Dec 14, 2020The easiest way to build a Dark ModeMost operating systems natively support dark mode now. I have become so used to it that anything without a dark theme becomes painful in the evening. As I gave my website a minor visual refresh this week, I often coded into the evening. When everything else switched to dark mode…CSS2 min read
Sep 4, 2019How to go from Junior to Senior DeveloperIn software development, seniority has nothing to do with age. Seniority does not happen to you automatically as the years go by. You do not become a senior developer in the same way you become a senior citizen. Unfortunately, many people I work with equate gray hair with seniority and…Careers5 min read
Published in Make It New·Feb 21, 2017What to consider when picking a library or pluginWhen adding new features to our applications, we are often faced with a choice: do we build it from scratch, or can we use one of the many solutions that are freely available in the form of libraries and plugins? Depending on the ecosystem you are operating in, chances are…Open Source8 min read
Published in Make It New·Feb 7, 2017Nothing is ever “not bad”You might fondly remember the post in which I urged readers to drop the “should”. Several months in, I can say that I have successfully stuck to that change in the language that I use, and my writing has gotten more precise because of it. I also now feel bad…Language4 min read
Published in Make It New·Sep 7, 2016Why it’s best to colocate unit testsMost JavaScript-based frontend frameworks do not impose a “one true directory structure” on the developers using them. While this allows us to use whatever model we are most comfortable with, it also does not provide guidelines or best practices to follow. …Java Script6 min read
Published in Make It New·Aug 9, 2016On trends in designWorking in design is challenging. Everybody has at least some opinion about it, regardless of their background. They might not always be able to put into words (or pictures) what they consider to be “good design”, but they certainly know what they don’t like once they see it. We can…Design6 min read
Published in Make It New·Jul 5, 2016Make your time countEver since I was very young, I knew that I wanted to “do something with computers”. The thought of telling machines what to do, and then being able to watch them do it, was always very intriguing to me. I spent a lot of my spare time picking up programming…Startup6 min read
Published in Make It New·Jun 7, 2016Drop the “should”My work is often conceptual in nature: specifying requirements, writing documentation, and occasionally writing unit- and acceptance-tests. While centered around technical aspects, all of these are primarily ways to communicate with other people. Over the last few months, I have noticed an anti-pattern in the way I write: I use…Language3 min read
Published in Make It New·May 3, 2016Your API might be sexistI recently came across an API that exposed a reasonable but unfortunate design decision, the specifics of which are irrelevant safe for the fact that the data in question concerned humans in one form or another. It is described well in the following simplification: { employees: […Gender Equality5 min read
