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Out of Scope

A web developer's musings on software, product management, and other vaguely related topics.

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The Legend of Zelda: The Time Travelling Salesman

The travelling salesman problem is a well-known problem in computer science. The salesman needs to visit a number of cities on a map and…

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Shortcuts

Sometimes taking a shortcut means you know a faster way of getting somewhere.Other times, it means you save some time at the expense of…

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Because or in spite of

When a project with unique characteristics works, it may be tempting to think it’s working because of these characteristics.The only way to…

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Name with intention not implementation

If you’ve been programming for a few years now, you’ve likely come across this quote:There are only two hard things in Computer Science…

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How to get 20,000 reputation points on Stack Overflow

I recently (October 16, 2015) hit 20,000 reputation points on Stack Overflow putting me, at the time of writing, in the top 2% of users.2…

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Grid Framework

I woke up the other weekend and thought to myself, “there aren’t enough CSS grids in this world, how can I fix that”. Instead of simply…

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Link drop: HTML and CSS coding guidelines

I’ve been reading a lot about coding guidelines lately, so I figured I would share the best resources I found. When working as part of a…

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Don't sell your time

A lot of people struggle to put a price on their own work. The logic usually goes like this: 100 hours * $75 per hour = $7500. Then comes…

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Upgrading Bootstrap from 2 to 3 (or between any major versions)

When software goes from one major version to another, it usually means one thing: things are going to break.For CSS/front-end frameworks…

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Startup books reviewed

If you’re thinking of starting a business or are working for a startup, there are worse things you could do than read those books. Instead…

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1 year with the Kindle

A year ago I decided to treat myself with the Kindle (Paperwhite). I wasn’t a huge reader back then, but I averaged between 2 or 3 books a…

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3 little gems or how to start doing the hard work

I’ve been programming in Ruby (on Rails mostly) for about 3 years now, but until recently I had no idea how to create a gem (a Ruby plugin…

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Not every hit has to be a home run

I’m not a huge baseball fan, but I thought this analogy for achieving success in whatever endeavor you pursue was pretty spot on. When…

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“Sorry, that username is already taken”

Unless you were an early adopter or you have a very unusual name, being able to register your regular username on a website is a rare feat…

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Now you're thinking with Bootstrap - Part 2

This blog post uses Ruby on Rails as the web framework, but most of the points should apply to your framework of choice. It also focuses on…

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Reddit's empire no longer founded on a flawed algorithm

About a month ago on January 12 2014, reddit made a seemingly minor change to its algorithm. This algorithm is responsible for determining…

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Link Drop - February 2014: Online Design Creators

Online design tools are getting more and more popular. I’ve gathered a few of the more popular ones. I haven’t tried any very seriously as I…

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CSS only menu toggle - no JavaScript required

A lot of menus require JavaScript to toggle its visibility. However, it’s very simple to accomplish the same task without any JavaScript by…

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Take the blame

Whenever something doesn’t go the way it should, try something new, take the blame. Whether it happened to you or a coworker, it doesn’t…

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Legitimate uses of browsers' "porn mode"

Often labelled as porn mode, the incognito/privacy/anonymous mode on browsers can be very useful for web developers.First, it’s very helpful…

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Now you're thinking with Bootstrap - Part 1

A lot of people complain that Bootstrap or Foundation are too bloated for a production app. But really, what I hear when people say that is…

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How to survive with an endless to-do list

In our personal and professional lives, most of us have to live with a never-ending list of tasks. Just for example, on my list of personal…

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