danbender-blog

[danbender-blog]

I miss this place.

I earned these tags, and am very proud of my journey to this moment. I’ve taken a few days away to reflect - and sleep..a lot. I’m going to tell you about the worst week, and then I’m going to tell you how Dev Bootcamp has changed my life. Okay? Ok.

Here are some things about week eight of...

[danbender-blog]

yup.

In our on-going pursuit of trying to improve readability and usability of digital products and services, one thing that’s always struck us as odd is the way typography of email applications has been left untouched since the early days of the internet. Even modern applications released in the...

[danbender-blog]

In our on-going pursuit of trying to improve readability and usability of digital products and services, one thing that’s always struck us as odd is the way typography of email applications has been left untouched since the early days of the internet. Even modern applications released in the...

[danbender-blog]

An open source vulnerability scanner for RoR apps

This looks nice:

http://brakemanscanner.org/

[danbender-blog]

WHOAW.

The hover effects on Amazon’s big ‘ole “Shop by Department” mega dropdown are super fast. Look’it how quick each submenu fills in as your mouse moves down the list:

It’s instant. I got nerd sniped by this. Most dropdown menus have to include a bit of a delay when activating submenus....

[danbender-blog]

!

[danbender-blog]

A few truths about web development

It will never be perfect – the idea of the web is to release code into the unknown. All you can do is make sure you don’t deliberately make it harder for people by expecting a certain technology or hardware to be available.

You can always find a problem that is not possible with standard techniques – you can then use JavaScript and the DOM to solve that problem. Then you have the problem of people using your JavaScript solution and be ready to fix it for all the new platforms, browsers, environments and connection speeds to come. That’s what web development is about. That’s what browsers need to do.

“Technique $X is the best to use” is a fleeting statement – table layouts were the only way to create a multi column layout and got replaced by CSS. CSS layout with positioning and floats is a make-do solution, too. Flexbox is the up and coming solution to the problem of layout on the web. It is not ready across all browsers and not backwards compatible if you want all browsers to create the same layout. See where this is going?

There is no “one” solution for any web development problem – this is the beauty of the web. It is the “bring your own solution” platform. If you want to make it better for everybody, use standards and let the browsers worry about the performance issues and do report them to the browser makers. Everything else is patchwork and will be debunked as “not working as expected” over time

In 90% of the cases mythbusting articles solve one problem – the argument is not that a technology is flawed, the argument is that it is not good enough to solve problem $x. Which is OK, there will always be things that can not be done. The real question is “do you need to solve problem $x and what dependencies, issues and problems does the solution bring along with it”?

Everything on the web is best achieved with a mixture of technologies – CSS animations are great for certain jobs, but will not be good enough for others. You can achieve almost everything with JavaScript but that doesn’t mean you have to or should. Flash was used for a lot of things, some it was damn good for, others awful. There is no way – ever – that one technology can 100% replace another. Our use cases change and we should strive to use the technologies that gives us the best result for the least effort whilst allowing browsers to optimise for us. It is not about what we can do, it is about what makes sense to do.

Source: @codepo8 

[danbender-blog]

Last spring, the average page was 1246 KB. This represents a 26% increase in total page size in just six months, and a 151% increase in three years.

C'mon, we can do better than this (source).

[danbender-blog]

Git: the NoSQL Database

Why not? This is cool. (Presentation and code examples after the jump.)

[danbender-blog]

Tips and tricks for the Terminal in Mac OS X

Gotta love it.

[danbender-blog]

Defer loading of javascript

This (..) is the recommended solution from the Google help pages.

Read along here.

[danbender-blog]

“ABC: Always Be Coding”

by @davidbyttow https://medium.com/tech-talk/d5f8051afce2

[danbender-blog]

#happy

[danbender-blog]

Hey Dan! I noticed an app(I think) on your latest blog that tracks your coding process. I think it's a really awesome tool, especially for a beginner like me. May I ask what app it is(if it is an app)? Thanks!

Hi,

the app is called Lift @ https://lift.do/

It's fairly simple; it allows to define goals and track them by simply checking them off. Their hypothesis is that regular tracking helps build habits. I agree and I have been using it ever since it came out.

Cheers

Dan

[danbender-blog]

#coding on the crowded #train. Danke für nix, #deutschebahn.

[danbender-blog]

100 days of code

I have been coding for 100 days in a row.

There were days when I coded from early AM until, well, early AM and other days when I just coded for a little bit – but I kept that streak going and am going to keep it up as long as I can.

It is hard to believe what I have learned in those 100 days.

Only 100 days ago, I barely knew what a Terminal was, and now I even prefer to use iTerm in my everyday life when e.g. moving files on my machine. I went from not knowing anything to still not knowing anything but nevertheless writing full-stack web applications and following best practices like TDD.

Biggest learning?

Probably: 

I love doing this stuff.

Learning is awesome and I am (most of the time) insanely grateful for all there is to discover.

All we do is mess with data. We send data, we store data and we receive data. We perform operations on data. Ergo: programming is not magical. It is the single most creative and challenging craft I have ever engaged in but it is not magical.

This is #thebestlyfe.

[danbender-blog]

Thank you

Now that I'm back in GER (cold!), I feel like there is one more thing to say:

Thank you. For everything but especially for the support and the amazing friendships we built. And this new superpower – damn, I'm hooked.

Lots of this* for y'all.

*just in case you were wondering:  yup, only 1 div. :)