Pros and Cons of Using Medium as a Blogging Platform
I published my first blog post on Medium. It is called, Updating Your React Native App. It’s been interesting comparing and contrasting the experience of writing on Medium vs. writing on my own WordPress blog at McCullough Web Services. Here’s what I liked about writing on Medium:
Breaking Change with setState in React 16 Alpha Affecting React Native 43+
Recently, I upgraded the React Native app at Build.com to version 45.1. While testing the app, we discovered an undocumented change to the way that setState works. This change will affect React Native version 43+ and is due to a change in the React 16 alpha library. In this post, I’ll describe this breaking change…
React Native 45 Errors in Jest
At Build.com, a co-worker and I are in the process of updating our app to the most recent version of React Native, 0.45.1. We’re currently working to fix up our tests in Jest and I thought I’d share with you some issues that we’ve discovered.
Creating Your First npm Package
Creating Your First npm Package Lately, I’ve been pushing myself to contribute more to open source. I started by contributing to existing projects: small features and writing documentation. I even wrote a blog post about it. This past week, I was finally able to make the jump from contributing to a project to authoring one.…
Getting Started in Open Source
Getting Started in Open Source “The fundamental act of friendship among programmers is the sharing of programs” – Richard Stallman Recently, I’ve been working to contribute more to Open Source software. The following post is based on that experience and research for a presentation I did with Jordan Papaleo for TahoeJS. Contributing to Open Source…
From Ski Instructor to Programmer – My Journey Back to Programming
On the surface, I have a stereotypical story for a programmer: I started programming at a young age, went to college for computer science and now I’m a senior JavaScript developer. But for around 8 years, I didn’t program at all and didn’t work in a technical field. This is the story of how I…
Fixing the React Native Error: “Unable to open URL: telprompt”
At Build.com, we use Bugsnag to help monitor our app for crashes and errors. The other day, I noticed a group of errors that all took the form: Error: Unable to open URL: telprompt:5551231234 After some research, I figured out what was causing the bug and how to fix it.
Fixing the Jest Error, “Invariant Violation: addComponentAsRefTo”
I work on the Build.com React Native app. We’re currently on a push to dramatically increase our test coverage. Recently, I came across a bug that affects some, but not all, of our tests. Tests fail with the message: Invariant Violation: addComponentAsRefTo(…): Only a ReactOwner can have refs. You might be adding a ref to…
My Favorite Developer Podcasts
For the month of March, a number of podcasts that I listen to have been encouraging people to tell others about their favorite podcasts using the hashtag, #TryPod. I love listening to podcasts while driving or while I walk around the neighborhood or grocery stores. They’re interesting, educational, entertaining and many are created with high…
Multiple Distributions with Jekyll, Pandoc & Markdown
Some time ago, I got the idea that I should write a book about something. I wasn’t quite sure of the topic but I thought it would be an interesting exercise. While contemplating that idea, I reasoned that, if I wrote a book, I would want to use some interesting technologies. I like using GitHub…