One awesome thing about side projects that I get out of a side project is that I get to try my fanciest ideas. On the most recent side project, one thing that I got to try is sharing TypeScript logic and types between frontend and backend code.

I have written why I like function hoisting in JS, but the other day I got a bite in the back in the context of function hoisting. 😸

I have a couple of Jekyll-based websites, and my make start looks something like this:

start:
	bundle exec jekyll serve

This works. I run it in another terminal tab, and ^C it when I’m done. The other day though, I thought it’d be nice if make start would run in the background and then say make stop when I’m done. Here is what came out. 🤓

The other day I was writing a Makefile which involved nvm and stumbled upon an error that seemed to make sense, on one hand, but on the other hand I couldn’t quickly google out a clean solution. Digging in some more, I’ve devised my own, which I’m going to present here. 🤓

I’ve launched a new Jekyll website recently, and one thing that I wanted to be able to do on the very first days is to be able to have different URLs for a single post. 🤔

Use-case: I’ve published an article on the blog, but the topic is one that comes up frequently enough that I want to have it on the FAQ page, but also have a simple one- or two-word permalink that I would be able to tell someone on the phone, for example /socializare.

The other day I found myself copy-pasting some Google Docs texts into a new Jekyll website, and so I had to format quite a bunch of lists. After Google Docs, the reflex was to select the rows, and hit ⌘+Shift+8, so I thought: Hey why not make a key-mapping? 🤓

Today I launched on a new project and there was a specific Node version required, specified (strangely) in package.json. I’ve expected it to be in .nvmrc, but never mind, I had to get it working, and I wanted it working with make, as I do for every new project.

One of the things that attracted me early on in Elm were the union types: Having the compiler ensure that discrete values of a variable are correct seems quite useful. And it was as disappointing when I couldn’t find out a type-safe and reasonably straightforward way to build a <select> tag out of a union type. I’m emphasizing type-safe because Elm’s type system is the reason why I’m learning it. Conceptually these two things — a union type and a dropdown — align perfectly, and I thought it should be a way to code it as well.

A few weeks ago I have set out to try Elm on a toy project of mine. The experience was like learning to program again: I had to figure out very basic things like how to attach an event handler to a field.

A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at our local JavaScript meetup. It was my first talk ever, and, as you can probably imagine, I had a couple of notable moments. And I’d like to share them.