Markdown for Documenting

Documenting with Markdown

Rik Scarborough Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Programming Leave a Comment

In today’s environment, we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to documenting our applications. We have a multitude of word processors, websites with word processors built in, wikis, and notes applications galore.

So you may be wondering, is there even any point in talking about ways to document your application? I think there is. In this blog, I’ll share my documentation tool and how and why you can use it in your own projects. It’s called Markdown.

Create a modal with styled components

Cook Your Own Modal with Styled Components

Lou Mauget Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript, React, Tutorial Leave a Comment

I created several JavaScript modal dialogs – I always extend a framework modal instead of scratch-coding my own. I thought I knew the things a framework needs to implement in order to present a modal but did I? There was only one way to find out: cook my own JS browser modal, and that is exactly what we’ll do in this post.

In this blog, I’ll cover a short approach to hand-coding your own modal with Styled Components. You can find the entire project on GitHub.

Refactoring Strategies For Ugly Code The Does Everything

Refactoring: Ugly Code That Does Everything

Gabe Schmidt Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript, Node.js, Programming, Tutorial Leave a Comment

If you’ve been writing code for a significant amount of time, you’re sure to have seen the—anything but godly—“God Method.” It’s a method that performs way too many processes in the system and has grown beyond all realistic logic to become “The Method That Does Everything.”

This single unsightly method can span dozens, if not hundreds, of lines. Sometimes even over 1,000! This type of “ugly code” is an unbearable beast to maintain. This is why it’s considered a “code smell” or anti-pattern.

In this tutorial, we walk through a tangible “God Method” and step through the process to refactor it into something more manageable and human-readable. Our code is written in JavaScript for a Node.js service, but the principles apply to any language.

Infrastructure as Code Using Azure CLI

Todd Horn Architecture, Articles, Azure, Cloud, DevOps, Tutorial Leave a Comment

Infrastructure as Code (or IaC) is the process of using code and versioning in the same way you do your source code to manage your networks, VMS, and Azure resources. IaC generates the same environment every time it is applied, and it’s an important DevOps practice to use alongside continuous delivery.

The release pipeline executes this model to configure target environments. If you need to make any changes, you edit the source, not the target environment. This allows you to create reliable and stable environments on-demand that can be validated, tested, and repeated.

In this blog, we’ll look at how we can use Azure CLI and Azure DevOps Release Pipelines to make this happen. I’ll walk you through all the steps you need to take to get set up.

Getting Started with Expo

Stewart Snyder Articles, JavaScript, Mobile, React, React Native, Tutorial 1 Comment

Expo is a platform and framework that allows you to write cross-platform code using React Native, taking advantage of the APIs native to each platform. This makes it extremely simple to develop and deploy apps to a variety of platforms. Additionally, it allows the apps to make use of the native components of whatever platform they are deployed to.

This post first reviews the different features of Expo and how they can be used to rapidly develop and deploy software. Then, we’ll talk through the steps you’ll need to take to get up and running with the tool.