Developing Upwards

I’m going to take some time out of absolutely loving Evernote for keeping me on task and organized throughout the day to talk about what, I think, is absolutely the worse thing about it. Evernote is a completely different application on every platform and device it supports. For a product who’s main gimmick is keeping you organized and your data synced between all of your platforms and devices, that’s sort of a really hard knock against them. The Evernote for Windows application is great, but so is the Evernote for Mac application. These are quite different, and not just in the ways that usual differ between Windows and Mac to fit the platforms well. They are just fundamentally different applications which coincidentally happen to be sharing your data. Beyond the two desktop Evernotes, the problem only gets worse. Evernote for Android is yet another experience, with yet other features different from the two Desktop versions. The most jarring differences between these versions are dif...

I had an adventure over the last couple days with ES6! There was a pattern I'd already used in a few of my React projects to make ES6 classes a little nicer. ES6 did a lot to make working with  this  mechanics nicer, but there was a still a gap that bit me: the sugar provided by ES6 classes don't extend to keeping method bound to instances of the class. Maybe you, like me, would expect this to work: class Counter { constructor () { this . count = 0 } onClick () { this . count += 1 } } counter = new Counter () document . querySelector ( '#add-button' ). onclick = counter . onClick But, like non-class methods on any regular Javascript object,  onClick  will loose its binding to the  Counter  instance. There are a few existing solutions to this, but I wanted one that didn't change the syntax of defining a method on these classes. Enter AutoBind, via my new NPM module  es6-class-auto-bind : import Aut...

I’m watching the Apple vs FBI case with a cautious eye, worried about the outcome and really without much of a clue where its going to go. At this point we have a situation I can’t feel comfortable on either side of. Do I want an enormous multi-national billions-rich company refusing to follow court orders? That’s the kind of situation that would usually have me calling for pitchforks, probably metaphorically but increasingly physically. Yet, in this case, I can’t help but find that I agree with the specific case. Encryption, I believe whole heartedly, is a human right. … Don’t I? So what do I do when the hands that protect that are owned by share holders? We’re in a position that we shouldn’t be in. We have government agencies like the FBI and the NSA and the Department of Defense which should be tasked with protecting us and, therefor, with protecting the mechanisms that keep both our physical and ephemeral property safe. The NSA should be funding real encryption and promoting public...

Today’s the second day of the first month of this new year. I decided to go ahead and do a sort of Fresh Start writing on this new year, even though it isn’t strictly the first. It wasn’t by design, but I like the laid back attitude of that because its part of my focus. I want to look forward to the year and I want to set some goals, but I don’t want to set myself up for letting myself down. That’s new years resolutions can so often do and I’m not going to do any of them. I’m happy to see my wife taking a similar approach because we’re so often on the same page. I’m going to lay out my thoughts about both this month and this year. Maybe the month thing will become a Thing I do more regularly, sort of checking in on the directions I’m taking. My January Expectations I’ve taken two weeks off for the holiday, so my energy for work is at an all time high after such a great break. This is leaning my attention right now towards things work related, both officially and unofficially as...

I’m really excited about ReactJS. I’ve let my tentative excitement grow for a while now, with a few experiments and tutorials and lots of reading. There is a strong habit of Shiny New Thing syndrome in the web world, and I’m as guilty of it as anyone else, so a lot of effort was made to avoid jumping on the bandwagon too soon. After building my first simple but complete application with ReactJS (and Flux) I’m absolutely convinced it is the best option for me to build web interfaces going forward. To share my excitement and to preserve my thinking, in case I come back in a couple years wondering how I got started with ReactJS, I’m going to outline all the reasons I’m so excited about ReactJS. ReactJS is Fast in Every Way That Matters Saying a software library is “fast” is often a red flag for not having a holistic view of the trade offs. Faster than what? Fast by what measurements and under which conditions? I can say that ReactJS is fast because I’m not saying one vague thing, but sayi...

Enjoying two weeks off for the holidays was a fabulous decision. It isn't far into it, technically only one day if you don't count the weekend that would have been there even if I didn't take a holiday, but I can already feel my stress fading away as I look forward to Christmas, to time with my wife and son, to visiting my in-laws and to just enjoying my home, with movies and video games and relaxing afternoons on the couch with the dog at my feet. I've taken two weeks off, partly because I realized how much time I had saved up. I'm really happy I can do so, but it also made me realize I need to take time off more often. I took three days off in November to coincide with a school break of my son's and it was just so great. I am going to make an effort to relax better and more pre-emptively.

Dead projects can be a constant lure. When you put down a body of code work and call it either defunct or completed, its hard to avoid the feeling there is something more to do. Whether its work you’ve decided was complete, but later come back to in your mind with ideas of new features and improvements, or work you’ve walked away from intentionally or through neglect and feel a guilt to return to that you cannot shake, old projects have a way of pulling your attention back to them. This constant pull can be terrible for concentration and painful for motivation on new work when you feel this desire to sink your time into something you’ve already gotten away from. Maybe you stopped working on that project because there were simply more interesting things to do with your time, or it was moving in a direction that wasn’t as interesting for you. Maybe you just have too many projects going at once and needed to do the responsible thing as an adult and recognize when you and too much on y...