Software

A collection of 16 articles

  • #brain dump
  • #identity

Distributed System IDs

Somtimes it feels like everything is harder with a distributed system. This article looks at identifiers and how even your IDs might need some special design consideration for a distributed …

  • #brain dump
  • #development

Brute Force Development

Some tasks are laborious. With this article, I describe my attitude that I will apply on occasion to handle these tasks.

  • #brain dump
  • #systems

Huge Software Systems

How can you work with a huge software system? Wrangling a large software systems carries significant challenges. This article looks at some of the areas to consider.

  • #brain dump
  • #documentation

Finding Your Audience for Technical Docs

Picking the right audience for technical documentation requires you to think through what you want to communicate. This brain dump includes how I think about audiences.

  • #brain dump
  • #authz

Authz dilemmas

Why is authorization so hard? It’s hard from the start and doesn’t get easier as a software system grows.

  • #Hugo
  • #static site generators
  • #handroll

A tale of two site generators

I switched my website from a custom made tool, handroll, to a very popular static site generator, Hugo. Why would someone switch from something tailor-made to a different tool? I explore …

  • #Netlify
  • #HTTPS
  • #web apps

HTTPS made simple with Netlify

Serving webpages securely with HTTPS offers numerous benefits. This post explores those benefits and shows how to set up HTTPS in no time using Netlify.

  • #CSS
  • #Semantic UI
  • #Ember

Semantic UI in Ember

Semantic UI is a popular styling framework for websites. I integrated Semantic UI in my Ember app and had an interesting experience with the process. I explain a bit of what I learned from …

  • #Open Graph
  • #Facebook
  • #Twitter

Open Graph, Twitter cards, and plugins... Oh My!

Social media is a huge part of how people share news with each other on the internet. This post looks into how to make your content appear richer on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

  • #Design

The necessity of software abstraction

Software abstraction is vital to managing a large application. My aim is this post is to combat the belief that a developer must understand all the details of the abstractions that they work …

  • #JavaScript
  • #Brunch

Using Brunch for JavaScript work

Brunch is an excellent tool for producing JavaScript. It requires little learning to become productive and feels right. This post will introduce you to Brunch and equip you to get started.

  • #tools
  • #dotfiles

dotfiles: Hone your software tools

Carpenters, painters, illustrators, and many other craftspeople collect tools over the years as their experience and skills grow. These tools help produce better work. Similarly, developers …

  • #shell
  • #Oh My Zsh
  • #Zsh

Oh, my shell? Oh My Zsh

If you spend a lot of time on a Linux or Mac terminal, you may be familiar with bash, the shell program that your terminal uses by default. In this post, we will look at Zsh, an alternative …

  • #JavaScript
  • #PhantomJS

Inject JavaScript with PhantomJS to inspect websites

What if you could interact with the JavaScript of another website by adding your code to the page? PhantomJS, a “headless” web browser, has the ability to do exactly that. In …

  • #TAP
  • #testing

When you're feeling all TAPped out

An explanation of the Test Anything Protocol (TAP)

  • #Perl

Into the rabbit hole

Want to learn some interesting stuff? Read the Perl documentation.