Changing Unfamiliar Code? First, Seek to Understand

As developers, we rarely, if ever, look back on a completed project with a sense that every aspect of the codebase was as good as we could possibly make it. We’re always battling time and budget constraints, competing priorities, and shifting goals as we work. So why do we ignore this reality when interacting with […]

The Single-Valued Type Pattern for TypeScript

We’ve been using TypeScript heavily over the last few years at Atomic, and a pattern has emerged for how we deal with cases where we want flexible, composable APIs for dealing with statically-known concerns about an application. Our Wish List Whether it’s data repositories, CMS content types, GraphQL queries, or background jobs, situations regularly arise […]

Better TypeScript Types for Redux Saga’s “Call” Effect

One of the challenges of working with Redux Saga in TypeScript is the heavy and unconventional use of generator functions. This feature from JavaScript does some amazing heavy lifting in enabling the library to be as powerful as it is, but it just doesn’t play well with TypeScript’s capabilities. There’s currently no way to even […]

Redux, Modularity, and the Law of Demeter

As a consultant at Atomic, I evaluate or contribute to a lot of codebases. Over the last few years, as Redux and TypeScript have superseded the use of more object-oriented paradigms, I’ve noticed a common issue — tight coupling of all layers of the application state. Redux stores a single reference to an immutable global […]

What World-Famous BBQ Taught Me About Software Development

Franklin Barbecue is one of the best-regarded barbecue spots in the country. A few years back, my wife and I took a trip to Austin, with one goal being to get some of the world-famous smoked meat. Like a lot of best-in-class spots, one doesn’t merely walk in and get some food (I’m looking at […]

Atomic Tech Lead 2020 Learning Interests

Last week, the tech leads in Atomic’s Grand Rapids office got together to share professional development interests and brainstorm opportunities for 2020. Atomic has sponsored employee professional development since its beginning, including an internal conference (“Atomic Con”) and funding for conferences, certifications, classes, reading groups, etc. This year, the Grand Rapids tech leads wanted to […]

How to Contribute to UX Design as a Tech Lead

Tech leads and developers have a vital role to play in the design of software. But with training in the abstract world of programming, many of us lack the vocabulary to provide useful critique on, say, the aesthetics or accessibility of design. Sure, we can share our feedback as people who may use it, but […]

Align Agile Story Execution to Business Value with Strategy Soundbites

Every project falls somewhere on a spectrum between extremes of short-term, get-it-done-ism and eternal, future-proofed longevity. Unfortunately, while you may have a ballpark sense for where a project fits on this spectrum at the outset, each user story needs its own consideration. Working out the right tradeoffs for each of these stories is the project.

React Hook for Query String State Management

On a current project, we wanted to hoist page state out of a useReducer hook into a query string of the URL. We saw this as a continual need for the project going forward, so we wanted a convenient way to build new pages that stored their state in the URL’s query string. To do […]

Testing Strategies in the Atomic TypeScript Stack

For the last few years, we’ve been using a universal TypeScript platform including TypeScript, GraphQL, React, and Express. Having TypeScript on both the client and the server (including command-line utilities and background worker processes) has transformed how we go about ensuring the quality of the software we build. When compared to other stacks we’ve used, […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Drew Colthorp

Author: Drew Colthorp