Technical

314 articles · all categories

9 articles from 2022 · show all

November 2022

Reader question: useReducer or XState?

Following up from my article about XState and Stately.ai, fellow reader S. asked if `useReducer` could ever be relevant when using state machines in React code. Yes! Here's how

When your brain is breaking, try Stately.ai

Two years ago I wrote about using XState after building a UI interaction so twisted my brain leaked out my ears. It helped. Now the creators have made something even better – Stately.ai 😍

October 2022

Over-engineering tweet embeds with web components for fun and privacy

A way to embed tweets in static sites with full pre-renders and live updates using just 9kB of client-side JavaScript, 2 HTTP requests, and full reader privacy ✌️

September 2022

useCallback is a code smell

One of my favorite ways to simplify and de-gotcha React code is to rip out all the useCallback and useMemo drama. 90% of the time you don't need it.

August 2022

Your code doesn't matter

"Your code doesn't matter" is something experienced programmers say, between the lines, when they sound like complete lunatics. But what do they mean? Why does everyone say it?

April 2022

Promise.allSettled, a wonderful tool for resilient code

The pros and cons of different approaches to writing resilient code that handles partial failures

March 2022

Saving time in UTC doesn't work and offsets aren't enough

Lessons from a painful outage with timezones, UTC offsets, and database clients that took a whole week to resolve.

A quick lesson in writing resilient code

On the backend anything can and will fail. How do you deal with that?

February 2022

A new VSCode extension makes state machines shine on a team

When you grok state machines, a new world of computational beauty and software design opens in front of your eyes. Things that used to be hard become easy. The impossible becomes possible. And you turn into that annoying team member.