A few days ago, while talking with a friend about a new project his team is about to start, he asked me my opinion about which JavaScript framework to use.
Of course, there is no right or wrong answer to this. However, the human psyche is always hungry for debates and conflicts, and this is why the internet is full of articles and texts that either try to prove framework A’s superiority, or rant against using framework B. Of course, the available options are more than two.
The truth is that all frameworks (at least the major and most known) have something valuable to offer, and thus it all boils down to pros and cons, and how these in particular affect your team, your project, and your product both in the short and the long run. …
Last week I published a story about store creation in @WalmartLabs’ Electrode. As I said, apart from that first engineering question, I had another one, this time regarding Server Side Rendering and store initialization when data prefetching is needed.
The problem
Let’s suppose we have the following case: Our application initializes a certain page by making an XHR to our server, retrieving the data to show (true SPA style). In order to Server Side Render this page, though, we need to have that data available beforehand. The real question behind all this is the following:
How can we initialize our store with such data, while enforcing code reuse as much as we can, and then feed those components+data to be Server Side Rendered? Keep in mind, that while this issue can be solved without much fuss when designing an application from scratch, I couldn’t find a clean way to do it in an Electrode app. …
The past few days I’ve been experimenting with @WalmartLabs’ Electrode. It seems like a rather interesting platform and it got my attention immediately as I stumbled upon it. I’m planning to write an article about it and what it offers to the programmer that employs it in his web app.
For now, I’ll just describe an issue I had when using it, and the solution I ended up with in order to fix it. Truth is, I really like the solution! I want to share it with you and also get your feedback on it!
The problem
According to electrode maintainers’ official response, there is no well defined way to initialize the store according to route. One way to accomplish it, as proposed by other members of the community, too, would be…
By now, especially due to modern build and bundling tools, all experienced web developers are familiar with ES6 modules (if you are not then you should totally get yourself informed!).
And in March this year, we were informed of some very exciting news! ES6 module support has come (or, is coming) to browsers! Safari became the pioneer with version 10.1 and landed module support, by adding full ES2016 support (see here and here). Then followed Chrome, Firefox and Edge browsers, announcing the support behind specific flags.
Since then, many blog posts have been written about how one can try them or the technical benefits of their use. There is no special value, thus, for one to go in technical detail about them and rewrite things that others have already covered adequately. …
During the past few years, many different titles have emerged for software developers. You can be a software developer, a software engineer, a frontend ninja, a computer programmer, a software architect and many other things that I may not even be aware of.
I don’t really know the actual difference between a software engineer and a software developer. Wait, let me rephrase that; in fact, there is no formal difference between the two. They are just made up titles for use in the software market. In some countries you may be called an “engineer” only if you have a particular university degree. …
The power of abstraction is vast. The human brain can only process information in chunks. When you explore something mentally, each tiny bit of detail adds on cognitive load.
Example: A House
When we talk about a house, we actually mean a rich, complicated construction containing walls, windows, doors, a roof and many other “building blocks” that we may not even be familiar with.
NOTE #1:
This is the power of abstraction; abstraction is a tool. …
OK, I know that I probably picked a rather cheesy title for a first story.
It’s been a long time now since I started contemplating the possibility of starting to share my thoughts and findings on programming. Something like maintaining a programmer’s diary. Most stories of course will be about my software engineering adventures, findings and in general in-topic stuff that I find useful or leave me speechless, as I strive in my day to day adventure to attain software engineering ninjardry (I will also create new words — ninjardry shall be the state of being a ninja at something).
Revolutionary ideas or ground-breaking software architecture propositions may never come, or may take long enough to manifest themselves but there shall always be fresh content regarding the nature of programming and the latest technologies in Front-end Engineering. …
