Oct 28, 2018Exploring the Strongly Typed GraphThe “Strongly Typed Graph” is something I’ve been thinking about lately. I believe it could significantly improve developer productivity in large, microservice heavy organizations. To be clear, this is still an exploration. An early idea I wanted to throw out there. But before I dive into what it is and…Typescript6 min readTypescript6 min read
Published in Art of Engineering·Feb 28, 2018Commit to CommitCommitment can be terrifying. Broken promises are the surest way down the waterslide of low morale. When someone comes to you with a problem, don’t react immediately. Commit to commit, then follow up quickly. Give a specific date when you’ll get back to them with a commitment. …Leadership2 min readLeadership2 min read
Published in Art of Engineering·Feb 26, 2018An Engineer’s Guide to CommunicationIt’s far too easy to be misunderstood. Trying to get your idea or point across to someone can often feel frustrating and difficult. You’re not wrong for feeling like you, or they, just don’t get it. It’s tempting to believe that maybe you were never meant to be a good…Software Development4 min readSoftware Development4 min read
Published in The Ember Way·Oct 11, 2017Skeleton Screen Loading in Ember.jsSkeleton screen loading (also known as placeholder loading) is a technique that enhances the perception of loading in your application. Typically, the loading state of an application is indicated by some kind of loading spinner or progress bar. Unfortunately, this can sometimes backfire and cause the app to feel slower…JavaScript4 min readJavaScript4 min read
May 30, 2017I Am Still LearningI’m afraid I was afraid when I started college in Australia, 4,000 miles away from home. I spent 3 years in vocational design school, and the thought of going back into academia was daunting. My grades were always terrible. Compared to my peers, I didn’t think I was smart enough. I was…Fear4 min readFear4 min read
Aug 12, 2016Rise From the Ashes — Incremental APIs With PhoenixMuch has been said about the Elixir language and the Phoenix framework —Phoenix’s performance without compromise makes it a compelling choice in a world where problems are increasingly concurrent and real-time. Despite Phoenix’s attractiveness, chances are you have business requirements that disallow you from dropping work on existing APIs that…Elixir3 min readElixir3 min read
Published in The Ember Way·Jun 28, 2016Component dependency injection in Ember.jsThe Dependency Injection (DI) pattern is a subset of Inversion of Control, and is a useful technique for decoupling the creation of a dependency from the object itself. Don’t let the terminology scare you though! DI is really just giving an object its instance variables. For example, below is a…JavaScript3 min readJavaScript3 min read
Published in The Ember Way·Jun 17, 2016Bringing Ecto Changesets into Ember.jsThe past month or so, I’ve been working on an Elixir and Phoenix API for a client. I am blown away by how nice it is working with Elixir and functional programming (FP) concepts. FP feels more intuitive and less prone to “shoot yourself in the foot” scenarios compared to…Ember6 min readEmber6 min read
Published in The Ember Way·Apr 21, 2016Declarative Templating in Ember with Composable HelpersPreviously, I mentioned that Ember’s new Helper implementation landed in 1.13. In my opinion, helpers are one of the most useful, yet least talked about features in Ember. In my EmberConf 2016 talk on Idiomatic Ember, I spoke about helpers…Web Development5 min readWeb Development5 min read
Published in The Ember Way·Apr 21, 2016Route Closure Actions in Ember.jsIn my previous post, I wrote about moving singleton state in Controllers into Services that back components. This means being able to lighten the responsibility of Controllers in your application, and in some cases even remove them completely. …JavaScript4 min readJavaScript4 min read
