Recently, my schedule has become quite busy, with various responsibilities competing for my time and focus. I find myself trying to hold onto as much context about these responsibilities as I can, but I can’t seem to remember all of the necessary information. After some careful reflection, I’ve found that I need to take more notes in both my personal and professional life. Read more on My Three Note-Taking App Criteria – and Why Boostnote Meets Them All…
Development
A Case Against Dependencies
When you need to add a major bit of functionality to your system, what’s the first thing you do? Naturally, you start looking through whatever package repository is appropriate for a solution that fits. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it’s important to think of the trade-offs made by adding external dependencies. Read more on A Case Against Dependencies…
Supplementing Your VPN with Little Snitch
VPNs are great for protecting your security when you’re on a network that you can’t trust completely, such as coffee shop or conference WiFi. However they don’t represent a complete solution by themselves. On macOS, Little Snitch can help you fill the gaps. Read more on Supplementing Your VPN with Little Snitch…
Store Batch Import Metadata to Save Yourself Time Later
Batch data imports are tricky to build. You need to make sure the data is valid, and, most importantly, you need to correctly map that data to your domain. In my experience, that last part is difficult. Read more on Store Batch Import Metadata to Save Yourself Time Later…
Getting Ready to Break Everything (in 5 Easy Steps)
Every project eventually hits a point where a big change needs to be made, and it’s going to break everything. And you’re going to be the one stuck putting it back together.
Whether it’s a language or tool change that causes your application to no longer compile, a third-party SaaS service change that breaks features throughout your app, or just a big refactoring, eventually you’re going to have to bite off more than you can chew. After having been faced with situations like these many times, I’ve developed a coping strategy. Read more on Getting Ready to Break Everything (in 5 Easy Steps)…
Spawn Virtual Browsers Effortlessly with Firefox Containers
You may have heard of Mozilla’s Facebook Container, an add-on for Firefox that keeps Facebook isolated whenever you open it. It’s an easy-to-use and simple tool for defending user privacy.
But you may not have heard much about the Firefox features that make the Facebook Container possible. They’re called Firefox Containers—and they represent a useful tool that sets Firefox apart in a powerful way. Read more on Spawn Virtual Browsers Effortlessly with Firefox Containers…
3 Tips for Dealing with Technical Debt
Technical debt occurs when we knowingly or unknowingly make a decision that will require parts of our system to be reworked later. Maybe we write some messy code in the interest of rapid prototyping and iteration, or maybe we avoid updating a library because it introduces changes that will require a lot of refactoring. We could also simply be unaware of the best way to do do something and learn later that our solution has some negative implications. Read more on 3 Tips for Dealing with Technical Debt…
The Worst Error Message in the World
Some error messages, like C++ template errors, are inscrutable, and some, like the venerable favorite “segmentation fault,” are uselessly vague. But the merely unhelpful messages aren’t the worst. It’s the misleading error messages that take the prize. Read more on The Worst Error Message in the World…
My Git Branching Strategy – Graph Gardening
If you've ever worked on a team with more than a couple of people, you've probably been involved in a discussion about branching strategies. Git-flow, GitHub-flow, Microsoft-flow, and many others all try to minimize disruption and conflict when making changes to a large codebase.
Recently, I've been playing with a new strategy that may help your team avoid time-expensive merge conflicts and maximize commit history readability for easier diagnostics later on. I call it graph gardening. Read more on My Git Branching Strategy – Graph Gardening…
Fake or Mock an API with JSON Server
JSON Server is an easy and quick-to-set-up module that you can use to fake or mock an API. You can find the basics in the documentation, and many articles regurgitate the same info. In this post, though, I intend to cover a few of the more complex things you can do with JSON Server. Read more on Fake or Mock an API with JSON Server…