jasonbutz.info

Article Roundup - Week of 6/19/2017

Article Roundup

Documenting Architecture Decisions
Have you ever joined a new team or begun working on a new project only to have no idea why things were done the way they were? It can be incredibly frustrating. Documenting those decisions can also be difficult. This article describes a method to document those decisions in a manner that reminds me a lot of how IEEE handles RFCs.

Unlocking Test Performance — Migrating from Mocha to Jest
Airbnb recently changed their unit testing framework from Mocha to Jest, and got a huge improvement in performance. On a beefy build server their mocha tests took 12 minutes (45+ on a local dev machine) but with Jest that came down to 4 1/2 minutes (around 15 on a local dev machine).

A dirty Webpack trick that reduced our gzipped bundle size by 55KB
Webpack is a great tool, especially since it can remove unused code. But, somethings it can’t really cleanup much because of how they are written. By removing moment’s locale files and making a hacky plugin the author was able to get rid of a lot of code. This is worth a read, but use with caution.

The “.well-known” directory on webservers (aka: RFC 5785)
I also first learned about the .well-known directory thanks to Let’s Encrypt, I had no idea it was an RFC for it.

SecureLogin — Forget About Passwords
I was hesitant to include this. I’ve seen a few things about it, but the protocol being proposed isn’t well explained anywhere that I have seen. Even the specification is not clear. There is one very confusing flow diagram, and that is about it. Regardless of all of this, it is something to keep an eye on. An issue was created on one of the repos asking for a better explanation, until that arrives I’d take all the claims of security with a grain of salt. A lot is being claimed, but very little well explained.

A Complete Guide To Switching From HTTP To HTTPS
If you aren’t using HTTPS you need to, it is more or less a requirement for sites and applications. If you don’t really understand HTTPS this article is a great place to learn what you need to know.

Dissecting Twitter’s Redux Store
This article come out a while ago and I’ve been meaning to read it. If you use Redux or are thinking about it I highly suggest this article. From what the article shows Twitter’s Redux state store is exceptionally well thought out and something we could all learn from.

webpack 3: Official Release!!
You may be thinking “Wait! Didn’t webpack 2 just come out?” Yeah, it did. Left beta in January. The webpack team has committed to faster release cycles. They have also committed to adding the features that the community wants, and this release is the real start of that.

UK Government Accessibility Posters
The UK Government’s Home Office created accessibility posters and has shared them on GitHub.

Machine Learning: Introduction to Genetic Algorithms
This is a great introduction to Machine Learning, it is written in JavaScript but could easily be written in any language. It is really interesting how quickly the example algorithm hones in on the optimal answer once it gets on the right track.

Designing The Perfect Accordion
Accordions, nothing tricky there right? Just throw in a thing that expands and contracts and you’re done? There is a lot more nuance than that to using an accordion well and this article covers everything you need to know.