The truth is — a great developer will work with whatever tools are available to them.

When I got my first job as a software developer 6 years ago, the on-boarding I received consisted of wiki pages, diagrams, keynotes, and many meetings to walk through various architectures and system diagrams.

I thought there had to be a better way, but as a junior developer, I wasn't sure.

There is a better way. 

Heavy code commenting is a symptom of bad code.

Most of the time, if you feel like you need to add a comment to explain what a piece of code is doing, your code is probably too complex and should be refactored. 

You have a team of talented developers and designers, a beautiful app, selling a beautiful product. Your sketchy competitor with a dated website and a disposable product converts three times better than you. What gives?

Recently I was working on building a DoJo-based widget (DoJo 1.X uses VanillaJS in the background) and I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why a globally-defined array is getting updated across different instances of that widget. 

New this week, Liberty Mutual's responsive policy quoting and bind website (currently available for Renters insurance on mobile devices 9" and smaller) boasts a clean and modern design, heavy reliance on native HTML5 functionality and a streamlined interview process. 

Now that this application is public, I've decided to post a short design analysis outlining key new features behind the new application, which has been designed with the customer in mind from the first page, to the last. 

The world of CSS just keeps getting better as new specs are introduced and eventually adopted by major browsers. One of those exciting specs is CSS Masking. While not fully supported across the major browser line up, it’s an interesting addition that’s generating a lot of attention. One absolutely outstanding example of what can be achieved with css masking is a project by Bryan James - Species in Pieces that showcases a collection of endangered species, made and animated using clip-path. 

Defined in the CSS Masking Module Level 1 spec, CSS masking provides two ways to hide sections of full images or objects: masking and clipping. Masking allows the use of another element to create a luminance or an alpha mask. Clipping simply provides a mechanism to only show a certain section of an object. Think of it as taking scissors and cutting a part of a piece of paper into a shape you want. 

In this post, I want to explore specifically the clip-path property and show a quick example of what can be achieved by it. 

Sorry WordPress, our 4-year relationship has come to an end. I was really excited about you when we first met, you were the ultimate answer to my website needs. But I have changed, and so have you. Actually, you haven’t really changed, and that’s the problem. After 4 years with WordPress, I’ve decided to take my blog where the grass is greener. 

Just a couple months ago, I could not see myself using SquareSpace. The lack of control and the amateur factor have always deterred me from even considering SquareSpace. 

So why did I decide to explore SquareSpace as a replacement to my self-hosted WordPress blog?

In my group, we use Outlook and Lync as our main forms of communication. The traditional, brick and mortar means of communication in the corporate workplace. Introduction of Lync a few years ago reduced the volume of email. After all, there’s no need to send an email to ask someone “Hey, did you deliver your changes yet?”. What Lync didn’t solve, and was never really meant to solve, is the ease of finding relevant information in a pool of hundreds of messages that end up in your inbox every day. 

Corporate email is broken, and most people know that, yet monolithic companies are slow to change. So here we are, in 2015, still sorting through piles of useless email. 

Enter Slack.