New tools won't change old culture

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but buying a new treadmill won’t make you a runner. It’s a mistake we’ve all made at some point. We’ve all decided, “This is the year! I’m going to spend lots of money on new equipment, on gear, on clothes, on cool shoes, and I’m going to <fill in the blank here>”. And we’ve all been rather disappointed when said shiny items find themselves collecting dust, and the treadmill/rower/elliptical are expensive clothing racks. Continue reading

Streamlining pull request reviews with suggestions

We’ve all been there. We’re reviewing someone’s code in a pull request (PR) and we spot a small mistake. A typo. The wrong option was set. A boolean flag was reversed. Something simple. What’s the best way to suggest a fix? One way is to create new branch and PR into the one you’re reviewing. Seems like a bit too much work, and maybe a little too formal. For a repository where you have permissions, you could simply push the updates. Continue reading

Starting a project for Azure Static Web Apps

A quick perusal of this blog shows how much I love Azure Static Web Apps, a wonderful service for hosting full-stack web applications. Static Web Apps uses Azure Functions for server-side code, and provides wonderful functionality including authentication. When it comes time to start doing local development, the initial setup can require a couple of steps as there’s a fair bit being provided to you by the service. I want to explore how to setup a project for Azure Static Web Apps. Continue reading

The importance of link text

Here’s a blog post about the word here. What we have here is an issue where here isn’t clearly defined. Here has lost all meaning here, and it’s hard to know where here is when here we use here to highlight things here, here, and here. I know what you’re thinking. I’m going overboard to try to make a point. You’re probably right. But it’s time we banish the word here from our link text, here an now. Continue reading

Bullet Journaling - my system

I’ve blogged previously about my adventures, covering what didn’t work for me about using a bullet journal (bujo). Now I want to walk through my system. Before we get started I want to make sure I highlight the fact this does not make me perfect by any stretch. I still have tasks which fall through the cracks, don’t get done on time, or aren’t a struggle. However, I’m far more successful with my bujo than without. Continue reading

Python Type Hints

I was on a community call on the Microsoft Python Discord channel when I was asked what my favorite new feature for Python was. My answer was immediate - “Type hints, type hints, type hints”. I find questions like this make for great blog posts, so let’s give it a whirl! The problem Before we get into type hints and why they’re so amazing, let’s explore the problem space. Let’s say I’ve created the following function: Continue reading

Deploy Astro sites to Azure Static Web Apps

There’s been a push of late to limit the amount of JavaScript sent down to the client as part of single-page or static web applications. I for one welcome this shift, as it means we as web developers are listening to the needs of our users, who don’t have limitless bandwidth or computing power. Sites load faster, scale better, have decreased load, consume less resources, help with climate change… It’s goodness all around. Continue reading