Read this here: https://dev.to/ben/an-impromptu-nyc-meetup--putting-our-heads-and-hearts-together 😝

We usually talk about refactoring code with the same kind of pedantic approach we do with all other kinds of software writing. We come up with recipes to abstract, break apart, and clarify. We fold these techniques together into larger ideas and catchier names like the Mikado method, the Big Bang approach, divide and conquer, or strangulation. OK, maybe not all of them are catchy. Click here to read the whole article

No, you will not be able to scale your CSS without pain. Your attempts to circumvent its shortcomings through transpilation, inlining, strict conventions, etc. will help, but you are not on a path to being free from the ache. You are just on a path. Your attempts to add rich…

The reports of jQuery’s death are greatly exaggerated. jQuery, which reacently announced its first 3.0 release candidate, has been an important tool for web development since its inception. The library provides a rock solid API for interacting with the DOM and other critical browser functions while hiding ugly syntax and awful browser quirks. For all that jQuery has offered the web, it still gets a bad reputation. It seems to me that people have been calling for its demise for some time, to be replaced with “modern” paradigms like React or Ember or Vue or Angular or your own crappy framework. These frameworks are great, but I believe they do not “replace” jQuery at all. They compliment jQuery and have fundamentally different use cases.

Throughout my career as a software engineer, many people have told me that learning to write code is difficult. I challenge this claim. The real difficulty is that people are often taught computer science before they are taught to actually write code. By computer science, I mean fundamental concepts such…

GitHub has had a profound effect on software, and therefore the world. Everyone knows the company that has raised a lot of money with the impetus to grow. This fact deserves more attention than it gets. …

If only Medium weren’t a bloated mess, but I digress. Read the full article here.

Programmers are lazy. Or not. Programmers are sometimes lauded for “laziness”, in reference to a personality trait that leads them to automate a task rather than doing repetitive work. This tale has truth, but is sort of a tongue-in-cheek idea. The personality traits that actually lead to success, while hard to pin down, are certainly not laziness. Traits I think of include creativity, meticulousness, ability to get along with others, and lots of other the habits they give you stars for in elementary school…