Posts by Year

2024

The Big Miss: Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

8 minute read

Today was one of those days when I question my life choices. Watch me dig my way out of a hole with the same shovel I used to dig my way in.

Composition in Action: Finishing the Swing

9 minute read

In software engineering, what look to be the easy parts often turn out to be the hard parts. If you’re lucky, the reverse is also true, but don’t count on it.

Unifying Web Presence with GitHub Pages

4 minute read

Eliminate content collisions with your primary GitHub Pages domain & unify all your GitHub project documentation pages under a single subdomain.

Code Complete: A Day in the Life of a Product

8 minute read

We’re all professionals here, right? And we all know there’s often quite a gap between what gets posted to social media and the reality on the ground.

Generic Abstractions

14 minute read

Modern software development works just like any other Hero’s Journey: you’ve got to hoof it some ways down the road before you can see very far into the dist...

Radash: The New Lodash

4 minute read

If you use Typescript and are still using Lodash: stop. It’s time for a change Give Radash a try!

Idea Discovery on GitHub

4 minute read

Coming up with ideas is easy. Deciding which ones to execute on is HARD. Here’s a kitchen-sink approach using engagement as a metric of market potential.

Some Words on LinkedIn

3 minute read

Squaring the impossible circle: Where should your content actually live?

mock-db

1 minute read

Mock DynamoDB-style query & scan behavior with local JSON data. Or learn to play the guitar, if you think pretty girls REALLY like that kind of thing.

AI-Generated Social Media Previews

1 minute read

I’ve generally been underwhelmed by ChatGPT and the like. Fun toy: not much practical use, so far. But this is an exception!

TSDoc + TypeDoc

1 minute read

Mastering the obvious, one lexical standard at a time.

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2023

Karmic Rule Five

less than 1 minute read

generic logic + custom config ≫ custom logic – Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code

Lodash + Next.js 13 = smh

1 minute read

Some old carelessness in Lodash plus a stern new outlook in Next.js 13 creates trouble on Edge networks.

Karmic Rule Four

less than 1 minute read

A work in progress is the best kind. – Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code

dot-code for Windows

1 minute read

An AutoHotKey script that launches VS Code with the open folder or selected files in File Explorer when you type Alt-Win-.

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2022

Next.js Template

21 minute read

A sweet Next.js project template. Integrates Redux Toolkit with with test support for Mocha + Chai + React Testing Library and release publishing via release...

AWS API Template

25 minute read

Config-driven AWS API ES6 template integrating federated Cognito User Pool authentication and a robust approach to release management.

Karmic Rule Three

less than 1 minute read

If you want to get a complex process right, template it. – Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code

React Component NPM Package Template

7 minute read

An ES6 React component NPM package project template featuring front & back end test support, automated API docs, release management & more!

NPM Package Template

16 minute read

An ES6 NPM package project template featuring a CLI, test support, automated API docs, release management & more!

How to Run an Event That Doesn’t Suck

16 minute read

Distilling 18 months of experience with 80+ online events, involving thousands of attendees, down into a letter to a friend.

Karmic Rule Two

less than 1 minute read

Nothing raises issues like contact with reality. – Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code

Vercel Preview Branch Weirdness

3 minute read

An accidental hosting environment dependency revealed an irritating bug in Vercel’s preview deployment logic.

Karmic Rule One

less than 1 minute read

Troubleshooting works just like the regular kind: you won’t hit your target if you don’t have one. – Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code

Unexpected Mutations

3 minute read

An unexpected (and probably unintended) function parameter mutation inside the web3.js library had me questioning my sanity for a couple of hours.

Karmic Rule Zero

less than 1 minute read

Minimize external dependencies and try not to use shitty libraries. – Karmic Rules for Writing Pretty Good Code

Testing Redux in NextJS

7 minute read

If you’re testing ES6 code referencing Redux in a transpiled build environment, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by putting your tests into JSX files.

Why Intent Trumps Action

2 minute read

Intent matters more than even massive action, because in the long term it is more effective at actually getting the job done.

Hello (Again) World!

2 minute read

You spend years of perfectly good writing time building gilded prisons for your words. If only there were a simple, beautiful way to write PORTABLE words.

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