Patrick Bacon on Atomic Spin

Importing with Absolute Paths using webpack in JavaScript/TypeScript

How to use absolute paths in JavaScript and TypeScript to improve your import statements, using the right webpack configuration.

Developer Tools

Running the Current Test File in VS Code

How to configure Visual Studio Code to run an external shell command passing the current file as an argument. Great for running tests!

TypeScript

DateStr – A Strongly-Typed Date String for TypeScript

Introducing DateStr, a strongly-typed string representation of a date in TypeScript, built using type guards and a nominal typing technique.

Developer Tools

Running Tests from MacVim in iTerm2 Version 3

An update to an AppleScript script that can be triggered from MacVim to find a specific iTerm2 tab for running focused tests.

Ruby on Rails

Code Generation for Rails Utility Scripts

Using code generation for your Rails utility scripts (like importing demo data into production) that can then be executed remotely (no need to deploy).

Ruby on Rails

Run a Local Rails Script on Heroku

One-liners can be piped into the heroku run console command—what about longer scripts you write locally and want to execute in a remote Heroku environment?

Developer Tools

Monitoring Stdout with a Timeout

An example of using expect's timeout feature to wait for specific stdout output coming from a background process.

Web Apps

Chaining HTTP Requests in Elm – An Example

To help the next developer who wants to chain HTTP requests together in Elm, I'm going to walk through an example in this post.

Development Practices

Capability Feature Flags for Backward Compatibility

Use "feature flags" to improve code that needs to maintain backward compatibility with an external API, device, OS, or hardware version.

Development Practices

New to Pairing? Speak Up!

When you're new to a project and new to pair programming, you might think it's best to stay quiet and learn as much as you can. You're wrong—speak up!

DevOps & System Admin.

How (and Why) to Log Your Entire Bash History

An easy bit of Bash configuration that will log your bash history to dated log files so you can refer back to them at any point in the future.

Android Development

Espresso – Testing RecyclerViews at Specific Positions

Tips and tools for writing comprehensive Espresso tests for an interface that uses a RecyclerView on Android.

Patrick Bacon

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