The Web Huddle #1
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
The Web Huddle is our monthly roundup of the best links shared in the Black Pixel web team’s Slack channel.
Itsy Bitsy Data Structures
In this project James Kyle provides an accessible introduction to data structures in the form of a single, hyper-annotated JavaScript file. Blending code and copy to explain core computer science concepts is becoming a trend for Kyle, following up on the popularity of The Super Tiny Compiler from earlier this year.
Data Structures might not be the juiciest topic in the world, but they are hugely important to growing as an engineer. Knowing data structures don’t just make your programs faster and more efficient, but they help you organize your code and your thoughts so that you can build more complicated programs without a ton of mental overhead.
Full-Width Containers in Limited-Width Parents
CSS savant Chris Coyier looks at a handful of techniques for implementing a fluid-width container element when its parent has limited width. The use case he covers is the popular Medium-esque editorial layout, where images break free of narrow single-column paragraph copy for greater visual impact without sacrificing readability. There are some good ideas here using modern CSS components like calc and vw — it’s a short and worthwhile read.
Sindre Sorhus’ AMA
Sindre Sorhus, purveyor of small JavaScript modules, ported his popular GitHub AMA responses to Medium. The result is a 42-minute read with insights into his workflow and tool choices as well as answers to more pressing questions like, “What’s your favorite spider leg based dish?” and “How was your weekend?”
If you’ve spent any time writing JavaScript over the past few years, you’ve probably used code written by Sorhus. Paging through his AMA responses is oddly humanizing. It’s an interesting look at the life behind one of the community’s most prolific contributors.
See how many times Sorhus’ name exists in your node_modules directory:
grep -ro “sindresorhus” /path/to/node_modules/ | wc -lw
Ramda.js
Ramda is “a practical functional library for JavaScript programmers.” Building on popular utility libraries like Underscore and Lodash, Ramda adds automatic method currying and function-first arguments for better composability. Check out Introducing Ramda and Why Ramda for more, or take a look at lodash-fp for a more functional-oriented fork of Lodash.
11 Simple npm Tricks That Will Knock Your Wombat Socks Off
Clickbait title aside, NodeSource shares some valuable tips and tricks for working with npm. Did you know you can open a package’s repository on GitHub with npm repo $package? Or only install production dependencies with a — production flag?
Learn about these tricks and more after the link! </buzzfeed>
JS MythBusters
JS MythBusters is less about busting myths and more about providing high-level tips for performant JavaScript applications. The design and format is easy to digest, and the content doesn’t get too extraneously detailed. The tips here are good to internalize and implement in your applications, though remember, premature optimization is the root of all evil
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