TIL

I’ve written about Kapeli Dash before: it’s a Mac program that lets you download sets of documentation to your computer. This week I discovered a killer use case: pair-programming. Recently I was pairing in a domain I didn’t know well. Before the session, I loaded Dash with every docset I thought I might need. So, for Python, think: Python, Django, and SaltStack, plus React and TailwindCSS for the frontend. When we needed docs, we could effortlessly explore these resources without Googling. Opening a browser while a pairing can be distracting (Banner ads! AI summary!), it can expose your personal information, and is a bit more clumsy when you know what you need. I can find React’s useMemo docs by typing useMemo into Dash and hitting enter— that’s it. There’s no path to that resource online that’s as direct as that. ...

When consuming educational materials, I often want to watch faster than the player permits. 2x seems to be an upper limit on many platforms, and that makes sense; 2x can be pretty fast. For material that’s review, I want to go even faster, like 2.5x. Here’s how I bypass this artificial constraint: open developer tools and ensure that the video HTML entity is in scope. You might have to scroll down to it, or highlight it with the element selector. Then, type this into the developer tools console: ...

This week I had a fascinating conversation about disabling paste into a text input. You might see this UX pattern when a form requires a user to type “confirm” before taking an action. I believe it’s a UX anti-pattern. It breaks an expected behavior of a web form without an obvious benefit. What I learned is that even if it were good practice, you can’t reliably enforce manual typing anyway. ...

Running tests in a watch mode encourages test-first thinking and creates a virtuous cycle. Here’s the command to run a Gradle Wrapper (Java) test suite in watch mode: ./gradlew test --continuous Gradle calls this a “continuous build.” It runs when tests or files under test change. Continuous Builds – Gradle Docs

Today I uncovered a nice hack for building a product demo. I had a bunch of Cleanshot screenshots I wanted to present in a Keynote slideshow. If you select all your screenshots and drop them into the left-hand slide navbar on Mac Keynote, each one becomes its own slide in the deck. This let me create a polished presentation in about five total minutes of work, including collecting the screenshots.

I enjoy the etymology of technology words. Understanding it can be a handle into using the tool well. One example: sudo. sudo comes from “Superuser do”, allowing you to run a program with the security privileges of another user, usually the root superuser. Here’s an example from a terminal near you: $ <dangerous-command> dangerous-command: NOT super-user $ sudo <dangerous-command> Doing a dangerous thing... This is why programmers say “su DO” (pronouncing “do” like “do”) rather than the softer “sudo”. They aren’t (just) being pedantic; it’s the more correct way to pronounce the word. ...

When I reconfigure my Zsh terminal, I want to see the changes immediately. A good way to do that on Mac is: exec zsh This uses the Zshbuiltin exec command to replace my login shell (Zsh) with another login shell (Zsh). Sourcing the Zsh config (source ~/.zshrc) is less reliable, as things like custom functions you’ve removed tend to stick around. Check out zshbuiltin for more.

I have a project with many Node scripts in package.json. One way to inspect them without ever opening that file (in a nice formatted) is npm run. It gives an output like this: $ npm run Scripts available in exercism@1.0.0 via `npm run`: download:js sh -c 'exercism download --track=javascript --exercise="$1"' -- format-check:js prettier --check javascript/ lint:js oxlint javascript/ test-all:js NODE_OPTIONS=--experimental-vm-modules npx jest javascript validate npm run format-check:js && npm run lint:js && npm run test-all:js Try npm run in a JavaScript project to see it in action.

Today I typed node -e <string> to see what happened. Answer: it evaluated my string argument. Here’s an example; printing the milliseconds since epoch without leaving the shell: > node -e "console.log(Date.now())" 1792427691395 Scripts that being with the minus symbol (-) are ambiguous, so you must add the -p / --print flag. > node --eval="-42" --print -42 See man node for more.

I love learning something new that’s core to the JavaScript language syntax! A code exercise I completed today did just that. Via this comma, items is returned. const removeItemAtBottom = (items) => (items.shift(), items); const cards = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; removeItemAtBottom(cards); // [ 2, 3, 4, 5 ] This helps us around the fact that shift() returns the removed item, 1, rather than the list of items that we modified. It works outside a function as well: ...