The Trunk

Opinions, thoughts, and ramblings about being a programmer and human. From your friends at Browntree Labs

What is the Call Stack in Javascript? (And how does it get ...exceeded?)

Have you ever seen this error? If you’re like me, then this particular error has probably kept you up at night, wondering what you did to…

📅 16 March, 2021

How to check for Balanced Strings in Javascript

As part of my ongoing interview question in javascript series. I am going present a very common javascript interview question that I have…

📅 25 January, 2021

How to ace your next Javascript interview

Over my 10 year career I have worked at a ton of different companies. I have worked at large companies, small companies, I have also worked…

📅 19 January, 2021

StimulusReflex with Rails is AMAZING

Recently, I saw a video posted online about this new emerging technology in the Ruby on Rails world. It is called StimulusReflex. It…

📅 04 December, 2020

Why I'm switching from Vim to IntelliJ

From Vim To IntelliJ In the beginning, a love affair For the last 10 years or so, I have been a die-hard Vim user. I was introduced to Vim…

📅 03 November, 2020

Remembering that I once was a horrible programmer

I think it’s pretty fair to say that as we grow older and wiser, we tend to forget where we came from. And I think this recency-bias shows…

📅 02 October, 2019

Global Snackbars in React with Redux, and Material UI

I’m working on a side project in React with Redux and Material UI. I love how snackbars look, and I wanted to create an easy system for…

📅 12 September, 2019

Scraping Reddit's API in NodeJS with Snoowrap

This is part 2 of a series of posts about scraping various sites/APIs with Node. You can find part 1 here. I’m still working on my side…

📅 30 August, 2019

Scraping sites with Node, Axios, and Cheerio

I’m currently working on a side project where I want to scrape and store the blog posts on certain pages. For this project I chose to use…

📅 21 August, 2019

Please don't forget your history (in Git)

When you work on a new feature, or bug fix, and your code is approved; what do you do before merging it into master? Do you squash all…

📅 07 August, 2019

Creating LivingRoom quickly with React and Rails

Browntree labs created a product called LivingRoom in only a couple months on a part-time basis. We iterated quickly by using well known…

📅 29 July, 2019

Re-Writing DRAFT's Ember app in React and Redux

Using React best practices and tools, I helped re-write DRAFT’s web application within 9 months. Here is the overview of how that was…

📅 13 June, 2019

What making a game in Vue.js taught me about Front-end development

This is the most useful thing I have ever done in my career. I have created my masterpiece, my magnus opus. Beethoven himself would be…

📅 04 June, 2019

Angular Dart: Guarding Routes with Google Auth UI

I’ve been working a lot with Google’s Dart lately, and I must say, its pretty impressive. The language is easy to pick up. It feels like…

📅 01 June, 2019

Programming 'ON' the Pixel Slate

Context I recently wrote a post on why I enjoy programming on the Pixel Slate. The post was meant to be a philosophical discussion on why I…

📅 20 December, 2018

Why I Program on the Pixel Slate

…And why I don’t think I’m ever going back. There is something that’s been on my mind for the better part of the last ten years. Ever since…

📅 18 December, 2018

How to create a component in React with Gatsby and GraphQL

This blog and website are built on React using a static site framework called Gatsby. Recently, I wanted to add a new component to this site…

📅 20 November, 2018

Four scenarios when a consultant is the right choice

From my experience Throughout my years as an independent software consultant, I’ve seen a lot of things. From large companies, to small…

📅 30 October, 2018

Creating a Gatsby Blog, Part 3

This is a series of videos where I live code this very blog! In part 3, we continue our saga to re-create the browntree labs corporate site…

📅 12 September, 2018

Creating a Gatsby Blog, Part 2

This is a series of videos where I live code this very blog! In part 2. We continue our work on the basic layout of the blog, and create a…

📅 24 August, 2018

Creating a Gatsby Blog, Part 1

This is a series of videos where I live code this very blog! In part 1, we go over the basic setup for this blog. I talk about the previous…

📅 19 August, 2018

Breaking your mind currying functions in ruby

I recently stumbled across an amazing, and mind breaking method in ruby. That method is . Here is the documentation for from ruby 2.4’s…

📅 03 May, 2018

Matching Terminal and Vim colors automatically

I’ve always been a bit of a chameleon when it comes to colors in my terminal. I am never settled on just one scheme. Sometimes I’ll go a…

📅 30 November, 2017

Parsing XML in ES6

Let’s say you’re a developer and you’re working on the latest disruptive app. This app tells you the property value of elderly homes in your…

📅 09 November, 2017

Redirection in Ember Simple Auth

Ember Simple Auth (ESA) is an amazing addon that enables Ember applications to authenticate and authorize users. I have used it in multiple…

📅 01 September, 2017

Binary Search in ES6

The binary search is an algorithm used to find the position of an element in a sorted array. This is one of my favorite algorithms because…

📅 01 May, 2015