Jovi De Croock

Jovi De Croock

Software Engineer

Blog

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My thoughts in a semi-raw form, a lot of these posts contain what goes around in my mind throughout a day.

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  • 2026-05-12Hardening publishing & consuming

    A practical look at reducing blast radius in npm publishing workflows — environment-gated OIDC publishing, limiting manual access, and what consumers can do on their end.

    engineeringopen-sourcesecurity
  • 2026-03-22Bridging the Server-Client Boundary with Signals

    How mixed-signals turns server-side Preact Signals into real-time shared state across clients, and what that can look like in tech like Cloudflare Durable Objects

    engineeringfront-endopen-source
  • 2026-03-16I have changed my mind about GraphQL

    Boilerplate became cheap, but GraphQL still wins when a durable schema contract matters across teams and clients.

    graphqlresttrpcllmfront-end
  • 2026-03-12Letting LLMs Debug Signal Lifecycles

    How we turned Vite into a local debugging API so an LLM can inspect signal updates, page events, and network context while driving the browser.

    engineeringfront-endopen-source
  • 2026-02-15Thinking About Effect Subscriptions

    Understanding how effect automatically tracks signal dependencies and the edge cases where you need to be intentional about subscriptions.

    signalsfront-end
  • 2026-01-28Why Computed Signals Matter

    Understanding the critical difference between using signal values directly and wrapping them in computeds for optimal performance.

    signalsperformancefront-end
  • 2026-01-18Debugging signals

    Understanding how to debug signals-based state changes and visualize the dependency graph.

    front-end
  • 2025-12-09The Browser Has Everything You Need

    Stop treating SPAs and SSR as opposing paradigms. The browser already loads resources in parallel but you have to use it.

    front-endperformanceweb
  • 2025-10-17State and rerenders

    Exploring the paradigm shift from 'render where you create state' to 'render where you use state'.

    vdomstatefront-end
  • 2025-10-12GraphQL Myths

    Common misconceptions about GraphQL and how persisted operations address them.

    graphqlperformancefront-end
  • 2024-08-02Surgical Rendering with any API

    A deep dive into how signals can optimize rendering performance across various API types.

    graphqlfront-end
  • 2025-07-16Beyond Hooks, why Signals and State Models

    Exploring how Preact Signals promote better separation of concerns through dedicated state models.

    statevdomfront-end
  • 2025-06-29The GraphQL Asterisk Problem: When Benefits Come with Caveats

    An exploration of the trade-offs and considerations when using GraphQL and its alternatives.

    graphqlthinking
  • 2025-05-30Tracking context

    Signals and the way they register on tracking contexts within your application.

    engineeringfront-end
  • 2025-03-02Child diffing, with offsets

    In Preact 10.16 we drastically changed how we diff children in Preact, let's take a look at how it works.

    vdomstatefront-end
  • 2024-12-13Signals, pull-based values

    Let's look at how signals can offer wins over hooks.

    vdomstatefront-end
  • 2024-09-15Fragments in VDOM

    Fragments, a seemingly convenient subject isn't all that straight-forward.

    vdomfront-endopen-source
  • 2024-07-27GraphQL's missing feature

    The concept of fragment composition is great but there's a fundamentally missing feature to make it feel great

    graphql
  • Preact X, a story of stability

    Preact X has been released for five years, let's go over all the exciting things that have happened.

    externalthinking
  • 2024-03-04Unreliable vendors

    What can we do to prevent our applications getting taken down by third parties, and if we do go down, how can we optimise for recovery.

    engineeringthinking
  • 2024-01-26GraphQL Caching Abstract Types

    A quick exploration of how a client-side cache looks at abstract and concrete types in GraphQL.

    graphqlfront-end
  • 2023-12-28GraphQL Development Workflow

    An opinionated development workflow I have enjoyed using when it comes to GraphQL.

    graphqlfront-end
  • 2023-07-23GraphQL Persisted Operations

    Persisted operations are a way to introduce caching and additional security to your GraphQL Endpoint.

    performancegraphqlfront-end
  • 2022-09-11Unique identifier in Preact

    Getting unique tree-identifiers consistent across server and client.

    vdomfront-endopen-source
  • 2022-07-07Browser timings

    When exploring a bug in Preact we came across a few quirks with regards to (micro)ticks and events.

    vdomfront-end
  • 2022-05-20Hydration in Preact

    We see a lot of talk about hydration, what is it and where is it applied?

    vdomfront-end
  • 2022-04-09State and VDOM

    We often talk about state in context, ... but this can be a footgun, let's take a closer look at how library authors bypass this.

    vdomstatefront-end
  • 2022-04-07Suspense, data and SSR

    How do we handle Asynchronous data in a situation where it feels the runtime is idle, how does Suspense tie into this and extending into ssr.

    vdomsuspensefront-endserver-side-rendering
  • 2022-07-04Controlled inputs

    Controlled and uncontrolled inputs have always been a big subject, what does it actually mean, to be (un)controlled?

    vdomfront-end
  • 2022-02-14Virtual Dom optimizations

    As one of the core maintainers of Preact I think a lot about VDOM and how to optimize the common actions of library-consumers.

    vdomfront-end