Patrick Bacon on Atomic Spin

Development

Overcoming Frozen Thinking in Software Development: Practices and Questions for Problem Solving

Frozen thinking can be a problem for senior developers. Let's examine why it's a problem and some practices to overcome it.

JavaScript

How to Use busboy for File Uploads in Express Middleware

Here's an Express middleware function that uses the busboy library to save an uploaded (multipart form) file to a temp file on disk.

Python

How to Compile Python with a Statically Linked OpenSSL on macOS

Statically linking OpenSSL to Python is not officially supported, but there are a couple of ways it can be done.

JavaScript

Configure an Express Application with mTLS and express-ws

Here's an example of how to configure a Node Express app that uses express-ws for WebSocket support with the necessary options for TLS / mTLS.

PostgreSQL

How to Partition Consecutive Rows with PostgreSQL

You can use PostgreSQL's window function capabilities to partition data over a specific number of consecutive rows preceding any given row.

React / Redux

Prevent an Unnecessary Refetch with nextFetchPolicy and Apollo Client

I recently figured out the cause of a strange issue due to a change in how the cache-and-network fetch policy works in Apollo Client 3.

TypeScript

Updated “Branding” for a Strongly-Typed Date String in TypeScript

Due to changes to TypeScript, I've updated my branding strategy so that the DateStr type works properly in newer versions of TypeScript.

Developer Tools

A LaunchAgent for Automatic Proxy Configuration

Start an automatic Proxy Configuration (PAC) HTTP server at startup, using LaunchCtl and miniserve, for proxying a VPN connection on macOS.

Developer Tools

How to Fix a Prisma Library Load Problem with Cypress on macOS

Here's how to fix the "Unable to Load Node-API Library" error that can come up when trying to use Prisma in Cypress tasks on macOS.

Web Apps

Cypress in Docker with VNC

This post describes the dependencies and configuration needed to run X11, a VNC server, and to get Cypress running in a Docker container.

Extracurricular Activities

Self-Hosted PostgreSQL with SSL in Docker

Here I share all the configuration details needed to self-host PostgreSQL running in a Docker container, with a valid SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt.

Platforms & Languages

Foreach Loops and Timeouts in 3 Languages

Documenting the behavior of using setTimeout (or similar) in a foreach loop in three different languages: Squirrel, TypeScript, and C#.

Patrick Bacon

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