Server Side Rendering

In this post I will explain how I enabled server side rendering for my blog.

The Architecture of My Blog

I just realized the other day that my blog is in its fifth year now. Since the application is built from scratch, I figured it would be fun to do a write-up of the architecture behind my blog.

Using Service Workers

In this post I take a look at service workers in JavaScript. I will show how to use a service worker to support offline loading of an Angular application.

Inspecting Webpack Bundles

In this post I will show how to visually inspect the contents of Webpack bundles.

Webpack Tree Shaking with Babili

In this post I will show how Babili can improve dead code removal in Webpack builds.

JavaScript AST

In this post I will discuss JavaScript ASTs and show how you can easily generate an AST of your code using Rollup.

Code Splitting in Webpack

In this post I will show how to do code splitting in Webpack.

Tree Shaking with Webpack

In this post I will take a look at how Webpack handles Tree Shaking.

How To Create A Tech Blog

Blogging is one of my favorite hobbies. In this post I want to share some info about how I built up my blog. Hopefully this will be helpful to other bloggers, but I am also looking for feedback and suggestions for improvement.

IIFE vs UMD

In the following post I will compare immediately-invoked function expressions (IIFE) to Universal Module Definition (UMD) bundles.

Tree Shaking ES2015 modules

In this post I will show that putting entities in the same file does not impact Tree Shaking.

Async Await Error handling

In this post I will show how to add error handling when using async/await in TypeScript.

Where is promise.finally?

At this point I've used so many different promise libraries that I've lost track of what's supported natively by ES6 promises. Today I learned that “finally” is not yet part of the standard even though it's commonly implemented by third party promise libraries. In this post I will show how to simulate “finally” while we wait for the standard to hopefully implement it.

Async and Await in TypeScript

In this post I will show how to simplify promise handling using async and await in TypeScript.

Tree Shaking in JavaScript

In this post I will talk about how to apply Tree Shaking to JavaScript code.

Angular 2.0 vs Aurelia

Lately I have spent quite a bit of time working in both Angular 2.0 and Aurelia, so I figured I'd share some of my experiences here.

TypeScript and implicit interfaces

TypeScript introduces interfaces – a concept very familiar to developers with experience from languages like C# and Java.

Object.defineProperty explained

JavaScript lacks explicit access modifiers, so variable “privacy” is hard to come by :-) . Instead we have to come up with clever workarounds to encapsulate objects to simulate the type of private scope we are used to from other programming languages. In this post I will demonstrate how to use Object.defineProperty to lock down JavaScript properties.

JavaScript variable assignment explained

Variable assignment is a concept that many developers find confusing. In this post I will try to explain how JavaScript treats variable assignments and argument passing.

JavaScript ES6 Linq

EcmaScript 6 offers some new really nice syntax additions to JavaScript. One of them is arrow functions. Arrow functions provide a compact way to create filter functions, so to take advantage of this I have created a lightweight library for querying arrays using ES6 arrow functions.

JavaScript and bind

One confusing thing about JavaScript is how the meaning of 'this' changes based on execution context. In this post I will demonstrate how to use bind() to inject the meaning of 'this' in functions where it's referenced directly.

Writing Jasmine unit tests in ES6

Previously I showed how to write application code using ES6, but wouldn't it be nice to use ES6 when writing unit tests as well? In the following post I will demonstrate how to write Jasmine tests using ES6 syntax.

Object models and inheritance in TypeScript

Proper object modeling is becoming more important in JavaScript development as client side features are growing in complexity. Most object models don't require inheritance, but for those that do, JavaScript is lacking proper/intuitive constructs to support it natively. True, it is possible to inherit objects in JavaScript through the prototype chain, but it still leaves a lot to be desired compared to languages where object oriented code is more of a first class citizen. In this post I have added an example of how to bring more streamlined inheritance to JavaScript through TypeScript.

JavaScript websites and SEO

Modern websites make heavy use of JavaScript to support a better user experience, but what is the impact on SEO?

JavaScript and its crutches

There is a growing sentiment among developers that the community is saturated with frameworks that all promise to fix “JavaScript problems”. Some are just frustrated with the high number of frameworks available, but there is also the DIY crowd that opposes any form of JavaScript frameworks. I personally fall somewhere in the middle since I would love for JavaScript to be natively “self-sufficient”, but the current state of the language is just not there yet.

Is jQuery still relevant

As so many other developers I got my first introduction to complex client side web applications through jQuery. It was essentially the gateway drug that got most developers hooked on JavaScript during a time when JavaScript played a relatively modest role in most web projects. I will always be grateful for the productivity boost I got from adding jQuery to my, back then, very limited repertoire of client side skills. However, as project requirements got more and more complicated, developers started to realize that the traditional jQuery pattern of very little separation between object model and markup was not scalable. I think this and a few other factors beg the question, is jQuery still relevant today?

Which JavaScript framework do I choose

Since JavaScript has made a big comeback as one of the most sought after skills in the job market, there has been a lot of talk about which frameworks to focus on. Developers have several frameworks to choose from today; Angular, Ember, Knockout, Durandal, React and the list goes on.... Granted some of these are not in direct competition since they serve different purposes, but they all deserve to be on the list of notable frameworks in today's market. In this post I will talk about why I don't think it really matters which one you end up going with.

Exciting new features in ECMAScript 6

JavaScript is everywhere these days! Both front end and the back end can be written in JavaScript, and in fact, this blog is an example of an application written entirely in JavaScript. Even though JavaScript has been around for a long time it's definitely a language in constant transition. The next really exciting milestone will be ECMAScript 6, which will usher in a whole host of new exciting additions to the language. In this post I will write about a few of the changes that excite me the most.