Tutorials, insights, and deep dives into software development. New articles published regularly.
My form inputs were sometimes controlled, sometimes uncontrolled, and React kept warning me. Here's how to design components that make the control model obvious—and avoid the bugs that come from mixing them.
I was building a tabs component with 20 props when I discovered compound components. Here's how this pattern gave me flexibility without the complexity.
I had the same user data in 5 different components and they kept getting out of sync. Here's the mental model I use now to decide exactly where state should live.
I built a "reusable" button component with 47 props and nobody wanted to use it. Here's what I learned about designing component APIs that developers actually love using.
I had a search input that fired an API call on every keystroke. Here's what I learned implementing debounce—closures, setTimeout, clearTimeout, and controlling when functions run.
I wrote CSS that should have worked, but my styles weren't applying. The problem? I didn't understand how CSS resolves conflicts. Here's what I learned about the cascade, specificity calculation, and how browsers decide which styles win.
I tried to manipulate an HTML element with JavaScript and got undefined. The problem? I didn't understand how browsers create the DOM tree. Here's what I learned about how browsers represent HTML, how to query and manipulate the DOM, and the performance pitfalls that caught me off guard.
I used divs for everything and my site ranked poorly in search results. Here's what I learned about semantic HTML, why it exists, and how it impacts SEO, accessibility, and maintainability—not just screen readers.
I created a closure in a for loop and spent hours debugging why all my event handlers were broken. Here's what I learned about closures, why they exist, and how to use them effectively without falling into common traps.
I used to nest callbacks five levels deep, making code unreadable and unmaintainable. Here's what I learned about Promises and async/await, why they exist, and how they transformed how I write asynchronous JavaScript.
I was debugging a bug where 'this' was undefined, and I realized I didn't truly understand execution context. Here's what I learned about how JavaScript creates execution contexts, how scopes work, and why 'this' behaves the way it does.
I spent hours debugging why my variable wasn't updating. The culprit? I didn't understand the difference between primitives and objects. Here's what I learned about JavaScript's type system, value vs reference behavior, and how to avoid common pitfalls.
I used to manually concatenate CSS class names with template literals until I discovered the power of utility functions. Here's what I learned implementing classNames, covering rest parameters, type checking, recursion, object iteration, and more.
I used to think JavaScript was multithreaded because it could handle multiple things at once. Here's what I learned about the event loop, why JavaScript is single-threaded, and how async operations actually work.
I used to write `const firstName = user.firstName` over and over again. Here's what I learned about destructuring, why it exists, and how to use it effectively without falling into common traps.
I used to build strings with + concatenation in JavaScript, and it was a nightmare. Here's what I learned about template literals, why they exist, and how to use them safely and effectively.
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