Brian Vanderwal on Atomic Spin

Don’t Repeat Yourself, but Sometimes Repeat Yourself

Repetition in itself is not the enemy that the DRY principle makes it out to be. Removing false duplication can create more problems than it solves.

Functional Programming

Thinking Declaratively in an Imperative World

How can you take advantage of functional programming if you're not using a strictly functional language or toolset? Think declaratively, not imperatively.

Web Apps

Add F# to Your Web App with Fable

With Fable, you can add F# code to your new or existing web application. Fable compiles to JavaScript, so it runs directly in the browser.

Web Apps

Taking Advantage of the (Few) Good Parts of CSS

Utilizing only the good parts of CSS feels like I'm throwing out 90% of it. But if it means I can spend less time debugging, I'll do it gladly.

Web Apps

JavaScript-free Web Development with WebAssembly, Bolero, and F#

WebAssembly and frameworks like Bolero promise to open the Web to languages beyond JavaScript. Bolero enables F# development from front to back.

Developer Tools

Four Ways to Keep Junk Out of Git

Source control is great, but you don’t want it to keep track of everything. Passwords, temporary changes, and desperate debugging edits are best kept out.

Development Practices

What Does Validation Actually Mean?

The term "validation" is often used as a catch-all for several activities – 4 things that are really just different components of validation.

Development Practices

Commit Messages – the Easiest Documentation You’ll Ever Write

Historical context for a codebase gets lost over time, and documentation gets outdated. Solve both problems by writing bits of documentation as you go.

Development Practices

A Case Against Dependencies

It can be very tempting to pull in a 3rd-party package to add functionality to your app. But there are hidden costs you should weigh first.

Development Practices

Special Cases Ruin Everything! (Here Are 3 Ways to Avoid Them)

An average person can keep about 7 units of information in short-term memory, and every special case takes up at least one of those spots.

iOS / OS X

UI Unit Testing in Your iOS Project

When it comes to automated testing, UI tests tend to be difficult to write, take a long time to run, and are prone to flakiness. So I recently explored the feasibility of isolating

Web Apps

Azure Functions in F# (For Real)

Maybe someday Visual Studio will include support for Azure Functions in F#, but for now it’s possible to get there by adapting the C# Azure Function template.

Brian Vanderwal

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