Google .dev Domains, GitHub Pages, and Heroku Apps

How to get things wired up now that you have that sweet, sweet .dev domain name

 Posted on March 9, 2019  |  4 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

At the end of February 2019, Google released general access to the .dev top level domain. I had heard about this happening about a year ago, and am now the happy owner of two .dev domains! One of these is chasesawyer.dev and will soon be the new home of this site! But how to get it set up? When you buy a domain name, nothing is really set up for them - going to those addresses doesn't point to anything Firefox and Google will just say “Server not found. [Read More]
post  blog  dev  heroku  google  domains  dns  security  hsts 

Debugging Node Applications

With or Without an IDE

 Posted on June 11, 2018  (Last modified on June 17, 2018)  |  3 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

When developing an application or project with Node.js, debugging is an important aspect to getting to the bottom of issues. If you use an IDE (integrated development environment) or code editor that has built-in or supported debugging capacities, such as Visual Studio Code, then you have that ability already. But if you are someone who's developing with a more basic code editor - such as Sublime Text, then you can still debug your Node. [Read More]
post  blog  node  javascript  debugging 

File Paths in Node

How Path Resolution Can Be Confusing

 Posted on June 9, 2018  |  4 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

This week I had an interesting discussion with another new developer who was getting started working on an Express-based project and was frustrated by their static files working one day, and seemingly without provocation, not working the next. I knew from experiencing the same feeling when dealing with static files both in Django and Express that a static file loading problem is difficult to resolve, and how often the problem is often a simple one that is nonetheless opaque to a new developer unfamiliar with file systems and path resolution. [Read More]
post  blog  express  javascript  node  filesystem  debugging 

Code Editors vs. Word Processors

Why I think code editors are so much better

 Posted on June 6, 2018  (Last modified on June 7, 2018)  |  2 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

Word processors are great for creating documents with a lot of rich formatting, but all that stuff can be a huge distraction. Code editors on the other hand are amazingly good for writing - the writing where the only thing that actually matters is the content, and not the format. While it's probably been hashed out and written about a lot by other people, the one thing, the killer aspect of it for me, is the ability to scroll the page down, so that whenever you want, you can always return to that feeling of having a blank canvas to write upon. [Read More]
post  blog  nonesense 

New Free Code Camp Cert

Certified Fresh

 Posted on June 5, 2018  (Last modified on June 7, 2018)  |  3 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

I got my back-end (now API and Microservice) cert today from Free Code Camp! https://www.freecodecamp.org/certification/shadowimmage/apis-and-microservices Hooray! It's been a year since I started working through the Free Code Camp curriculum, and it feels good to finally have finished the API work. I feel like I have a pretty solid grasp now on how to build and arrange an API, which I hope will help me in the future when I try to do more API work. [Read More]
post  blog  update  certificate 

Bad Coffee

A silly complaint

 Posted on May 10, 2018  (Last modified on May 12, 2018)  |  1 minutes  |  Chase Sawyer

I woke up late today, so I didn't have time to make coffee. And instead of going to my usual place where I know there's going to be great coffee available, I decided to get a doughnut and some coffee from the doughnut shop. The first warning that this wasn't going to go well was when I got my travel mug back and there was coffee all over the outside of the mug. [Read More]
blog  coffee  fwp  short