bengladwell.com

Easy Video Encoding with AWS

Use S3, Lambda, and MediaConvert to create an automatic video encoding pipeline.

Testing React Native Components with Mocha

Testing for React Native components is broken This week, I generated a react-native app with react-native v2.0.1. It went something like this: The resulting Jest-based testing setup does not function. TL;DR You can get a nice Mocha testing setup working for React Native using a custom Mocha

Lessons from Rails: Focus on State in Tests

import { lessons } from 'rails'; // part 3 Bringing techniques used in Rails to Node Better late than never. I'm happy, if not surprised, to be learning so much from Rails in 2018. This is the third post in a series about techniques I found in Rails that were so good, they

Lessons from Rails: Generate test data

import { lessons } from 'rails'; // part 1 Bringing techniques used in Rails to Node Better late than never. I'm happy, if not surprised, to be learning so much from Rails in 2018. This is the second post in a series about techniques I found in Rails that were so good, they

Lessons from Rails: Tests using DB transactions

import { lessons } from 'rails'; // part 1 Bringing techniques used in Rails to Node I'm about a decade late. After unknowingly circling it for years, I am now working in Rails. When I started at CoverMyMeds in the beginning of 2017, I wasn't sure what I would think of working with

Vimscript: Automatic ESLint detection

Update - as fun as it was to learn some vimscript, I no longer make use of this stuff. I just use ALE and ESLint and all is well. I have been a vim user for over 15 years, but until recently I had never tried writing any Vimscript. I

Serverless Web Apps by Example

Disappearing Servers There's a lot of talk about serverless architecture and serverless web apps. But what exactly does a serverless web application look like? I've built some of my own serverless apps and have been carefully surveying the serverless landscape. As I see it, there are three classes of serverless

Serverless Web Architecture with Firebase

Cut out the middle man For a couple of years, I sensed that I was missing something in web architecture. I was hearing more and more that I may not need that web server that played such an important role in my standard design. You know the server I'm talking

On React CSS techniques

TL;DR Material-UI components are great even though they use inline styles, which are not for me. CSS Components are great. When I was designing reword, I had to decide how to handle CSS. As far as I could tell, there were four options. The standard approach. CSS files are

Learning the React ecosystem

A while ago, I realized that I had fallen out of step with current trends in Javascript application design. "I regret nothing!" I shouted at the roiling Javascript masses. But still. React looked cool. A few people like it. And I did like the server-rendering story I was

Superficial lessons I learned in Ethiopia

I recently returned home from a two-week trip to Ethiopia. My family spent some time in the capital, Addis Ababa, as well Awassa in the south of the country and Bahir Dar in the north. I had many experiences that will probably influence my view of the world, and many

Fridgewords: A Backbone and gulp.js tooling example app

I gave a talk at CodeMash last week on using gulp.js to organize your frontend stack. It was the first time I have ever spoken at a tech conference and it was a lot of fun. 'bout ready for some gulp goodness with @bengladwell in Zebrawood #codemash pic.

javascript

Assembling a frontend stack part 4: Bootstrap, Less, and Livereload

Edit: Some of the material in the Assembling a Frontend Stack posts is outdated. Specifically, I no longer use Bower in any of my projects. Bootstrap - save me from making decisions about design I'm a developer, so I love a design framework like Bootstrap. I'm told that not all

javascript

Assembling a frontend stack part 3: Handlebars and JSHint

Edit: Some of the material in the Assembling a Frontend Stack posts is outdated. Specifically, I no longer use Bower in any of my projects. Handlebars is a good templating solution Handlebars seems to have won the day. I don't have many complaints. And someday soon we'll have HTMLBars and

javascript

Assembling a frontend stack part 2: Bower and Browserify

Edit: Some of the material in the Assembling a Frontend Stack posts is outdated. Specifically, I no longer use Bower in any of my projects. How to organize your Javascript code Even a marginally sophisticated webapp will have two bundles of Javascript: 3rd party code like jQuery or Ember your

javascript

Assembling a frontend stack part 1: Gulp.js

Edit: Some of the material in the Assembling a Frontend Stack posts is outdated. Specifically, I no longer use Bower in any of my projects. This is not as easy as it used to be Gone are the days of just a little HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Well, that's what

javascript

Linting JavaScript in Vim

Update - This post is no longer relevant. Just use ALE and ESLint! Why Vim? Because I have never really been able to get away from it. Even the best IDEs feel cluttered and heavy to me. I guess I prefer a Less-Integrated Development Environment for some reason; one that