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Article Roundup - Week of Oct 15, 2017

Article Roundup

React, Inline Functions, and Performance
This is a good article to read if you have an interest in React, or if you care about application performance. One central theme is “premature optimization is the root of all evil”

Dev dogfooding is not user research
This article wasn’t about what I thought it would be; you might leave this article thinking “I need user research better explained”. Here is a website that has a nice overview. The article focuses mostly on the reasons why many developers are not familiar with user research and why getting them involved may result in better products.

Planning for Accessibility
This article is an excerpt from a recently released book. The excerpt goes over why accessibility should be considered when building a product and gives some pointers on getting started.

To SQL or Not To SQL
SQL and NoSQL both have their strengths, this article does a good job of weighting the pros and cons between them. It also includes short blurbs about the pros and cons of different SQL and NoSQL implementations.

JavaScript’s Promise Leaks Memory
There is a memory leak that occurs with JavaScript’s promises, and it is a known issue that has not been fixed. The issue actually lies in the specification that defines how the standardized Promise object is implemented. So long as your Promise chain terminates before it gets too large you can avoid this memory leak, once the chained promises return a non-promise everything can be cleaned up. Since this is a known issue, and some people are not concerned with it, it is worth being aware of. This is a nice explanation of why the issue is caused by how the Promises reference each other and not an infinite loop.

An Introduction to Interaction Flows
This article is exactly what it says, an introduction to interaction flows. They look like a tool that, when done well, can greatly speed up development. They seem to shift some of the decisions and iterations in development to earlier in the process when changes are less costly.

The Web Share API Is Here
This is a potentially useful unofficial API for sharing webpages or content on them on a mobile device. Chrome is the only browser that supports it, but there is a draft in the works to make it official.

Debounce Your React and Redux Code to Improve Performance
This isn’t a long article, but it talked about an important concept. Debouncing your code. Even if you don’t use React it’s worth a quick read.