Welcome to my PinkLetter. A short, weekly, technology-agnostic, and pink newsletter where we cultivate timeless skills about web development.
My Ramblings This Week
How would you show (not tell) your expertise?
Google your name. What do the results, images, videos say about you? There are thousands of professionals out there in the same field as you. Why should anybody pick you?
If you look like everybody else, the only reaction you can get is a “meh.” I posit we should all strive for either “fuck yeah” or “hell no.”
I derive great satisfaction from crafting code, I am a maverick, and believe in enabling others first. Most importantly, I like pink.
I make it clear in everything I do because that’s who I am. As a side effect, people know who they are dealing with before talking, so we can avoid wasting time if our values don’t match.
Recently, I designed, developed, and deployed Rictionary. It’s a Polish dictionary that scratches my own itch: the alternatives suck and I needed something better to learn the language.
Isn’t it a better story than saying “I know Figma (design), Ruby on Rails (develop), and Heroku (deploy)?”
“Fuck yeah!” Or maybe “hell no” because you don’t give a damn about me, Polish, and that stupid logo I created with InDesign. And this is fine too!
Now’s your turn: what’s a piece of code, blog post, illustration, or any sort of recent craft you are proud of?
Remember: show don’t tell.
Elsewhere on the Web
3 Useful TypeScript Patterns to Keep in Your Back Pocket by Casey Falkowski
Using TypeScript with its most basic types alone adds plenty of safety to your code. Sometimes, however, you come across situations where you need a little bit more. Here are three useful TypeScript patterns that will kick your game up a notch.
What Is Functional Programming? by Kris Jenkins
This is my take on what functional programming really is, in a way that will make sense to a jobbing programmer just trying to Get Stuff Done.
Surgical Refactors by Justin Searls
Is there anything we can do to make legacy Ruby more maintainable?
That question led me to this talk. In it, I introduces a new gem that we designed to help wrangle legacy refactors. It’s called Suture, and along with providing some interesting functionality to make refactoring less mysterious and scary, it also prescribes a clear, careful, and repeatable workflow for increasing our confidence when changing legacy code.
(Riccardo: Good one even if you are not a rubyist.)