Tag: JavaScript

Hiatus Over! Get More Efficient Today!

May 26, 2018
Reading Time: 1 minute

It’s been well over a year since I last made a write up. In that time I’ve seen contracts and projects come and go. I’ve created a full-stack startups MVP (Angular/Node) and continued building my client list. I’ve taken the time to get a great feature of using async/await in ES6 to good use – it makes reading async code a lot easier. And, I’ve also updated the theme for the blog.

Currently I’ve been looking to get further integrated with Blockchain and developing additional iOS apps. I already have a number of contributions to some additional Crypto currencies. Being able to work with many talented individuals over the last year has also been a great experience. I look forward to discussing these and other technologies as I work with them.

If there’s one thing you should start doing today it would be to get a Jenkins build server setup and working for the work that you’re doing, whether it’s Web or Mobile. The amount of additional efficiency that you’ll gain will be significant.

Here are some of my favorite Jenkin’s Plugins:

1) Slack Notification Plugin – Get slack notifications for your jobs as they build (or fail)

2) Publish Over SSH – Allows me to very easily setup everything to be pushed to the deployment target.

3) Embeddable Build Status – Whether your using a formal PR setup, thus allowing the code mergers to understand the build status of your branch, OR if you have a repo that you want others to know about the build status, this very handy plugin gives quick build details to a user.

4) Sounds Plugin – I sometimes don’t want to watch for build notifications, but would rather hear a sound on success / failure. This plugin allows just that.

Travels with AngularJS

January 21, 2014
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Speed of development is essential with web application development. Not to mention, if you aren’t careful your code will end up in a big mess in no time. Abstracting out highly identifiable layers in the front end development process can be not only tricky, but very cumbersome and difficult to maintain. Having recently tried developing a personal project I’ve been working on, only to stop and realize that the front end of it was becoming so complex, I could barely follow it while developing (damn you JavaScript!!). I had made my flowcharts ahead of time, reviewed them, re-reviewed them, only to hit this stopping point and realizing that there must be something better out there.

I thought I’d start by looking at a few of the MV* frameworks, such as Knockout.js, Backbone.js and AngularJS. I had used Knockout.js at the office somewhat, but found that it wasn’t what I was looking for. After developing my Ruby and Ruby on Rails skills over the last few years, I wanted something that was very fast for development all while allowing maximum control. Something that wasn’t overly verbose, and could accomplish everything I needed to develop on the front end.

Next up, I tried Backbone.js. Just a simple multi-field forms code was quite long, and I was still looking for something more concise. Hello, AngularJS.

I had once looked at AngularJS at the recommendation of a colleague, however, I didn’t initially grasp the API concepts documentation, didn’t want to waste development time on it at that moment and didn’t come back to it until I hit this project road block, as the entire back end of my project is now completed in Rails. This time however, without any distractions I dove right in. I found the exact resources on YouTube to explain the basics, followed by signing up for some video training on it. Within a week and a half, I was ready to go.

It was a slower start initially, making sure things were setup correctly, cross-checking my code with the API documentation that I now understood, first utilizing it on a work project which could only be completed in the compressed time frame I had available with the power and speed of AngularJS. I had a fall back plan in the event something didn’t work out as intended, which gave me only 4 days of working time to figure out if I could truly utilize AngularJS in the way it was meant to be used. I tired effortlessly until I had the skeleton on the application setup and functioning, and from there everything fell into place. I did in 3 days, what would have taken close to 3 weeks if doing it by Vanilla JavaScript and jQuery. I had multi-line fully dynamic forms with AngularUI (BootStrap UI AngularJS Compatible framework) and a fully responsive BootStrap 3 layout, with the ability to dynamically swap out the theme on the fly. I had a user account authentication system setup and working. The project didn’t require the use of any custom written directives, however, I’ve done the studying necessary to know when I would need them more.

As I continue to work on my personal project with AngularJS, I find a lot more satisfaction in working on the front end. Having a wonderful layout system and theme setup from BootStrap makes the development process a lot more enjoyable as well. It’s not, first build it out, then style it out. It’s now baked right in from the start.

If you’re looking to really try out AngularJS and see how it can enhance your front end project, I highly suggest looking at this YouTube video that greatly helped me.