April 28, 2022

Am I Too Old to Become a Programmer?

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese proverb

I mentor adults who are learning to program after serving in the military. Some are in their late twenties, and some are twice that age. A common concern is that they are too old to be changing careers to programming.

April 25, 2022

It's Harder to Read Code Than Write It

In Things You Should Never Do, Part I, Joel Spolsky narrates Netscape’s ruinous decision to rewrite their browser from scratch. This introduced the following concept to me: “It’s harder to read code than to write it.” I believe this is true. Today I’d like to explain why.

April 19, 2022

The Problems With Code Screenshots

A common anti-pattern on sites where code is discussed, such as Slack, Stack Overflow, GitHub Issues, etc., is to post a screenshot of code when asking for help. This technique has many problems, and there’s almost always a better alternative.

April 16, 2022

Hash Fetch Instead of If/Else

Conditional logic has its place, but often there’s a better alternative. Today, we’ll look at a Ruby solution: a hash with .fetch.

April 13, 2022

First Get It Working, Then Make it Look Good

I recently completed a winter survival course where we built shelters in just ten minutes with only the contents of our packs. The pack I brought was nearly empty, so I made a tent out of my parka. It was ugly, but it could have saved my life. How does this apply to software? When building a feature, first get it working, then make it look good.

April 12, 2022

My psql Config

RC files, thought to stand for “run command” files, are read by a program during startup. The file that configures the PostgreSQL REPL psql is called .psqlrc. In this post I’ll share my personal psql configuration.

April 6, 2022

Solved! How to Exit Vim "Ex" Mode

How does one exit Vim “Ex” mode? But first… how did you even get into “Ex” mode?

April 5, 2022

How to Read a Stack Trace

A stumbling block for many people when debugging is reading the stack trace. Today I’d like to discuss this important skill.

April 2, 2022

RSpec.describe vs. describe: Which Should I Use?

Ruby’s RSpec describe block has two common syntaxes. Which should you use?

April 1, 2022

Your Demo Doesn't Need Auth

When building a demo application, I believe you can often skip authentication.