When it comes to my choice of editor, I find that I’m a nomad. I’m always switching around based on the needs of my current project and the editor I’m using. If I squint hard enough, VSCode starts to look like Emacs. Over time, I’ve found a few editor features I can’t live without. Read more on Six Editor Features You Shouldn’t Live Without…
Author: Chris Farber
12 Emacs Keybindings Worth Learning
After spending a bit of time learning Emacs, I’ve found it has a widespread compatibility with a lot of the basic movement and editing commands. Spending a bit of time learning these commands can make you more effective in a variety of places, even if you don’t use Emacs as your preferred editor. Read more on 12 Emacs Keybindings Worth Learning…
Save Side Effects for Last
Over time, I’ve noticed a design heuristic that has helped me immensely over innumerable projects. It’s actually quite simple: You can think of it as saving your side effects for last. Read more on Save Side Effects for Last…
Easily Reloading your Clojure Project in Spacemacs
I’ve long been a fan of Stuart Sierra’s reloaded workflow. When I’m working on a ClojureScript project that doesn’t use Figwheel or another tool to assist with live code reloading, this is the pattern I reach for to help manage iterative and interactive development. Read more on Easily Reloading your Clojure Project in Spacemacs…
Exporting Application Data for Business Users? Use XLSX, Not CSV
Having written my fair share of application data exports and imports, using CSV for tabular data has usually appeared to be an obvious choice. But lately, I’ve changed my mind on this. I’d argue you should write XLSX instead. Read more on Exporting Application Data for Business Users? Use XLSX, Not CSV…
What is Point-Free Notation & When Does it Make Code More Readable?
Like most fancy-sounding development terms, “point-free notation” actually isn’t that complicated. The “point” refers to the name of an argument for a function. Let’s say you have the following function: Read more on What is Point-Free Notation & When Does it Make Code More Readable?…
Understanding UIAppearance Container Hierarchies
I recently had my first run-in with the UIAppearance infrastructure that has been built into iOS for, admittedly, a long time. Given my experience with CSS, I brought along some assumptions of how appearance(whenContainedInInstancesOf:) would probably work. Naturally, these assumptions were very wrong. Read more on Understanding UIAppearance Container Hierarchies…
(Clojure) Spec-ing Data from JSON
I’ve returned to Clojure after some time using other tools, so I’m late to the party regarding learning and experimenting with Spec. The first order of business was to build some specs for data I’m receiving from an external system in JSON format. Given that it was my first real experience with Spec, and I had no control over the shape of the data I was spec-ing, I was uncertain how to proceed. Read more on (Clojure) Spec-ing Data from JSON…
Control Flow in Ruby Blocks
I recently found myself needing to return early from a block passed into a method in Ruby. Although the way to do this is fairly simple and obvious in hindsight, it seemed to surprise some of my Ruby-enthusiast colleagues. I decided to write this post in the hopes that it’s interesting to others. Read more on Control Flow in Ruby Blocks…
Reflecting on Single-Page Applications
Although I was an early adopter of client-side web applications, it’s hard to fully divorce yourself from all the tradeoffs that go into a system you’ve built when analyzing a single aspect. Recently, I’ve been noticing that some of the websites and services that I rely on in my day-to-day life have been rewritten into SPAs, so I’ve taken the opportunity to step back and reflect on the effects that are visible to end users. Read more on Reflecting on Single-Page Applications…