Simple React Patterns
This excellent post by Lucas Reis introduces various patterns for writing React components.
Tilo
How to format JavaScript automatically with Prettier and Git
How to integrate Prettier and Git to have your JavaScript automatically formatted before every commit.
Getting started with NodeJS and Kafka
In this tutorial, I’ll talk about how I set up Kafka to provide website analytics and event tracking for a web application. For my use case, I wanted to store and process raw event data in real-time. With Google Analytics, you can’t do that. Enter Kafka.
Preparing for the Himalayas
In 6 days, I leave on a 15-day trek through the Himalayas. In this article, I thought I’d write up some of the preparation that we have had to do for this trip.
A simple way to render React on the server
Update (Mar.29, 2018): I now recommend using NextJS to build server-rendered React applications. Read more about it here. This tutorial will explain the simplest way I have found to server render React components, fetch data, and share component state and props between server and client. You don’t need anything complicated. It’s actually very easy and […]
Travels through Japan
A collection of photos from my trip to Japan with friends.
JavaScript Testing: From 0 to 80% Code Coverage
This is how fast your coverage numbers will go up. I was recently working on an application at work which was stable but had no automated test coverage. As it got bigger, I grew more worried about the fact that I couldn’t keep the entire code base in my head anymore. As an app gets […]
How do Express.js Sessions work?
Every web application in the world that maintains user data has to deal with sessions. As developers, we need to know what they are and how to use them. This post explains how sessions work in Express.
3 Dangerous Factors Fueling Toronto’s Crazy Hot Real Estate Market
Home prices in Toronto have tripled in the last 15 years. I looked into some data and try to explain what I think is happening in the Toronto housing market.
The JavaScript Engineer Skill Tree
If you took all the skills that a intermediate to senior JavaScript Full Stack Engineer required to be productive and successful and mapped them out, what would it look like? In my opinion, it would look like the Skill Tree below. It looks pretty intimidating, doesn’t it? Some of those branches can be entire professions (like Testing, […]
Apple’s New Campus
A quote from Wired’s article on the Apple “Spaceship” Campus stood out to me: At one point, Behling recalls, Jobs discussed the walls he had in mind for the offices: “He knew exactly what timber he wanted, but not just ‘I like oak’ or ‘I like maple.’ He knew it had to be quarter-cut. It […]
Six best practices when building REST APIs
Six quick tips which will help you build more maintainable CRUD-based APIs.
How to build and deploy static websites using Metalsmith
How to use Metalsmith.io to build simple static websites in NodeJS
13 best practices to secure your NodeJS web application
Everyone agrees that web application security is very important but few take it seriously. Here’s a 13-step security checklist that you should follow before deploying your next web application.
How to send emails in Sails & Bedrock
If you have used Bedrock, you have probably set up user authentication for your web application. If you haven’t, check out how to do that in this post. However, you may have seen that the Reset Password flow is broken. What’s up with that, you wonder? Well, first let’s take a look at what the […]