I love object-oriented programming. I love naming concepts and materializing them with a class. I love dot notation. I love hiding implementation behind a seemingly simple accessor.
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The standard way to dynamically update HTML content in Ruby on Rails relies heavily on DOM IDs. These IDs are used to identify the target HTML element for an update.
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Yesterday, I got my first conference talk proposal rejection. It was going to be about folder structures, so I’m guessing there wasn’t enough AI to make the final cut.
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My work designing and developing the superdb.org website is finished. The first commit was on October 4th, 2024 and the final commit was on February 5th, 2025.
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I am loving this API for working with React state. It’s a very light wrapper around useState. I call it useStateObject.
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A 9.0 earthquake shook my front-end world when I discovered “layout primitives” at every-layout.dev. Then an aftershock rolled through when I learned about fluid sizing and spacing tokens from utopia.
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Two articles I read this week have inspired the heck out of me. The first was by Jared Turner of thoughtbot with the punchy title “WIP is waste”.
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I made a quick screen recording using the VSCode debugger to break on a line of code in my NodeJS electron process.
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The one thing missing in every budgeting application is the “Spending Commitment”.
Definition: “A thing I am already committed to paying for”
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Does this sound like you?
You are using Sprockets to pre-compile assets for production. You are using Kamal to deploy. You have asset bridging enabled in your deploy.
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This is the syntax for setting an output parameter in a Github Actions step.
echo "{name}={value}" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT" Here’s an example of using this syntax in a workflow step.
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Many people ask me about how to dynamically set the width and height of the Tree component based on its parent using react-arborist.
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My first programming language was Ruby. Well, it was actually Microsoft Excel, then VBA, then C# for a university class, then Ruby.
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Imagine hanging out with someone all day who berates you. They make final judgements about your character. They criticize anything you do imperfectly.
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After 13 years of JavaScript, I finally have a way to remember how the comparator function in Array.sort() works.
I think the trouble is that all the examples use this shorthand syntax.
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The Monaco Editor is awesome. It’s what powers VSCode. I wanted to use it to power the query editor pane in Zui, the data exploration app I work on.
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I just published a JavaScript library called transitions-all-settled that allows you to wait for CSS transitions to settle before you do something.
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There are only two types of transactions.
The ones you are present for. The ones you are not. This just dawned on me.
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It's not uncommon to see this type of single element React component.
function Title({ children, ...rest }) { return <h1 {.
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I love this quote by John Cutler from his post on disincentives.
“Good things can happen when you make it easier to do good things.
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Any two people in a close relationship are bound to eventually hurt each other. To most of us, it is no surprise when this happens.
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I have enough food in my kitchen.
I have enough water to drink.
I have enough clothes to wear.
I have enough things in my house.
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This is a great podcast episode about company culture. The gist is, it doesn’t matter what people say or write about what the culture is.
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I was just in the gym and as I lifted a weight I thought of the energy flowing out of me to lift it.
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I love pipes. Anytime I can pipe something somewhere, it seems that order has claimed a victory over chaos. In fact, there is pipe-related photo of me at the end of this article for your viewing pleasure.
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Comets are constantly falling.
We don’t know when.
But if we’re open, our eyes are open,
The comment will appear.
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Swords drawn, Draw blood, Blood in the water
Recover, Respond, Respect
Cross the line, Cut too deep, Feel the heat
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A common distinction in React is Controlled vs Uncontrolled components. But the real world is not so black and white…
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A child knows nothing about itself. Its body is a mystery, its ideas, its dreams, its feelings. The child relies on caregivers to teach her everything.
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I was talking with a group of friends trying to come up with possible answers to unanswerable questions like:
What happens when we die?
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I’m working on a React app that has frequent data transitions. Each time a user submits a query, the state is reset as we wait for a response from the server.
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While at a playground this weekend a man talked to my 3-year-old son in a way that upset me and I had to do something about it.
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Experiences compress into memories.
Memories compress into feelings.
Feelings compress into instincts.
Instincts compress into the unconscious.
The unconscious compresses into the collective human unconscious.
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We took a trip down to Joshua Tree this weekend for a cousin’s wedding. For the first time, I could appreciate the gifts of a desert climate.
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I’ve owned a full frame camera for over 5 years. I’ve acquired 3 lenses and snapped many thousands of photos. And yet, last week I discovered these five tricks and was shocked by my ignorance of them.
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When I’m angry I stop needing everyone to like me. I don’t care if they approve of what I do. My face doesn’t hurt from smiling all the time.
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This post is half rant, half guide. Each of these 13 questions reveals tradeoffs that take time and mental energy to research.
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I watch Netflix because I’m too tired to do anything else. The kids are finally sleeping and I’m spent.
It’s meant to be a quick escape from life before I do what I really need to do which is sleep.
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What if we didn’t think of God as infinite.
What if God poured itself into this particular universe. What if He’s completely bound to this one cosmos.
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All the time at the playground I hear, “good sharing!” and “no no Jackson, you need to share”.
We parents think it is some critical skill that children need to learn.
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Whenever a class needs a few arguments in TypeScript, I cringe because I know I’m going to need to perform a ceremony to make it happy.
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I’ve got an electron app that needs to be built on all three platforms. I’ve got three workflow files all with slightly differing steps.
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What do I do when my component uses a ref internally but also needs to forward a ref from its parent?
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