DNS, or Domain Name System is the method by which a computer identifies a website without being told its direct IP address.

For Boomers, DNS is the rolodex of the Internet. For Millennials, DNS is the phonebook of the Internet, and for Zoomers, DNS is the Contacts app of the Internet.

DNS serves as the intermediary between users and websites.

When you send an HTTP request (aka, when you enter a URL into your browser), your computer (the client) sends a request to a DNS server (usually the one provided by your Internet Service Provider).

If this is the first time you are searching this website, the DNS server will perform a recursive query to find the IP address of the website you’re looking up. This means it will query several other DNS servers, beginning at the top-level servers, until it finds the address you are looking for. …

As I’ve been navigating my way through the job search process, I find that while I feel very confident on my coding skills for technical interviews, I struggle with the more word-y, conceptual questions. This feels like a common problem amongst self-taught programmers and bootcamp grads. While we produce excellent code, the background someone would get from a traditional CS degree isn’t there, making us less focused on the abstract

What is React?

React is an open-source Javascript library developed by Facebook. What makes React different from other frameworks is that it uses reusable components and declarative code for efficient front-end rendering.

How does React work under the hood?

React uses reusable components, server-side rendering, and a virtual DOM to optimize and enhance performance. …

I spend a lot of my time writing code for things like video game mods, Photoshop, and website APIs that non-programmers are likely to use. So I often find myself expressing hesitation before I’m ready to deploy scripts and bots until my documentation is solid enough that anyone reading could understand it.

Really go step-by-step

Go into the minute details of how to run your program, and consider every mouse click you make to be an integral step. I often record myself going through how to run a program and then rewatch as I write my directions down, so I don’t miss anything. …

Making a Photoshop script has been one of my biggest programming challenges, mostly because of the limited script documentation available, and because Adobe recently restricted access to old forum posts, making a lot of script questions only accessible through Google cache (if I was even lucky enough to find a cached page).

In my spare time, I like to make gifs for websites like Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, and GIPHY. I started making gifs because I found myself too often wanting a specific reaction gif for a punchline, but not being able to find the GIF anywhere. Gifs are fun to make, but they also take a really long time. …

CSS gives you several different options when it comes to styling your elements. You can choose to universally style a tag by applying styling directly to the tag name, or you can use either a class name, or id name, to apply styling to select elements.

When you declare your styling, a tag name needs no leading symbol, while a class will use a period . and an id will use a hash #.

Conceptually, you want to build classes to be reused. For instance, if you have several header-like elements throughout your website that are all meant to look similar, but have differences among them, you can create a basic“header” class and apply individual styling to each component using the style property, or using an id. You can also apply several classes to one element, simply by separating the class names with spaces, like class="header about" for a header on an ‘about me’ page. …

Anyone who’s had the pleasure of working with me to debug their code is probably now familiar with the phrase “tests are free.” It’s one of my favorite programming platitudes, because of its truthy-ness.

Constantly running tests and debugging your code is the best way to get it to work. Sure, that seems simple enough, but with so many ways to debug, how can a programmer chose what to use?

Let’s quickly go over two tools you can use for debugging your JavaScript code. For the purposes of this guide, I’m assuming you’re either using Chrome or a Chromium fork like Brave, but I’m sure you could follow these steps on other browsers by simply running a few tests of your own. …

I’m not one for modern politics. I just don’t have enough energy to follow all of the nonsense that appears in the news every day. However, I love fictional politics. If I was waking up from a coma and the doctor asked me who the president was, there’s about a 90% chance I’d answer “Jed Bartlet.” And even with my distaste for today’s political climate, I’m still a huge history buff.

Last week, a friend sent me this listicle that claims to be about the “2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates’ Comfort Food.” This is one of the strangest articles I’ve ever read. …

I’m a firm supporter of Google’s former blob emoji, and that is one stance I will never compromise on. Heretics may still decry their odd melting shape (speaking ill of the dead no less) but I will support my blob brethren until the end of days.

I’m such a blob fanatic that I decided I wanted to replace the vanilla emoji on my Macbook with the iconic blobs. After a careful internet search, I stumbled upon some very bad news. 🥺