Interesting reads — volume #11
This month there may be more React links than usual due to me building a new web app using React hooks and learning the intricacies of hooks to stop DDoSing my app 😜
As there are 12+ interesting articles and you don’t have the time to read all of them, do not skip over the last one — “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice”. There are also few short but appetizing reads.
Continuous Deployments for WordPress Using GitHub Actions
I was planning to test out GitHub’s actions and deployment was the one that made the most sense to me. This awesome article from CSS Tricks teaches us how to deploy and build your WordPress theme but it definitely can be used for anything else as well. It builds your package with Composer and NPM and uses rsync to copy files over to your production server.
If you are interested in DB migrations and deploying Laravel apps check https://atymic.dev/blog/github-actions-laravel-ci-cd/, https://samuelstancl.me/blog/push-deploy-a-laravel-app-for-free-with-github-actions/ or https://laravel-news.com/push-deploy-with-github-actions as they have good ideas and tips.
How to Create Custom WordPress Editor Blocks in 2020
Overview of how to build a WP Gutenberg block by Peter Tasker. It leverages the latest tips, tricks, and tools such as create-guten-block. You don’t have to be a React expert to follow along and to build your own block.
React Hooks — Understanding Component Re-renders
Overview of most used React hooks with a detailed explanation when each of them is being used during component rendering lifecycle. Do read it if you are starting using React hooks and before you start DDoSing your own API endpoints. And while we’re discussing React Hooks, Kent C Dodds has written an excellent article on useMemo and useCallback hooks.
Logpoints: the best Chrome DevTools feature you aren’t using yet
Awesome little helper in Chrome DevTools that can be quite handy and can save you the time to manually write console.log. As I don’t write a lot of JavaScript, console.log is my go-to debugging tool. I know you still use it too 😉
Sharingbuttons.io
“Super fast and easy Social Media Sharing Buttons. No JavaScript. No tracking.” They most certainly do deliver as promised.
Favorite JavaScript utilities in a single line of code! No more!
180 favorite JavaScript Utilities in a single line of code! This one is definitely worth bookmarking.
TLDR: Writing a Slack bot to Summarize Articles
Learn how to integrate a state-of-the-art machine learning model into a Slack bot to generate a summary of articles shared by their URL commonly known as TLDR; (too long, didn’t read). It uses cortex.dev, serverless framework deployed on AWS Lambda and AWS SQS.
You don’t have to be Twitter-famous to grow your blog
Newsletter email course with great tips on blogging for newbs like me. JK, I believe everybody will find something useful there. Each day/email you get homework to work on :) If you’re interested in writing articles for money check out this great overview: https://dev.to/hyvortalk/10-companies-that-you-can-write-for-and-get-paid-as-a-developer-100-per-article-4dd7
Use Twitter to find developer friends near you
A quick little tip on how to search through Twitter using geocoding.
We now use 100% renewable energy at the office, and at home!
By reading this amazing and inspiring article from one of the most coveted WordPress web agencies I’ve learned that B Corps exists and that the movement is marching ahead (https://bcorporation.net/about-b-corps). Faith in humanity and capitalism restored 😀
Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage
Fascinating article about food delivery business (Doordash and Uber Eats), which starts to look a lot like a negative-sum game (where at the end everybody is at loss). At best 😀
68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
Awesome pieces of advice by Kevin Kelly (an author and former executive editor of Wired). The one that resonates with me the most is: “Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.” You need to bookmark this and read it once a week until you memorize them all.
So far sticking to daily scheduled 5 minutes of preparing content for Interesting Reads is working for me. Some days I’m spending less than 5 mins and just saving the links I find worthy, and on some, I spend more time and write a description for those links. I hope this becomes a habit soon so I can remove daily reminders.
