I work developing web applications for our clients at Scott Logic. You can also find me on GitHub.
Open Source
It seems barely a month goes by without a new supply chain attack making the headlines, and malicious code in dependency packages from package managers such as NPM is a common method. My usual sentiments include “oh another one, what a surprise”, before thoughts eventually turn to - someone *really* ought to be doing something about this. Fortunately, it turns out that quite a few things are indeed being done - there's progress, activity, and promising ideas for the future. The outlook is brighter than what we might have assumed.
Artificial Intelligence
When we couldn't find a tool to meet our prompt engineering needs, we decided to create a universal tool that allows anyone to build their own – all within the familiar spreadsheet environment. An Excel add-in that lets you use OpenAI models in Excel formulas.
Tech
I recently spent some time remotely attending JSNation, a hybrid-format JavaScript conference held in Amsterdam alongside sister conference React Summit. In this post, I'll cover some points of interest from around half the talks I chose to attend.
Tech
Newcomer desktop-web framework Tauri has quickly attracted the interest of developers looking to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies. Promises of smaller and faster applications certainly appeal to those using Electron. In this post, I’ll take a look at what’s new in this space, what distinguishes them, and why WebView2 doesn’t solve everything.
Tech
Late last year I attended DevTernity, an all-remote generalist software development conference. In this post I'll cover off some points of interest from some of the talks I chose to attend, and reflect on the remote conference experience.
Tech
This is a post about doing performance right when building large and complex web applications. Much advice is available about optimising for every last ounce of performance on the web, but that won't help much if we don't already have 'good' to begin with.
Tech
Caching frontend application bundles isn't as effective when they're updated frequently. In this post, I'll explore the idea of using deltas to update already-cached bundles, and cover some approaches - including one that's feasible today using service workers.
Tech
The 'Performance' tab of Chromium (Google Chrome) DevTools isn't always enough for analysing complex multi-window Electron web-desktop applications. In this post, I'll introduce the related but lesser-known Tracing tool, and show how it can be used with Electron.
Tech
The WebHID API will allow web applications to use human input/output devices connected via Bluetooth or USB. This post takes an early look at where it fits in, the possibilities enables, and how to use it.
Delivery
The flexibility and power of issue tracking tools can make it difficult to figure out how to use them effectively. In this post, I present a few simple tips on what I find works and what doesn't.
Tech
Changes to code formatting tooling/policy can be painful to integrate with work-in-progress branches. Here's an approach to solving the situation quickly and easily using a single Git rebase command.
Tech
Where does one start when looking to write better code? And how do we maintain code quality and consistency when working in a team? These two questions drove me to create a language-agnostic guide to writing decent code.
Tech
It's useful to be able to use components built using one framework, within different frameworks. In this post, I explore considerations and patterns, and finish off with an example using React and D3.
Tech
Beneath the user interface of our applications, we as developers both define and use default values in code and configuration. Choosing carefully helps make what we build quicker, easier, and less error-prone to use.
Tech
Nobody looks forward to conflicts when collaborating on code. There are things we can do however to minimise unwanted ones, promote useful ones, and make them easier to solve correctly.
Tech
Conflicts sometimes arise when merging two npm-shrinkwrap.json files from different source control branches. Git might be able to solve some of these - but should you let it, and what should you do if it can't?
Tech
In this post, I create an interactive map of relative changes in currency strength, using D3's geographic projections, world map data, and a currency exchange API.
Tech
A quick guide to the available source map options in webpack, and the considerations for choosing one in different scenarios.
Tech
Sizing advanced components such as grids using ng-style can leave you with rendering problems. Here, I create a variant of ng-style with some small tweaks to avoid this problem.
Tech
It's easy to get started building data-bound user interfaces in the browser using the KnockoutJS MVVM library. This post covers some practices and techniques that help with using it successfully in large single page applications.