Project-Specific Command Line Shortcuts with direnv

Most projects that last more than a few weeks accumulate some form or another of automation. Some carefully craft jobs in a package.json file and run them with yarn automation. Some stuff their Makefiles full of .PHONY targets and run them with make my-automation-better. Still others fill up a directory with Bash scripts and run […]

Git Merging vs. Rebasing: The Beginner’s Guide

Let’s say you’re creating a feature branch off a master for a new feature you are about to implement. You finish up your work on the feature branch while one of your colleagues is making some changes on the master branch. Before creating a pull request, you might want to make sure you have the most […]

Avoid Git Peril with –force-with-lease

It is no secret that git push --force is dangerous. Without question, it will replace the remote with your local changes—and it won’t stop to check if that will override any changes pushed up to remote in the process. When working in a shared repository, this spells danger for even the most careful developer team.

Interactively Pipe Commands Together with the Ultimate Plumber

Recently, I discovered a new tool that quickly became an integral part of my daily development workflow. It’s called up – the Ultimate Plumber. It allows for interactive chaining of pipe outputs. This is a good choice for anyone who frequently pipes the output of awk, sed, grep, and other command line utilities together.

My Three Note-Taking App Criteria – and Why Boostnote Meets Them All

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 […]

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.

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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