Fall Link Roundup

Summer has come and gone, the fall routine is here. Over the last few months I have read some really cool articles/posts, and I thought I’d post a selection of them here with a short thought about each.

Programming

Clojure

• A gentle intro to Clojure

  I am a sucker for functional languages, but I haven’t gotten as familiar with clojure and I would like some days. This is an interesting read with a cool application to the Github API.

• Clojure for the brave and true

  Have only skimmed the TOC, but looks very very cool

Elixir

• Authentication and Authorisation in Phoenix Liveview

  Good overview of this problem: Phoenix Liveview is driven by channels (websockets) which don’t innately associate with phoenix’s session state. With the introduction of phx_gen_auth this has been simplified – cool overview!

• Learning Elixir’s GenServer with a real-world example

  Nice overview of the almighty GenServer

• Practical Concurrency Cookbook

  Some good examples of common use-cases

• How does Plug.Cowboy Work

  Cool overview of Plug.Cowboy

• Securing Webhook Payload Delivery in Phoenix

  Good overview of concerns with some good examples

• Using Phoenix Presence

  A nice example of using phoenix presence in a contrived app

• Architecting GenServers for Testability in Elixir

  Nice examples / discussion

Go

• Go by Example

  A friend and I have challenged ourselves to try and solve 2021’s advent of code in a language that we don’t feel strong in. We decided on Go for this year, this site is definitely going to be a good resource.

HTML / CSS / SVG

• Learn CSS

  Google released a new learn CSS platform based on their successful ‘CSS podcast’. It looks pretty amazing!

• Creating UI Components in SVG

  If there is one lesson I learned when working on Exercism’s syllabus map is that SVGs and programmatically generated SVGs can be amazing. Sarah Drasner’s overview of using them for UI is great.

• Designing Beautiful Shadows in CSS

  Wow, what an awesome article to help you really understand the method behind the details

JavaScript

• Just JavaScript

  Dan Abramov’s online interpretation of his previous email-based curriculum to shape your mental model of JavaScript. Worth.

• Dynamic task schedule with NodeJS and Redis

  Hadn’t thought about this type of problem in a long time, this was a simple approach to polling long running tasks using a common redis solution

• Lightning Fast Search with Elastic Search

  While reading ‘NodeJS the right way’ there is an interesting portion where you have the chance to learn a bit about elasticsearch. This is a neat overview of elasticsearch.

• Let’s Create a Lightweight Native Event Bus in JavaScript

  Cool pattern which feels very javascript-y to me.

• JavaScript async and await in loops

  Good overview of promises while performing in data transformations of collections

• Three intermediate functional JS patterns

  Some neat patterns, I liked the rest removal and console-logging in arrow functions, but I am less convinced the removal of the ternary is alway the best. The example uses a poorly formatted ternary expression and replaces it with a specifically formatted single-line if statements. 🤷 6 of one, half-dozen of the other to me.

• 30 seconds of code (GitHub repository)

  I like these short snippets of patterns for re-use. The website feels slower to navigate, so prefer the repo view.

Javascript / React

• Fundamentals of Redux Course from Dan Abramov

  An older course, but still relevant as redux has played a large part in shaping the modern SPA-landscape for controlling/consolidating app-wide state. It seems there is a shift with “new” concepts like React’s Context, but good overview and Dan Abramov is very good.

• React XSS Protection Cheat Sheet

  nice overview of practices to protect your viewers/users/clients

• react2025

  Cool tutorial/walk-through using Next.js/React, integrating Firebase and Stripe, deploying to Vercel

• Multistep Forms in React with Awesome Ux

  A cool series of articles detailing multi-step forms in react

Prolog

• Prolog meta-interpretation for syntax checking

  I’m a sucker for interesting applications of prolog. While it is super slow, using it for niche instances like this makes a lot of sense to me since it is so good for DSLs with its DCG syntax

Ruby / RoR

• Ruby on Rails Model Patterns and Anti-patterns

  While using ruby and RoR as the subject, I think this is an applicable problem in many languages/frameworks

Software Development / Other

• Software Estimation is Hard. Do it anyway.

  A good case for how to approach the estimation conversion.

• My Software Estimation Technique

  A methodical approach to software estimation.

• Technical Writing Course

  Had no idea this resource existed. Planning to go through it sometime

• Guide to Onboarding Developers

  My employer is hiring lots right now, this looks like a neat way to be able to plug in to that process and help make the transition successful for others.

• Reddit Interview Problems: The Game of Life

  Neat overview of hiring programming problems