A React Crash Course for Backend Dinosaurs
–Brandon Bruno
(my notes from the lecture)
Perfect course for me – a guy who (basically) knows what React is but not a lot beyond that. (And at 41 I probably qualify for dinosaur status, so there is that). Mr. Bruno had a refreshingly dry sense of humor.
I could be wrong about this but I thought React kinda/sorta sounded like Visual Basic? I.e. you have “components” (all the things on a page) that can then have code stapled onto them. React is apparently a “library not a framework” so I might need to look up exactly what the differentiation is there. At any rate it seems to couple tightly with JS. It is mainly for the purpose of building components.
A fact I had known a bit before – it’s primarily maintained by Facebook (or “Meta” I guess we’re calling it now) and also a community of React devs.
Intro to Amazon AWS
–Brian Korzynski
(my notes from the lecture)
A quick primer for spinning up a new project using AWS and some of the core benefits and uses the AWS cloud service can provide.
S3 covered using AWS for basically a cloud-based file system. SQS can queue requests to your web app to prevent crashing. Push notifications are exactly what they sound like, but interesting to see the provider side of it.
I wonder about trying this out in the future for some projects I have in mind. I didn’t realize AWS could be so accessible to play around with. (I had been involved in a project a few years ago putting a corporate web app onto AWS so I guess I always thought of it as an exclusively high-end cloud service).
End to End Testing with Cypress
–Avindra Fernando
(my notes from the lecture)
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What’s a selenium wrapper?
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Spies, stubs, clocks (network control)
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Fixtures = mock data
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Support = repeated logic
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Json = cypress settings
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Integration =test files
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Can create custom, on the fly functions to reuse using the arrow function format
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Base url in JSon file
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Cy.intercept (spies)
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Can also stub
A good generalized walk-through of Cypress E2E testing.
Interesting to see a break-out of all the things Cypress encapsulates (frameworks, assertions, test runner, etc.)
The new thing I learned was about the “spies” for the purposes of network control. These can be used in conjunction with stubs.
This was a good primer before jumping into Cypress testing at work.
Learn Functional Programming through Construction: First Principles
(The Mars Rover scenario)
–Cameron Presley
(my notes from the lecture)
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HTTPS://blog.thesoftware mentor.com
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Determine nouns in reqs
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Model those nouns , commands (verbs)
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Modeling is properties
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Function: all elements on left map to an element on right
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In case of platypus map to default command ‘unknown’ map to DO NOTHING method
I thought I would throw in one “Difficulty Mode: High” lecture on each day to challenge myself. This lecture fit the bill perfectly – way over my head but I could still follow what the speaker was talking about and it was an interesting and thought-provoking topic (especially with the Mars Rover scenario).
The presenter was a hoot, really loved the guy. He introduced some very elegant ideas about functional programming that had never occurred to me (since I don’t typically spend a lot of time thinking about functional programming, but maybe I will now?)
- Modeling – while he was talking about modeling a requirements document for coding I think it’s an interesting idea that could have a lot of applications – filed away in my brain for future implementation.
- The simple definition of a “Function” (see above) was one I’ve known since high school Algebra but had never thought to apply in the sense of coding.
- I will always think of a “Platypus” scenario now. That is firmly in my vocabulary.