John Ruble on Atomic Spin

The Software Life

Preview Environments with Neon’s Database Branching

Neon DB solves problems with database branching. A fresh database instance is provisioned, based on the latest state of its parent database.

Development Practices

If your web app uses a Postgres database, you're already most of the way to live updates in the browser. Here's how to use LISTEN/NOTIFY.

Azure

Are you looking for a quick cron job on Azure? If your recurring task can be expressed as a one-liner, here's an easy way to run it in Azure.

Extracurricular Activities

After avoiding it for a decade or so, I’m finally dipping my toes into home automation. So, what's changed, and why now?

JavaScript

My software team recently applied the prune command and other techniques to great effect, reducing the Docker image size by half.

TypeScript

On a recent project, my team created a lightweight code generator, with reusable techniques I want to share. Read on for the why and the how.

TypeScript

I recently found myself wanting a two-dimensional switch statement in TypeScript. Here's one way to write one!

TypeScript

One-off CLI scripts that share code with the application are valuable. Here's my favorite way to run them in a Node.js TypeScript project.

Developer Tools

It can be hazardous to combine Contentful with server-side rendering (SSR). My first tip: watch out for cycles!

Developer Tools

My team recently stood up a GraphQL API endpoint with a server called Yoga, and I was pleased with how easy it was to get going.

Developer Tools

I have been using Skitch for marking up screenshots, but recently at the suggestion of a co-worker, I switched to a new tool: Shottr.