Array destructuring, object destructuring, and more — JavaScript has the destructuring assignment syntax to allow you to unpack objects and arrays into variables. I still see a lot of code where either the developer is not aware of this language feature or just didn’t use it. The feature was added in ES6 and enables terser code without…

I love static sites for many reasons and Jekyll is still a firm favourite when I need to throw together a simple site. One thing I hadn’t hit with Jekyll before was handling different environment settings and basic secrets. As with most things it was easy if not obvious at…

I spend a lot of time wearing headphones. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that working remotely means I talk a lot on video calls with my team and clients. The second is that when I am not talking I am devouring almost any type of…

The speed of development you can achieve using serverless architectures and services can be mind-boggling. For small projects, having the ability to connect several services, each having a specific purpose, is very powerful. Recently, I built an MVP that used GetForm.io and Zapier to connect a GatsbyJS web app to…

Code reviews are a vital part of running a development team. Once you get past developer number one, its vital to ensure you have an agreed code review checklist and factor time into your workflow to ensure you review all code. I would argue that if you work as a…

Late last year I experienced my first fatal failure under Linux for a very long time. I was restoring a project to work on and updating the Jekyll framework which was refusing to play nicely. I applied a recommended fix from the Manjaro repo’s and my laptop froze. Upon rebooting…

Over the last week, I have looked at the code for four projects at Platform Eight. There was a common thread across the projects and that was a complete lack of documentation. …

The last few projects I have built have been either React or Gatsby based. When setting up these projects I wanted a fast and simple way to apply a consistent and maintainable style system for them. There are different ways to define styles when building components, from inline styles and…

I have looked at a lot of projects over the last year for clients of all sizes at Platform Eight. One of the trends I have seen in a lot of the projects is the failure to provide adequate handover documentation from outsourced teams. …