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Array.prototype.at
8.11.2021
Working with arrays is an essential skill in any programming language, especially JavaScript, as we continue to rely on external data APIs. JavaScript has added methods like find and `findIndex recently, but one syntax I love from languages like Python is retrieving values by negative indexes. When...
Command Line trash
24.10.2021
One of the first commands you learn when experimenting with command line is rm, the utility for deleting files and directories. Deletion is a core computer UI operation but operating systems use a “Trash” paradigm, where files are stored before truly deleted. With the rm utility...
Terminate Process on a Port from Command Line
10.10.2021
Once a week I have to deal with a zombie process or try to start a process that’s already running on its designated port. In most cases I use macOS’s Activity Monitor to kill the process, which is time-consuming. What if we could just kill a process on a given port from command line?...
CSS accent-color
4.10.2021
For better or worse, form fields have been somewhat difficult to style with CSS. Form control display is dependent upon device, operating system, and browser, so you can imagine the difficulty in making styling easy. We have slowly been given some controls over form control display, as evidenced...
How to Create a UUID in JavaScript
30.9.2021
The UUID identifier has been used in programming since the days a baby-faced David Walsh became a professional software engineer. My first exposure to UUIDs was via a ColdFusion app I inherited and … the less we say about that the better. In any event, I was recently surprised to see that...
AggregateError
17.9.2021
One of the big themes of the web these days is concurrency, which leads to accomplishing tasks asynchronously. In doing so, the possibility of multiple errors can occur. Instead of providing a generic error, optimally you’d provide a wealth of error information. TheAggregateError error lets...
Set a Default Node Version with nvm
9.8.2021
As I’ve shown you in the past, nvm an excellent utility for switching between Node.js versions. Whether your host machine or CI, building and testing your apps on different Node versions is a necessity. I’ve recently found a few nvm commands that I found really useful during local...
onInput Event
3.8.2021
Coding HTML forms has been painful my entire career. Form controls look different between operating systems and browsers, coding client side and server side validation is a nightmare, and inevitably you forget something somewhere along the line. Some behaviors don’t act the way you’d...
Dark Mode in One Line of Code!
19.7.2021
Dark mode has seemingly become the desired visual mode for websites and mobile apps alike. Dark mode is easier on the eyes, especially for those like me who like to burn the midnight oil by coding and reading tutorials. Unfortunately not all websites offer dark mode, so it’s up to me...
Fix Seeing “0” in Your JSX Code
9.7.2021
The early days of the web felt like the wild west when it came to coding practices — just make it work. Then we became enlightened to better practices, separating HTML from CSS and JavaScript. Then came React and JSX, where we combine JavaScript, HTML, and even CSS with Styled Components...
How to Upload a File via SSH and Command Line
28.6.2021
My preference for daily work is usually GUI applications, like Visual Studio Code for text editing and Cyberduck for remote file server management. I’m also a huge fan of automation, so I do try to learn the command line equivalents of UI functions. My latest desire was wanting to know how...
Always Show Arrows for Number Input
21.6.2021
While I enjoy small details that make user interfaces more elegant, I also believe that less is more, especially when it comes to native behavior. One native behavior I dislike is that <input type="number" /> elements only show the increment and decrement arrows when the input is focused....
JavaScript Numeric Separators
10.6.2021
Writing good code is important — writing code that’s easily human readable is a next level skill. It’s not often that APIs are introduced whose seemingly only useful function is making code more readable, but let me introduce you to JavaScript numeric separators: an API that lets...
CSS :is
31.5.2021
There are scores of developers who hate CSS; don’t get it, don’t want to get it, etc. Most of that is either down to inefficiencies within the language or misunderstanding of how to properly construct a website structure. I mostly love CSS but there are some parts of the language that...
Prevent Windows from Sleeping
20.5.2021
I have a few processes on my Windows gaming PC that are critical but sometimes get impacted over night as Windows tells my beloved machine to tone it down. My machine has the necessary cooling so I’m happy to let the processes do their work. There is a setting in the UI which allows...
Regular Expression Match Groups
26.4.2021
Regular expressions are incredibly powerful but can be difficult to maintain. They’re a skill you learn on the job and, when the suits walk by, make you look incredibly smart if you have a few up on your screen. How can we solve the maintainability problem? With a match groups, as Addy Osmani...
Object.entries
20.4.2021
Navigating and managing data structures is a really important skill for every level of engineer to have and improve upon. Over the years, the JavaScript language has continued to provide more methods for managing data structures, from Object.keys to Object.values and so on. One of my favorites...
CSS Smooth Scroll
19.4.2021
Improving the user experience of web applications has always been a priority of mine. I always come back to the same though I’ve had for 20 years: “users expect a web app to work — let’s make the app a joy to use.” Over the years we’ve employed JavaScript...
Intl.NumberFormat
13.4.2021
Formatting numbers on the client side is an important task, especially when you consider how much raw API usage is in play these days. What’s also important is ensuring those numbers are meaningful to users, no matter where they are in the world, especially if you’re an eCommerce...
VS Code node:console Fix
23.3.2021
I’ve been using Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code text editor for years with great success. The app has always been stable, flexible, and the best compliment I can give it: an afterthought. Recently, however, every time I added a console.log to a JavaScript file, VS Code would add import...