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Rob Conery

Rob Conery

269 posts published

The Subtle Arts of Logging and Testing
Software Design

The Subtle Arts of Logging and Testing

I'm a big fan of testing, but I get lazy sometimes and it ends up costing me money, directly.

· Rob Conery

Test-driven Development In Action
Videos

Test-driven Development In Action

TDD is one of those things that people talk about, argue about, and think is interesting. I'm one of those people, so I asked Brad Wilson to clear it all up for me.

· Rob Conery

Meet Playwright
Videos

Meet Playwright

Curious about Playwright, the frontend testing framework? Well hang out for the next hour and I'll show it to you!

· Rob Conery

🤖 Does Functional Programming Matter To You?
Software Design

🤖 Does Functional Programming Matter To You?

Learning Elixir changed me as a programmer, and learning functional concepts changed the way I think about writing software. How about you? Is functional proogramming a useful thing to learn?

· Rob Conery

Rails Revisited
Rails Revisited

Rails Revisited

A detailed walkthrough of migrating a modern JavaScript site back to Ruby on Rails, exploring why Rails might still be the best choice for many web applications.

· Rob Conery

👻 Hacking Ghost for Fun and Profit
Front End

👻 Hacking Ghost for Fun and Profit

I've been using Ghost for many years and recently I decided to see just how far I could push it.

· Rob Conery

Surviving the Structured Interview
Career

Surviving the Structured Interview

The tech industry is slowly changing over to structured interviews, but most people don't know what they are and that they have a formula!

· Rob Conery

Explain It Like I'm 5 - Why Are Hashes Irreversible?
CS Theory

Explain It Like I'm 5 - Why Are Hashes Irreversible?

How to explain hashing algorithms to 5-year olds? Well... I'll do my best in this post, which comes with a video too!

· Rob Conery

The Imposter's Frontend Accelerator
The Imposter's Frontend Accelerator

The Imposter's Frontend Accelerator

JavaScript client frameworks are powerful and help you create an amazing experience for your end user. Unfortunately, learning how to use them sucks.

· Rob Conery

🤖 A Real World Approach to Playwright
Front End

🤖 A Real World Approach to Playwright

Writing tests can be tricky, especially using a more complex tool like Playwright. I took some time and dug in over the last year and I'm happy I did.

· Rob Conery

What Is Your Yeet Threshold?
Front End

What Is Your Yeet Threshold?

Solving problems is what we do, but sometimes the solution is to burn it all down and start again, learning from your mistakes. How do you make this choice?

· Rob Conery

😳 Allowing Yourself to Screw Up
Career

😳 Allowing Yourself to Screw Up

I managed to screw a few things up this weekend and I want to believe it's OK. I like screwing up... it means I'm trying. Failure is the best teacher, after all. Then again...

· Rob Conery

What Should Be a Plugin vs a Composable vs a Store in Vue?
Front End

What Should Be a Plugin vs a Composable vs a Store in Vue?

Vue is a very powerful framework that I love a lot, but understanding some of the builtin machinery can be extremely confusing. Here's how I deal with that.

· Rob Conery

Trying Something Different: A Real World Tutorial for Frontend Programming
Front End

Trying Something Different: A Real World Tutorial for Frontend Programming

I'm creating an episodic walkthrough where I build a real application I need to ship, and you get to do it with me. It's up for presale at 50% off.

· Rob Conery

Repositories and Unit of Work Don't Mix
Databases

Repositories and Unit of Work Don't Mix

There is a trend in the .NET space of trying to abstract EF behind a Repository. This is a fundamentally bad idea and hopefully I'll explain why.

· Rob Conery

Everyone Has a Plan, Until They Get Hit in the Face
Front End

Everyone Has a Plan, Until They Get Hit in the Face

I spent almost 3 hours last weekend trying to figure out one of the most vexing problems I've ever faced, and I recorded all of it.

· Rob Conery

How Elixir's Concurrency Changed Me as a Programmer
Videos

How Elixir's Concurrency Changed Me as a Programmer

This is an excerpt for a talk I gave in 2016 at NDC London, featuring Elixir and the concurrency features it has, built in. It's easily the most annoying demo I've ever done...

· Rob Conery

Seven Simple Steps to Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
Career

Seven Simple Steps to Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Getting over imposter syndrome is no easy task, but it starts by recognizing a cold, hard truth: you're being toxic to yourself and those around you. I'll share with you some steps I took to get over it.

· Rob Conery

Using Constraints to Protect Calendar Data in PostgreSQL
Postgres

Using Constraints to Protect Calendar Data in PostgreSQL

Think about the lines of code you would have to write in order to manage a scheduling system. Duration checks, start and end time requirements as well as checking for overlap! You could spend a few days writing all that code or you could let PostgreSQL do it better with 5 lines of SQL.

· Rob Conery

Weird Brazil Date Bug with Jon Skeet
Videos

Weird Brazil Date Bug with Jon Skeet

Digging through my archives once again and found this wonderful video with Jon Skeet doing what he loves to do: sleuthing date bugs and answering questions on StackOverflow!

· Rob Conery

The First Draft of Anything Is Shit
Front End

The First Draft of Anything Is Shit

I'm allergic to crappy, non-sensical, faked up demos that try to convey highly technical concepts. Yet I find myself falling into that lazy trap constantly. This requires intervention.

· Rob Conery

The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers
Life

The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

As programmers we tend to think of reports after the fact, often when it's too late. I learned this the hard way over the last few days.

· Rob Conery

Data Structures and Algorithms
Videos

Data Structures and Algorithms

Many people are interviewing these days and you really, really should know the basics if you expect to do well. You'll find that here with common data structures and algorithms.

· Rob Conery

Handling Dates and Times Properly in Postgres
Postgres

Handling Dates and Times Properly in Postgres

Handling dates properly is delicate business and, thankfully, Postgres gives you many tools to help make sure you store date information correctly. But that only works if you know what's going on!

· Rob Conery

Striking Gold in My Archives
Postgres

Striking Gold in My Archives

Digging through my archives of hundreds of videos, I found an oldy but goody - publishing it for you to enjoy!

· Rob Conery

Fun Geeky Things To Do For the Holidays

Fun Geeky Things To Do For the Holidays

I love nerding out over the holidays and today was no exception. I added a feature to my blog that I've wanted to add forever!

· Rob Conery

Five Things I Learned Building Bigmachine.io Using Nuxt and Firebase
Front End

Five Things I Learned Building Bigmachine.io Using Nuxt and Firebase

I like to change my publishing site regularly - it's fun and it keeps me sharp. This iteration is with Nuxt and Firebase, and I learned a ton.

· Rob Conery

Developing A Potent Voice
Career

Developing A Potent Voice

Writers often talk about "finding their voice", but what does that even mean? There are ways to loosen the control your internal filters have on your ability to express yourself.

· Rob Conery

Fast and Simple Web Apps with Nitro
Videos

Fast and Simple Web Apps with Nitro

Nitro is an exciting web server created by the unjs team, who are also the people behind Nuxt. Nitro is a study in simplicity and a wonderful tool for your JS belt.

· Rob Conery

Hello PostgreSQL
Postgres

Hello PostgreSQL

In this production, a SQL Server DBA (Rob Sullivan) and a developer (Rob Conery) take a deep dive into PostGreSQL (v9.1) and are surprised by just how capable, intelligent and *fast* PostGreSQL is.

· Rob Conery