My (somewhat) complete salary history as a software engineer

It’s 2018 and somehow women are still getting paid less than men, even in supposedly progressive industries like software.[1] Whether that be from companies offering women less than men for the same position, women being less…

Why I’ve stopped exporting defaults from my JavaScript modules

You can export both named and default symbols from JavaScript modules, and now I’m choosing named exports exclusively.

Computer science in JavaScript 2019: Linked list

How to implement a singly linked list in JavaScript using classes, symbol properties, and generators.

How I think about solving problems

Early on in my career as a software developer I thought my primary contribution was writing code. After all, software engineers are paid to ship software and writing code is a key component of that. It took several years for me to realize that there are numerous other…

The lazy-loading property pattern in JavaScript

Traditionally, developers have created properties inside of JavaScript classes for any data that might be needed within an instance. This isn’t a problem for small pieces of data that are readily available inside of the constructor. However, if…

Introducing Env: a better way to read environment variables in JavaScript

If you write server-side JavaScript, chances are you’ve need to read information from environment variables. It’s considered a best practice to share sensitive information, such as access tokens, inside…

Two approaches to win an argument as a software engineer

If you’ve spent any time developing software professionally and then you are probably used to the spirited debates that take place between software engineers as well as between software engineers and management, design, and product…

Creating a JavaScript promise from scratch, Part 1: Constructor

Early on in my career, I learned a lot by trying to recreate functionality I saw on websites. I found it helpful to investigate why something worked the way that it worked, and that lesson has stuck with me for decades…