Changelog.com - 📚 Laws for hackers to live by

I thought it’d be cool to get mix test and mix format running on pushes to the changelog.com repo, so I gave GitHub Actions the old college try. After (not too much) futzing around on my own, I figured I’d have more success by getting an expert to help out. Good call be me! 😆

In this ~1 hour jam session, we go from zero to a successful Actions workflow. I learned a lot along the way, and you might too by joining us on the journey. Thanks, Jonathan!

So you are building a client-side web app for that next big project and wondering: “Which router should I use?”. Here is the thing: you don’t need any, and you will understand why shortly.

Intriguing!

What does this have to do with coding, you ask? Ambient music, IMHO, is the best music to code to. I’ve been enjoying this list ever since it hit my radar the other day, so I thought I’d pass it along.

Hyperapp claims to be twice as fast as React, weighs in at 1.8KB, and renders interactively in ~10ms.

Hyperapp is a modern VDOM engine, state management solution, and application design pattern all-in-one. once you learn to use it, there’ll be no end to what you can do.

Filed under: zero-minutes-since-last-frontend-framework

Erik Dietrich:

I believe that there is a unique group dynamic that forms and causes the rot of software groups in a way that can’t be explained by bad external decisions causing the talented developers to evaporate … In this post, I’m going to set the stage by describing how individuals opt into permanent mediocrity and reap rewards for doing so.

A must-read piece for anyone in danger of getting stuck in the “Expert Beginner” loop.

… during these years, the software developers are job-hopping and earning promotions, especially these days. As they breeze through rapid acquisition, so too do they breeze through titles like Software Engineer I and II and then maybe “Associate” and “Senior,” and perhaps eventually on up to “Lead” and “Architect” and “Principal.” So while in the throes of Dunning-Kruger and Advanced Beginnerism, they’re being given expert-sounding titles and told that they’re “rock stars” and “ninjas” and whatever by recruiters–especially in today’s economy. The only thing stopping them from taking the natural step into the Expert Beginner stage is a combination of peer review and interaction with the development community at large.

Monical Powell has a great rundown of GitHub’s new profile readme feature. She lays out how to set up yours and then lists a bunch of creative ways our fellow devs are using theirs. Video games, GitHub Actions, and Spotify playlists abound.

OK so maybe you don’t use a standing desk… like I do. OR maybe you do, but you don’t use the IKEA Bekant desk in particular… like I do. STILL you can appreciate how hacker it is that someone built their own drop-in controller to add memory positions to the Bekant… right?

I wanted to have memory positions for easily switching between various work positions. I also didn’t want to be limited to just 2 positions. However, as I went through the process, I realized the hardest part was designing the enclosure. 3D Printing is a great option, but lacks that professional look, and limits the availability to those with printers. Additionally, getting custom membrane buttons that would look good was also extremely expensive. Simple push-buttons would take away from the look of the desk.

By targeting the factory enclosure, it keeps the original look and robustness, while adding functionality.

See it in action right here.

Jordan Lewis shared his end-to-end setup to run a live coding stream. He covers all the things — OBS configuration, stream alerts, channel setup, chatbot, becoming a Twitch affiliate…

If you’re reading this post, you might be interested in trying your hand at live coding on stream, as a way of sharing your projects in a more relatable, immediate way than a polished blog post, teaching others about programming, or just as a way to have fun. I think that live coding and streams in general are an interesting possible future form of both education and entertainment, and if you’re contemplating starting your own stream, I sincerely hope that you do it.

You’ll need the latest (macOS Big Sur beta and Xcode 12 beta) to get this up and running, but if you’re interested in modern macOS development and SwiftUI, it’s probably worth it so you can poke around the source and see how it all fits together.

Ah, the classic mis-alignment of value to LOCs. How have you responded to this type of question or scenario?

Why did a fix that seems so simple when looking at the changes made take two days to complete?

Because I took the time to investigate the real cause of the issue, not just looking at the symptoms. If some code is throwing an error, you could just wrap it in a try..catch statement and suppress the error. No error, no problem. Right? Sorry, for me, making the problem invisible isn’t the same as fixing it. “Swallowing” an error can easily lead to other unexpected side-effects. I don’t want to have to deal with them at a point in the future.

Some hard-earned advice by Hugo Zapata who (a lot like you and me) has struggled to finish side projects over the years. Not only do they go in-depth with how to get ‘er done, there’s also some good balancing analysis included:

Some abandoned projects end up being an inspiration to create something else years later. Maybe you learned something new, explored an idea, or found a problem not possible to solve with the knowledge and resources you had at the time.

It’s good to have an open mind and be ok with finding dead-ends, they are powerful teachers.

However, shipping projects is awesome and by reducing scope and anticipating interruptions you will be able to complete your project and release it to the world.

I also appreciated Uku Thät’s take on this subject from our recent episode about Plausible Analytics.

This is under heavy development but is available publicly as a ‘pre-alpha’ developer preview. Tsunami itself is a general purpose network security scanner, but it has a plugin system for detecting specific vulnerabilities. The plugins themselves are hosted in their own repo.

Instead of only triggering the default email or phone apps when selecting a mailto or tel link on your website, “mailgo” provides a modal with more options such as “Open in Gmail”, “Open in Outlook”, etc.

This will extra functionality will be less important on mobile now that Apple is letting us change our default clients in iOS 14 (so that the default app would already be set to Gmail, for example), but you may find it helpful for your users anyhow. 4.96 KB cheap.

Here’s what worked for Vlad Mihalcea…

1. I started a blog first. This allows you to practice your writing and build an audience.

2. I self-published my book because publishers only wanted to give me just 10% from the profit. I used Leanpub to write and sell the book while I was still writing it and Teachable to sell it when it was done. Leanpub gives you 80% royalties. Teachable gives you around 95%.

3. …

Check his Twitter thread for the other twelve (12) things he did to make money with his book idea.