥Read moreAndrew Sullivan’s "My Addiction Sickness"
August 23, 2019I read Andrew Sullivan’s 2016 piece for the New York Magazine this week and it’s as relevant as ever. It’s a wonderful, thought-provoking…
➥Read moreMarkdown Image Titles and Alt Text
August 22, 2019I continue to be impressed by the simplicity and power of Markdown. Today, while exploring the API for Gatsby’s Remark Images, I noticed the…
➥Read moreDealing With Disappearing "Position: Fixed" On Overflow?
August 21, 2019Have you ever tried to have an element overflow when one of its children is in a fixed positioned relative to it? Fun fact: It doesn’t work…
➥Read morePostgres: Getting The Owner Of Tables
August 20, 2019I was trying to modify a table today when I hit an error: . To figure out who the owner was so that I could ask them to modify the table on…
➥Read moreReminder: Logging Into Postgres With Shell Commands
August 19, 2019PGAdmin, Dbeaver, etc. are useful GUIs for managing and reviewing Postgres databases. Sometimes, however, there’s a desire to login via the…
➥Read moreAdding Columns To Postgres Tables After Creation
August 18, 2019If you already have a table created in Postgres, how can you modify it to add a new column? Similar to adding constraints after a table has…
➥Read moreAdding a Unique Constraint To Postgres Tables After Creation
August 17, 2019How do you add a unique constraint to a table in Postgres if it’s already been created? Most of the time, we add unique constraints to a…
➥Read more:hover Vs :focus
August 16, 2019Most of the time, these two pseudo-selectors act in concert. In fact, they’re so frequently triggered together that my naive testing…
➥Read moreRegex Search in VSCode
August 15, 2019Finding all instances of an imported module in a large app can be challenging. With the namespace for a module being restricted to the file…
➥Read moreReplacing MouseEvents with PointerEvents
August 14, 2019How can the necessity of handling different types of inputs (e.g., mouse, touch, and pen) by duplicating event handler logic? The Pointer…
➥Read moreTypescript Generics: A Basic Use Case
August 13, 2019When does it make sense to use a Generic in a Typescript type? How do you create a type that takes a Generic? I’ve read through the…
➥Read moreImporting Modules While Reducing Clutter
August 12, 2019I’ve developed a peculiar habit. I knew I’d developed it, but didn’t know it was peculiar until my lead asked me about it this morning. When…
➥Read moreMDX vs Remark
August 11, 2019Both MDX and Remark are Markdown compilers that will convert valid Markdown into HTML to render on the web. The beauty of Remark is that it…
➥Read moreWorking On The Wrong Problem
August 10, 2019Working with code is an extraordinarily satisfying experience. Not in the minute-to-minute. At that scale, it can be infuriating. The code…
➥Read moreSuperscript And Subscript With Markdown
August 09, 2019Markdown doesn’t support for superscript or subscript directly. However, there are multiple strategies to adding superscript and subscript…
➥Read moreError: "Field "image" must not have a selection since type "String" has no subfields."
August 08, 2019I was trying to query an image I’d placed in the frontmatter of a post, when I got the error: Field ‘image’ must not have a selection since…
➥Read moreVSCode - Reenable Settings When "Exclude Settings And Ignore Files Are Disabled"
August 06, 2019Filing this one under annoying bugs that shouldn’t be an issue but end up taking up way more of your time than you’d like. VSCode offers the…
➥Read moreMultiple Post Types With Gatsby
August 05, 2019When I set up my previously, I noted that if there were multiple file systems that I wanted access to, all I need to do was to duplicate…
➥Read moreProgrammatic Page Generation
August 04, 2019Alright, I’ve been building to this point! Time to generate new pages for a blog programmatically using Gatsby! Previously I wrote about…
➥Read moreTrials In CSS: Fit Content To Window
August 03, 2019One of my ongoing challenges with layouts on the web is the fact that a website does not naturally have an end. Unlike an 8.5”x11” sheet of…
➥Read moreGit Push New
August 02, 2019Every time I cut a new branch in Git and am ready to submit a PR for review, I get an annoying error reminding me that I need to set the…
➥Read moreLearning Vim With VimTutor
August 01, 2019If you have already installed, you can get an interactive walk-through using the . To launch , open your shell and type in the command…
➥Read moreState, Reducers, And useReducer In React
July 31, 2019To date, I’ve struggled to understand reducers. Terms like reducers, actions, dispatch, all blurred together and even though I could use…
➥Read moreUsing isValidElement To Ensure A Node Is An Element In React
July 30, 2019I am trying to reduce an array of React Nodes to an array of React Elements. Specifically, I’m trying to extract the title prop from those…
➥Read moreReminders And Suggestions
July 29, 2019Every week I sit down and write what I want to stop, start, and continue. That habit, it would seem, should insulate me to some degree both…
➥Read moreuseRef Vs. useState And Unnecessary Renders
July 26, 2019Today, I found a wonderful side-effect of : it doesn’t re-render components when it changes. This was ideal for my situation because I…
➥Read moreGit Branch Naming Conventions
July 25, 2019I have a habit of making longer git branch names. I use the branch name as a way to communicate what and why I’m working on something. For…
➥Read moreHow To Use Variables GraphQL Queries
July 24, 2019My dive into Gatsby continues. Today, I wanted to better understand how dynamic queries worked in GraphQL. For example, my blog (which I…
➥Read moreUsing Lodash Reduce And Some To Accomplish Complex Filtering
July 23, 2019I came across a situation where I had a collection of collections. Some of the internal collections, however, I didn’t want to keep around…
➥Read moreReframing No
July 21, 2019The past few weeks I’ve felt like I’ve been saying “no” to more things. Specifically, I’ve said “no” to caffeine. “No” to bagels and muffins…
➥Read moreGetting Started With Gatsby-Source-Filesystem
July 20, 2019Continuing my learnings in Gatsby and today I found out a few new pieces about the filesystem plugin, .1 The filesystem plugin is from…
➥Read moreSequences in Postgres
July 19, 2019The in Postgres is a number generator.1 Once created, they can be managed with sequence operators.2 So, why use them? One reason would be…
➥Read moreThe Seed Of Imagination Is Others
July 18, 2019My mind races a lot. I can’t help it. Whenever I talk to someone, read something, observe an interaction, etc. I immediately start thinking…
➥Read moreCheck For Duplicates - COUNT, CASE, and EXIST In Postgres
July 16, 2019Before I write to a database, I want to make sure that I don’t create a duplicate record based on the name and parent record id. To…
➥Read moreUsing COALESCE And Dynamic Updates To Multiple Records In Postgres
July 16, 2019I wanted to update multiple fields on multiple records and handle the case that not all of the information is present in the update for each…
➥Read moreGatsby Config Plugin Syntax
July 14, 2019I often struggle with the syntax of config files. What are resolvers? How do options work? etc. As a result, while making my way through…
➥Read moreWhat Is `require.resolve` And How Does It Work?
July 13, 2019In order to understand , part of the Node API, we must first understand its context. Namely, the module and how it fits within the realm of…
➥Read morePostgres Constraints And Arrays
July 12, 2019I wrote in the past about using constraints in the context of array operators in Postgres. Today, however, I didn’t have a pre-defined array…
➥Read moreInserting Values Into A Table - Postgres
July 11, 2019How do you insert multiple values? I always find myself looking this up. I decided I’d jot it down here for future reference. Hopefully it…
➥Read moreSQL Tricks: Querying The Same Table Twice
July 10, 2019I recently came across a creative solution to finding the relationships between different values within a table using SQL. This may be…
➥Read moreDon’t Let Facts Get In The Way Of A Good Story
July 06, 2019Don’t Let Facts Get In The Way Of A Good Story The first time I heard about Jerry Seinfeld’s “Productivity System” was 2013.1 2 The system…
➥Read moreVariables in Postman
July 03, 2019I’ve written in the past about why I like testing my APIs with Postman. Today, I learned that they have yet another feature that makes my…
➥Read moreArray Lengths In Postgres
July 02, 2019Yesterday, I wrote about the intersecting of Arrays in Postgres. Today, I wanted to go a step further and think about finding the maximum…
➥Read moreArray Intersection In Postgres
July 01, 2019Recently, I was building an API to modify the data in a database. The field I was modifying happened to be an array, and I wanted to make…
➥Read moreThe One About Quotes In Postgres - Single, Double, And Handling `non_snake_case` Fields
June 30, 2019Imagine the following situation - you’re trying to select columns from a Postgres table Let’s assume these are the only four fields you want…
➥Read moreEntity Relationship Diagrams - What The Lines Mean
June 29, 2019Yesterday, in talking about Postgres and Subqueries I was trying to represent a relationship between tables. I knew intuitively what I was…
➥Read moreSelect And Calculate With Postgres Using Subqueries
June 28, 2019I wanted to be able to retrieve a set of records from a database along with specific details from a related table. I knew SQL could…
➥Read moreErrors, Loading, And Happiness: A Pattern In React
June 27, 2019If I’m working on a React application that is trying to render data based on an asynchronous call, there are three common cases I should…
➥Read moreError Handling: SSH & Git Remotes
June 26, 2019Starting this morning, I was suddenly unable to update my repositories on Github. As I’d written about in the past, I prefer using SSH over…
➥Read moreUsing Typescript’s Pick To Improve Communication And Decrease Maintenance
June 25, 2019Instead of documenting an interface that is redundant, but only a partial, we can use to allow the interface to automatically be linked, w…
➥Read more`Type[]` vs `Array<Type>`: What’s the Difference?
June 24, 2019The short answer: there is no difference. When investigating, I was steered to the Typescript Handbook1 which notes: The type…
➥Read moreDetails Tags And Choosing Your Own Adventure On The Web
June 22, 2019Recently I heard about Julian.com and specifically about the design of the manuals the owner, Julian Shapiro writes. One of the things that…
➥Read moreUsing `_.pick` To Extract Relevant Details From Objects
June 21, 2019Building on lessons from yesterday’s dive into , I found an opportunity to explore . This time it was because I wanted to send data from the…
➥Read moreMore Uses Of `_.groupBy`
June 20, 2019As I wrote previously, the method of Lodash can be really useful. My original use case for was for one big object, but of course, those…
➥Read moreIn Defense Of Pen & Paper
June 19, 2019I seem incapable of reading without a pen in hand. If I am not in a place where I can underline or jot a note in the margins — I don’t read…
➥Read moreHandling Empty Arrays With Postgres
June 18, 2019A few days ago, I wrote about handling arrays from Javascript to SQL. Turns out, I missed an edge case - empty arrays. If you try to set an…
➥Read moreTesting - Chai Tests And Database Connection Pools
June 17, 2019I’m writing some integration tests for an app that is confirming database queries are working the way I’m expecting. In order to prep the…
➥Read moreArray Handling: JavaScript to SQL
June 15, 2019Yesterday we updated a Postgres record’s details based on the and returned the update in a single query. What if the details was not a…
➥Read morePostgres `RETURNING` Statement
June 14, 2019Often, after making a change to a database, we want to verify that the change was made and use the updated rows. A naïve approach would be…
➥Read moreOptional Params With JSON Stringify
June 13, 2019I’ve gotten in the habit recently of printing my variables as object literals. For example, if I have a variable, , that I want to inspect…
➥Read moreAdding Comments To A SQL Statement
June 12, 2019There are two ways to add a comment to a SQL query - using and . The differences are as follows: With a comment surrounded by and , the…
➥Read moreMarathon Pace And Stumbling Forward
June 11, 2019The topic of life as a journey has been on my mind lately - evidenced by my last two essays Defense of Detours and Arrive Safely And Avoid…
➥Read morePostgres Data Types: Array
June 10, 2019When looking around a table in Postgres today, I noticed a curious looking field. looked like a collection, but when I looked at the Data…
➥Read moreGit Stash With A Message
June 09, 2019Adding a message to a stash is a great way to easily identify what’s included in a stash. This can be particularly helpful if you’re only…
➥Read moreGit Stash A Specific File
June 08, 2019Sometimes you only want to stash a few files at a time. Maybe in the course of your work, the files you were changing revealed a bigger…
➥Read moreLessons In Typescript: Extending 3rd Party Libraries And Reading Type Definitions
June 07, 2019Using third party libraries is great when they do exactly what you want them to do. When it comes to extending them, however, it can get…
➥Read moreDebugging Transpiled Code
June 06, 2019I was investigating a situation where my application was deviating from my expectations during runtime — aka bug fixing. Opening up my…
➥Read moreButtons Without Style
June 05, 2019When it comes to accessibility (a11y) on the web, one of the best / easiest things you can do is to use semantic HTML. Structural, semantic…
➥Read moreIncrementing State In Functional Components
June 04, 2019I was recently trying to understand Material UI’s component. In looking through their implementation of the Horizontal Linear Stepper, they…
➥Read moreIn Defense Of Detours
June 04, 2019Detours are slow. They add time and distance to our route. Particularly when we have a plan and know where we’re going, this delay can be…
➥Read moreStorybook.js And Static Image Files
June 03, 2019Storybook supports static files, like images. But it wasn’t working for me. In fact, the way to make a story with a static file is really…
➥Read moreKeep Homebrew Formulae Up To Date
June 02, 2019In the same vein as cleaning up my git branches, today I recalled that I can easily update my Homebrew formulae with the command . This…
➥Read moreUsing Variables To Make Interchangeable React Components
May 31, 2019Using Variables To Make Interchangeable React Components I’m still making tweaks to the Stepper project I wrote about previously (here and…
➥Read moreGithub Branch Protection Rules
May 31, 2019I use Netlify to manage the deployment of my site. One of the things I love about Netlify are the checks they run against each branch to…
➥Read morePrinting The Directory Tree
May 31, 2019I wanted to be able to print cool trees of my directories to help show my folder structure. At first, I thought it was simply using standard…
➥Read moreHigher Order Components In Javascript / Typescript
May 29, 2019Imagine you have a prop that you want to be passed all the way through to the DOM. If you try and pass through a prop that isn’t…
➥Read moreArrive Safely And Avoid (Avoidable) Accidents
May 27, 2019No matter the mode of transportation, the faster you go, the less control you have. If you’ve ever tried to turn on a dime when sprinting or…
➥Read moreAdding Words To The MacOS Dictionary
May 27, 2019When writing about Javascript (or past lives writing about health care), I would often type words that don’t appear in Webster’s or Oxford’s…
➥Read moreCleaning Up Your Local Git Repository: AKA How To Remove Stale Branches
May 26, 2019Unless your git workflow is pushing straight to master (because YOLO), it’s likely that your local repository will grow unwieldy in time…
➥Read moreSimple Way To Swap Variables Using Javascript
May 24, 2019I’ve been learning about some of the ways you can use destructuring to make my Javascript more declarative and communicate my intent more…
➥Read moreCreate A Spinner & Add A Loader In React
May 23, 2019Using two libraries, and , I learned a new simple way to create a component (i.e. a spinner) to be used while an image is being loaded in…
➥Read moreUnzipping A File From The Command Line
May 22, 2019I should start with the observation that I hate using my mouse. Yet, that was exactly what I was about to do today to unzip a file. The…
➥Read moreMake Space To Revisit Problems
May 20, 2019Make it work. Make it right. Make it fast.1 This maxim screams pragmatism. Don’t optimize too early. Get something working. Then, and only…
➥Read moreHooks, Async, And The Joy Of New Problems
May 17, 2019When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When approaching new problems, it’s easy to fall into old ways of doing…
➥Read moreRivers Of Knowledge
May 11, 2019Describing each individual as unique has become cliche. And yet, isn’t it the case? Our lives are our own - no other person has the same…
➥Read moreHover Events & Different Cursors With CSS
May 08, 2019More CSS fun today! One way to visually indicate that an element is clickable is by changing the cursor to a If a data element is supposed…
➥Read moreZ-Index: Geometry, Not Magic
May 07, 2019It was one of those light bulb moments when things finally clicked. My colleague was describing how to ensure that my elements weren’t…
➥Read moreScroll Events And Invoking Lodash’s `_.throttle` Or `_.debounce`
May 06, 2019Recently, I was working on a project where I wanted the scroll event to invoke a function that would affect other elements on the page. For…
➥Read moreGit Merge Strategies - Recursive - Theirs (and Ours)
May 04, 2019Often when I get a merge conflict, what I really want to do is defer to the master branch, so, if I’m on a branch and I want to merge in the…
➥Read moreLodash `_groupBy` Vs. Custom Helper Functions
May 03, 2019Yesterday, I wrote about using Lodash’s to solve a problem. The issue was that that wasn’t the first time Lodash proved helpful. My first…
➥Read moreObjects, Undefined values, and Lodash's `_.pickBy` and `_.identity`
May 01, 2019Let’s start with the basics. I was in an oh-so-common situation recently where I was building a component that would visualize the details…
➥Read moreGit - Renaming A Branch: Locally & Remotely
April 30, 2019To rename the name of a branch, there are four potential steps: Checkout the existing branch (the one you want to rename): Rename the local…
➥Read morePs and Qs: The Overlooked Final Piece
April 30, 2019When I was younger, I learned to “mind my Ps and Qs.” I’m glad I did. It’s a relatively straightforward behavior that has paid dividends…
➥Read moreUsing The Emoji Keyboard And Keyboard Shortcuts
April 28, 2019On Macs there is a Emoji & Symbols keyboard. You’ve probably seen it on your phone, but desktops and laptops have it too. To launch it, go…
➥Read moreHow To Find Your Notes Quickly (In Bear)
April 28, 2019I use Bear as my digital note keeper and place where I write. As I continue to add more notes to it (6k and counting), being able to find my…
➥Read moreGit - Checking Out Remote Branches
April 27, 2019Update: I kept using this approach and recently found an even simpler way to checkout remote branches. I wrote more about it in Git…
➥Read moreMinimizing bundle sizes by restructuring your imports
April 26, 2019Using the example of importing the into a file, we can see how this works. is equivalent (at least in terms of bundle size) to But, if we…
➥Read moreThe Purposeful Pause Practice
April 23, 2019The world is busier than it used to be. We’re bombarded by constantly with work emails, Instagram notifications, and Slack messages. My…
➥Read moreError Handling: Address In Use
April 18, 2019Running my node server, I got an error indicating that my port was already in use (). I knew that shouldn’t have been the case because I had…
➥Read moreLearning (@ Work)
April 16, 2019I think the psychology of learning at work is interesting. On the one hand, an employer should want employees to ask questions and learn…
➥Read morePomodori and Deep Work
April 14, 2019I brought pomodori back this week after listening to the podcast episode with Productivity with Mani Vaya. Mani won me over early in the…
➥Read moreWhen Tracking Makes Sense
April 14, 2019Before my recent efforts to be more mindful of how I used technology, I was quite proud of the streak I had with meditating daily. I had…
➥Read moreCurrying - An Introduction With Function Declarations & Expressions
April 13, 2019For a long time, I hated seeing functions like this: . I thought this was just “code golf” (the idea of reducing a function to its shortest…
➥Read moreHow To Test Your API Using cURL & Postman
April 13, 2019The other day, I found myself making some changes to a network request for our application. By navigating to a specific page, I knew I’d…
➥Read moreBash Functions & Git - How to wipe out changes made to a specific file
April 07, 2019I find myself writing the following command multiple times daily. I had been reading a little about bash functions and wanted to see if I…
➥Read moreDefault Prop Values In React
April 05, 2019What value does a prop get if no value is assigned? To think about this more tangibly, imagine you have a higher order component, . That…
➥Read moreClosure & Lexical Scope
April 05, 2019When we say that JS is lexically scoped, what we mean is that a function will have access to the variables in the context of which it was…
➥Read moreReact Lifecycle Methods - A primer with React 16
April 04, 2019One of the things that I didn’t appreciate when I first started using React was how helpful the different lifecycle methods were. I got away…
➥Read moreRename Variable While Destructuring In Javascript
April 04, 2019I recently came across a situation where I had two different props in a component that had the same name (they were in different parts of…
➥Read moreCopying Data From One Column To Another With SQL
March 08, 2019If you need to copy all data from one column to another column in SQL, use the method. If it’s a simple copy for copy, without conditionals…
➥Read more`.d.ts` Files And Typescript Interfaces
March 08, 2019The file is a declaration file. In this case, it’s a declaration file for Typescript files. What does that actually mean though? The…
➥Read moreThe Limits of Habits
March 02, 2019Are there areas of life where the costs of efficiency gained outweigh the costs? Of course. It’s just not a question that I ask that…
➥Read moreObject Oriented Javascript: Class Instantiation Patterns
February 18, 2019What are classes anyway? A class is an entity that is capable of producing objects (instances) that share common attributes, features, and…
➥Read moreReact Key Props And Why You Shouldn’t Be Using Index
February 17, 2019If you’ve ever mapped over an array in React, you’ve likely seen this warning: I wanted to understand why React gives this warning. After…
➥Read moreNext Level Shell: Aliases And Functions
February 13, 2019Imagination Time Imagine a situation where you want to be able to navigate to a specific directory then open that directory with your text…
➥Read moreLooking Up Shell Functions In Zsh
February 13, 2019I recently figured out how to write a shell function. The problem is that pretty quickly I’d forgotten which functions I’d written, or fi I…
➥Read moreMacOS Spotlight Nonsense & Reindexing
February 12, 2019Recently, Spotlight had been acting up. For example: When I search for Spotify (an app I use every day), it wouldn’t show up. Instead I’d…
➥Read moreJS Modules Primer: Export & Require
February 11, 2019Import/Export vs. Require in JS On more than one occasion I’ve found myself looking up the MDN page on imports and exports for modules in…
➥Read moreReasons To Share
February 06, 2019There are plenty of reasons to write this blog and share your perspective. Recently, however, I had a few experiences that really reinforced…
➥Read moreDifference Arrays: What Are They And How Do They Work?
January 31, 2019Difference Arrays Imagine you’re given a problem that says for each “query” in the format add to all elements of an array of zeros with a…
➥Read moreRotating Arrays: Two Ways
January 30, 2019How would you rotate an array’s elements if you were given an array and a number of left rotations? (A left rotation is defined as moving…
➥Read moreExploring GET Requests: Multiple Values And Parameters
January 30, 2019The ease of writing GET requests varies with the clarity of the supporting documentation. With that in mind, I recently explored an API…
➥Read moreHeroic Consistency, Wu Wei, And The Middle Way
January 30, 2019I recently found the following tweet about heroic consistency. Don’t aim for consistently heroic efforts. Aim for being heroic at…
➥Read moreBetter Form Submissions with Event.preventDefault() and HTMLFormElement.reset()
January 04, 2019Two tools to keep in your tool belt when adding forms to your website should be: The reason is that by default, on submission of a form…
➥Read moreVSCode: Adding Ligatures To A Font That Doesn't Have THem
December 29, 2018A few months ago, I found a font, that introduced me to ligatures and how they could be useful in writing code. Fira Code’s ligature set…
➥Read moreWrite Your Own Javascript Contracts and Docstrings
December 29, 2018My very first introduction to code was with ~Introduction To Computational and Programming Using Python~ by John V. Guttag. While I didn’t…
➥Read moreLessons In querySelector And The Importance Of Understanding Mechanism
December 27, 2018NB: The below illustrations are inspired / adapted from MDN’s great page on QuerySelector. I did not come up with these examples (though I…
➥Read morePostman, URI Encoding, and Occam's Razor
December 25, 2018Occam was a 14th century theologian-philosopher who is perhaps best known now for his relentless insistence on using the law of parsimony…
➥Read moreDebugging: Dev.To RSS-To-Draft Only Displaying Post Summaries (Wordpress Solution)
December 23, 2018Preamable I’m filing this under the category of: “Issues that I created for myself and don’t want to forget how I solved.” Also, I don’t…
➥Read moreOh-My-Zsh and Persistent Aliases
December 22, 2018NB: If you want the quick steps to add aliases to your , jump down to the section, ”Adding Aliases: The Better Way“. First, a little…
➥Read moreCharts, Colors, and Complements: Oh my!
December 20, 2018Charts are the black hole of programming. I was warned, but I wanted to tackle charts anyway. That was my first mistake. Humans tend to…
➥Read moreNode Environmental Variables: A Simple Example
December 18, 2018This is not going to be a deep dive into Node’s environmental variables, but rather a quick look at how you may use environmental variables…
➥Read moreError Handling: Jest with Babel
December 16, 2018Trying to run tests with Jest, I got the following error: Looking at the stack trace (in full at the end of this post), however, there were…
➥Read moreCustom Sort Functions with Javascript
December 14, 2018Javascript’s built-in sort is powerful and fast. However, there are many times when you will want to sort in a custom fashion. Whenever I…
➥Read moreError Handling: Uncaught TypeError: this.searchDB is not a function
December 12, 2018While working on a React project, I came across the following error: is a method on my component that is called when certain buttons are…
➥Read moreCustomizing webpack
December 10, 2018I’ve looked up how to customize my Webpack a number of times, so I’m documenting here to serve as a reference and template for future…
➥Read moreAdding Indexes To Mongo + A Case Study
November 30, 2018I’ve been working on projects with larger data sets recently and have begun to notice that not all queries resolve in one or two…
➥Read moreExperience, exposure, and the building of knowledge
November 29, 2018A few weeks back I went from an absolute novice to being invited to present on a topic in the span of five days. The experience was humbling…
➥Read moreAxios And Routing With baseURLs
November 27, 2018I was unifying multiple micro services into a single front-end. To do this efficiently, I wanted to create a single proxy that sat in front…
➥Read moreIndexing Databases - A Postgres Example
November 22, 2018A short review of when and how to index a Postgres database. Common Commands Why Index Your Postgres Table The two most common reasons to…
➥Read moreLearning To Savor The Moment
November 21, 2018Savor the moment I love that phrase. It’s a reminder that there is something genuinely special about this moment in time. The circumstances…
➥Read moreError Handling: permission denied for sequence _id_seq…
November 20, 2018Recently, I was using NodeJS to write directly to a Postgres database when I got an error beginning with: What follows are the steps I took…
➥Read moreA Beginner's Guide to Feature Branch Workflows with Git
October 25, 2018The Feature Branch Workflow for git is a graduation from the Centralized workflow where all changes are made directly to the master branch.…
➥Read moreDebugging Create-React-App
October 23, 2018In an effort to learn React, I pulled up React’s introductory tutorial. Almost immediately I hit turbulence. I was in the setup of the…
➥Read morePrinting Articles and Blogs in 2018
October 21, 2018There are more free resources out there today than ever before. For a student, it’s a glorious time. Despite the rise of great annotating…
➥Read moreSwapping and Bitwise Operators
October 02, 2018One of the simplest ways to swap two variables in programming is to create a temporary variable that holds a value while you iterate. Given…
➥Read moreGrowing up
September 14, 2018Greg Lukianoff was recently on the Cato Daily Podcast to discuss his new book with Jonathan Haidt, the ”The Coddling of the American Mind…
➥Read moreLeadership vs Management
September 11, 2018Cal Turner Jr., CEO of Dollar General, was on the A16Z podcast this week. In a wonderful moment, Cal reflected on a lesson he took from his…
➥Read moreShady email practices
September 10, 2018Want to make sure that your customers unsubscribe even less than they would otherwise? Make your email long enough so that only the footer…
➥Read moreAggregators and what they're hiding
September 09, 2018The thing about aggregators is: in an era of abundant supply, it’s almost impossible to know when things aren’t there. When you need a piece…
➥Read moreDear Donald
September 08, 2018Dear Donald, Four years ago, you told me to ”Learn To Code.” This month I will be taking the next step in that journey as I start a full…
➥Read moreAliases and the .bash_profile
September 05, 2018.gitconfig follow-up with .bash_profille In my previous Git posts (here and here), I noted that one of the things I found really helpful was…
➥Read moreChia seed pudding
September 01, 2018At brunch with my cousin, I tried Chia Seed Pudding for the first time. It was awesome. To me it was a pleasant combination of Oatmeal and a…
➥Read moreImprovements in cable management
August 31, 2018Spend enough time looking at pictures of desks and you’ll realize that despite all of the electronics, there are terribly few wires on…
➥Read moreGit clone, pull, and push
August 30, 2018Git Clone, Pull, and Push Continuing my learnings re: Git. I wanted to better understand the use cases for three Git commands: 1. Clone…
➥Read moreCurbing my natural tendencies
August 29, 2018This spring I read the Jason Zweig updated version of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, the follow up to his more technical…
➥Read moreTime in the kitchen
August 28, 2018I’ve been trying to pick up more of the cooking duties in our home and I’ve noticed that recipes often make a distinction between prep time…
➥Read moreDeciphering the terminal
August 27, 2018My goal is to be a competent command line programmer. I knew that in order to make that happen, I would have to get very comfortable reading…
➥Read moreLearning Git from the ground up - another Git tutorial
August 22, 2018I’ve been trying to learn more about Git recently. I thought I’d write up some of the lessons I’ve learned to create a basic primer on Git…
➥Read moreDeep and shallow copying - A tale of two friends
August 20, 2018I was recently using the slice method to copy an array and I ran into a few difficulties understanding why my copy was not shallow. From the…
➥Read moreGiraffes and Elephants
August 14, 2018The simplest endeavor toward diversity focus on hiring practices. Making sure that candidates are not systematically excluded and that…
➥Read moreConfucianism’s marketing problem
August 13, 2018I’m currently reading The Path by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh. Puett and Gross-Loh contrast Confuscius to Kant and the modern…
➥Read moreThe best time to get started was yesterday
August 12, 2018The next best time is now. I’ve been dying to get back to this blog for months but this week two things gave me the push I needed: First…
➥Read moreMeasurement overload
June 14, 2017Measurements are getting cheaper, but the amount getting done is not keeping pace. Why is that? Nearly 150 years ago, William Thomson, the…
➥Read moreA Healthy Skepticism
June 13, 2017“For best results, mattresses should be replaced every 8 years” — I recently saw an ad with this copy in a window of a mattress store near…
➥Read moreA small tweak but a big difference
June 10, 2017Last night, I made a small change that made a big difference. It didn’t feel significant when I made it. It felt like a thing you do when…
➥Read moreMeetings with yourself
June 09, 2017I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o clock sharp. - W. Somerset Maugham It’s not…
➥Read moreSending a signal - Meetings at AndreesonHorowitz
June 08, 2017In his brilliant book on management and leadership, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz covered a lot of ground. Three years…
➥Read moreThe hat tip
May 23, 2017The hat tip is ”a cultural expression of recognition, respect, gratitude.” It’s more modern incarnation takes that tradition and translated…
➥Read moreYou're doing it wrong
May 17, 2017Ryan Holiday recently weighed in on the phenomenon of ‘ultra hardcore readers’ - people who spent nearly every spare minute of their day…
➥Read moreThe hidden cost of habit creep
May 16, 2017Habits are a way to automate certain decisions to make space for the bigger ones. They are not, however, a panacea - a lesson which became…
➥Read moreThe allure of banned materials
May 06, 2017A few days ago, I got to talking with a friend about the Berkeley students’ recent protests and threatened protests in advance of speeches…
➥Read moreWhy write?
April 26, 2017In his annual letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos answered a question that had been following him around for twenty years: what does Day…
➥Read moreOptimizing for the experience
April 16, 2017Think about the last time you were in an elevator. Did you pull out your phone to check your email or get an update on the score of the game…
➥Read moreWhere do you live?
April 08, 2017When we meet people for the first time, we are filling in gaps with all of the information we can gather about a person. No matter how good…
➥Read moreThis too shall pass and thoughts on (im)permanence
April 06, 2017Permanence is beautiful. I would argue that one reason we gravitate toward immortal divine beings is that there’s comfort and solace in…
➥Read moreAcknowledge then correct; skip the judgment
April 03, 2017I had wanted to write something smart tonight. The topic was all picked out, I had researched it, and I’d even thought of an anecdote about…
➥Read moreDrowning out thoughts
April 02, 2017“An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing.” — Julia Cameron A few months back, I was talking to a friend who confided that he filled…
➥Read moreCity of Big Shoulders
March 31, 2017Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling…
➥Read moreLooking at the keys to successful (email) communication
March 30, 2017In my first corporate orientation class, I participated in a professional writing seminar lad by Curry Young Consultants. In terms of return…
➥Read moreAlleviating the pressure to be right
March 29, 2017“If they don’t know your dreams, then they can’t shoot ‘em down” - J.Cole Most kids learn to share at an early age. It’s a lesson that…
➥Read moreGraveyard of Good Intentions
March 28, 2017Commitments are easy to accumulate and much harder to extricate from. One of the reasons why I’ve felt this week to be particularly…
➥Read moreMedia diet
March 27, 2017These past few weeks have been a lot for me. I’ve felt overwhelmed and underwhelmed, isolated and crowded, confident and unsure. The roller…
➥Read moreYesterday is not like today
May 07, 2016This morning I woke up for the first time in nearly three years without something that had become a core part of my identity. Yesterday, I…
➥Read moreSneezes, meetings, and Kitty Genovese
February 21, 2016The room was quiet and the music soothing. After 50 minutes of flowing from pose to pose in a room approaching 95°F, the class collectively…
➥Read moreLearning to "GTD"
February 14, 2016I have a friend who likes to say that people complain all the time about not having enough time to do what they find important, but when he…
➥Read moreBrief thoughts on reading and note taking
February 10, 2016Coming into 2015, I promised myself that I would read more than I did the year before. I was achieved this goal, but I finished was no where…
➥Read moreYesterday's Coffee - tastes like you made it today!
December 11, 2015“For the rest of our lives, we will always be one pot of coffee ahead.” “Until that day when I make a pot of coffee that neither of us will…
➥Read moreBlue Origin's historic rocket landing
November 24, 2015Because who doesn’t want to go to space? Also, props to the creative team who had the video chopped and edited in 24 hours to take us all…
➥Read moreWho Would Buy A Car Programmed To Sacrifice The Owner?
November 02, 2015“Who would buy a car programmed to sacrifice the owner?” 1 What I love about this question is that it gets at two conflicting priorities…
➥Read moreReaction: The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
October 02, 2015Graham Allison’s article “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China headed for War?” published in this month’s Atlantic reviews the rise…
➥Read moreReaction: When Housing Prices Rise, So Do Retail Prices
September 27, 2015The left panel of Figure 1 shows that retail-price inflation was highest in locations with high housing price growth during the housing boom…
➥Read moreMusings in the beer aisle
August 13, 2015Preamble I love beer. Thanks in part to a stint in Prague and living with a beer nerd for a year, it’s a real treat to stand in front of a…
➥Read moreShirt patterns and memory
August 09, 2015via The Old Design Shop Yesterday, I sat down at my friend Grant’s desk to catch up a bit. He commented on my shirt and said something to…
➥Read moreShould education be subsidized?
July 19, 2015Beyond my health, education is probably the single greatest gift I have ever received. I am eternally grateful to my parents, my teachers…
➥Read moreStarting with a question
July 18, 2015This site starts with a question. It’s a question about purpose, about direction, and about value - “Is this worth reading? Is it useful or…
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Thanks for reading! My name's Stephen Weiss. I live in Chicago with my wife, Kate, and dog, Finn.
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