https://survivejs.com/ 2024-11-21T00:00:00.000Z https://survivejs.com/blog/impressions-on-web-summit-2024/ 2024-11-21T00:00:00.000Z 2024-11-21T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Impressions on Web Summit 2024 Web Summit 2024 occurred from 11 to 14.11 in Lisbon, Portugal. Despite its name, the summit does not focus on the web. Instead, it is the largest startup fair in the world, boasting 70.000 yearly visitors. I had the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/state-ref-interview/ 2024-10-18T00:00:00.000Z 2024-10-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

State management is one of those recurring themes in frontend development. State becomes an issue when you try to build something even a little complex. This time I'm interviewing Kim Jinwoo about state-ref, his technology agnostic solution to the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/kaibanjs-interview/ 2024-10-11T00:00:00.000Z 2024-10-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been a lot of interest in AI systems. The question is, how do you build your agents, for example? In this interview, we will look into a JavaScript-based solution called KaibanJS with its author Dariel Vila.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/how-to-get-started-with-web-development-in-2024/ 2024-09-23T00:00:00.000Z 2024-09-23T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In the past few years, technologies such as ChatGPT have changed the way we work. It has never been as easy to develop web applications as today, but it also presents challenges of its own since the web was not originally meant as an application…

https://survivejs.com/blog/singulatron-interview/ 2024-08-22T00:00:00.000Z 2024-08-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

You could say Artificial Intelligence (AI) is eating the world. The problem is that often, you have to use an external service to leverage its benefits. Another option is to host AI solutions on your own, and that is where Singulatron by Janos…

https://survivejs.com/blog/pyramid-of-doom/ 2024-05-31T00:00:00.000Z 2024-05-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In this post, I will introduce you to the concept of the pyramid of doom. Although the pattern is not typical anymore, it is good to know how you might solve this anti-pattern, as there are several ways to approach it. The pyramid of doom could be…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-site-rewrite/ 2024-05-21T00:00:00.000Z 2024-05-21T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you have used this site earlier, you might have noticed it looks different now. That is because I did a massive rewrite of it. I had the following targets with the work: The new site should build faster - I built the old one with Antwar, my now…

https://survivejs.com/blog/relativeci-interview/ 2023-07-07T00:00:00.000Z 2023-07-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In terms of development productivity, Continuous Integration (CI) has become a common technique across development teams across the world. In this article, I'll interview Viorel Cojocaru about the topic to learn more. Can you tell a bit about…

https://survivejs.com/blog/future-frontend-interview/ 2023-01-30T00:00:00.000Z 2023-01-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

For a conference organizer, one of the hardest things to do is to keep your conference relevant. That is exactly the problem we faced with React Finland. As a result, we decided to pivot from React into frontend. Future Frontend conference was born…

https://survivejs.com/blog/console-cat-interview/ 2022-07-28T00:00:00.000Z 2022-07-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As an open source developer of Node.js command line tools, you often have the question of which versions are being used and how. To solve the problem, Matt Evenson developed a service called Console Cat. Read on to learn more about it. Can you tell…

https://survivejs.com/blog/nhost-interview/ 2022-01-27T00:00:00.000Z 2022-01-27T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing a full-blown web application, including a backend, can be quite an undertaking for a single developer or a small team. Several solutions have appeared in the market during the last few years that make this less daunting. To learn about…

https://survivejs.com/blog/how-to-tame-dev-deps/ 2022-01-13T00:00:00.000Z 2022-01-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's not uncommon for a normal JavaScript application to have thousands of dependencies. Once you start having multiple projects, the problem of having to maintain them is pronounced. It's for this reason that solutions like Create React App and Nx…

https://survivejs.com/blog/medusa-interview/ 2021-12-14T00:00:00.000Z 2021-12-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Building an online shop can be complex, and there are many factors to consider, not to mention compliance with all the different laws. To learn more about the niche and how to get into e-commerce, I am interviewing Sebastian Rindom from Medusa. Can…

https://survivejs.com/blog/ihatereading-interview/ 2021-06-16T00:00:00.000Z 2021-06-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing content is hard work, and it takes consistent effort to become a successful content producer. To learn more about one approach, I am interviewing Shrey Vijayvargiya about iHateReading. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Shrey…

https://survivejs.com/blog/forage-interview/ 2021-05-31T00:00:00.000Z 2021-05-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Analytics is a big topic. What you don't know, you cannot optimize. To learn more about it, I am interviewing Steven Malone about Forage Analytics, an analytics solution aimed for React Native. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Steven…

https://survivejs.com/blog/blitz-interview/ 2021-04-12T00:00:00.000Z 2021-04-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Although React is a UI library, that doesn't mean you couldn't write full-stack applications around it. Frameworks, such as Next.js, have appeared to make it easier. To learn more about one such framework, Blitz.js, I am interviewing Brandon Bayer.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/rubico-interview/ 2021-03-10T00:00:00.000Z 2021-03-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the tricky parts of JavaScript is dealing with asynchronous behavior. The language itself has introduced improved syntax (async/await) and utilities like Promise.all and Promise.race but it's not enough for more advanced use cases. To learn…

https://survivejs.com/blog/propagate-interview/ 2021-02-12T00:00:00.000Z 2021-02-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing your products is both exciting and challenging. There's both the business side and the development side to worry about and to manage. Both have to be on a good enough level for the product to work. In this interview, we'll learn about a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/grucloud-interview/ 2021-02-03T00:00:00.000Z 2021-02-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

For me, it's always amazing how complex infrastructure it's possible to configure these days. If you master a platform like AWS or GCP, you can do quite a lot. Earlier it took a lot of expertise and hardware to pull this off, and these days you can…

https://survivejs.com/blog/renderlesskit-interview/ 2021-01-29T00:00:00.000Z 2021-01-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When developing user interfaces with React, you often create a set of basic primitives. Another option is to consume them from a third-party library and perhaps build more complex components yourself. To learn about a potential solution to the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/pixelcraft-interview/ 2021-01-19T00:00:00.000Z 2021-01-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's cool to write small web applications for the sake of learning. You can set the boundaries yourself and experiment with new technologies. Abhishek Chaudhary developed a pixel art editor to learn, and in this interview he'll give an overview of…

https://survivejs.com/blog/nullstack-interview/ 2021-01-15T00:00:00.000Z 2021-01-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you look into what happened during the past few years in the world of JavaScript, you can see that component thinking made it to the mainstream. Even with this, there's still some kind of a boundary between the frontend and the backend. In this…

https://survivejs.com/blog/preloading-web-assets/ 2020-12-08T00:00:00.000Z 2020-12-08T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Preloading data is useful yet perhaps underused web development technique. When it comes to performance, the best work is the one you don't have to do. The second best is the one you can do ahead of time. Preloading achieves exactly this as it gives…

https://survivejs.com/blog/cv-compiler-interview/ 2020-12-01T00:00:00.000Z 2020-12-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When you apply for a new position or a business case, often people want to see your CV (Curriculum Vitae). Although it sounds simple to create one, it's far from it. Andrew Stetsenko has created a service that addresses the problem. Read on to learn…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-book-version-3/ 2020-11-27T00:00:00.000Z 2020-11-27T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Doing a paper release of a book comes with additional thrill as once you go paper, there's no going back. Any mistakes you might have in the book are going to remain until you make a new edition. It's for this reason that especially technical books…

https://survivejs.com/blog/plasmic-interview/ 2020-11-16T00:00:00.000Z 2020-11-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing user interfaces with React tends to require effort and often it's done at the level of code. What if we could create user interfaces in the browser itself? It's this question that we'll explore in this interview of Yang Zhang. Can you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/multi-platform-interview/ 2020-11-09T00:00:00.000Z 2020-11-09T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing multi-platform applications is difficult. Thankfully the advent of JavaScript has made it a possibility for an increasing amount of developers. To learn more about the approach, I am interviewing Valentyn Poliskyi. Can you tell a bit…

https://survivejs.com/blog/rockpack-interview/ 2020-11-02T00:00:00.000Z 2020-11-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As you might know, configuring webpack isn't the most fun thing in the world and that's exactly the reason why I wrote a thick book about it. For many React users, either Create React App (CRA) or framework such as Next.js hides a lot of the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-book-webpack-5-updates/ 2020-10-30T00:00:00.000Z 2020-10-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Webpack 5 has been available for a couple of weeks by now. The previous release of the book covered majority of the required changes but I realized there's still more work and updates to be done as I perused through the official release post. You…

https://survivejs.com/blog/e2e-interview/ 2020-10-29T00:00:00.000Z 2020-10-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Testing is topic that comes up often in software development as it's an important part of verifying what we did works. That said, it's a complex topic given there are so many ways to test. To understand end-to-end testing better, I am interviewing…

https://survivejs.com/blog/algolia-with-netlify-interview/ 2020-10-19T00:00:00.000Z 2020-10-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Setting up and maintaining a search on a static site is often a chore. You could handle indexing yourself using a solution like Lunr but even with that you'll encounter limitations as the size of the index grows. That's where services like Algolia…

https://survivejs.com/blog/ukrainian-developer-market-interview/ 2020-10-12T00:00:00.000Z 2020-10-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I've encountered many Ukrainian developers during my career and even visited the country a couple of times speaking at conferences. During each trip, it was surprising to me how vibrant the developer community is there. To learn about Ukrainian…

https://survivejs.com/blog/eleventy-interview/ 2020-10-05T00:00:00.000Z 2020-10-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Static site generation is a topic that is becoming increasingly popular due to the rise of JAMStack. Instead of maintaining a server, the idea is to generate static markup for the entire site. Depending on the use case, this can be a great fit that…

https://survivejs.com/blog/how-to-learn-effectively-as-a-developer/ 2020-09-24T00:00:00.000Z 2020-09-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I recently received an interesting question from a reader that changed his career path and headed to technology. He mentioned he was getting overwhelmed by the amount of information related to web development and computer science. He was asking my…

https://survivejs.com/blog/pipcook-interview/ 2020-09-14T00:00:00.000Z 2020-09-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There's a lot of excitement about machine learning and its applications. The question is, what can you do with and where to apply the technique and how. To learn more, I am interviewing Wenhe (Eric) Li, the creator of Pipcook. Can you tell a bit…

https://survivejs.com/blog/nocode-interview/ 2020-09-07T00:00:00.000Z 2020-09-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

What if you could create programs without coding? If you've ever used something like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, you've already done this at one level. NoCode programming is an emerging topic. To learn more about it, I am interviewing Alex…

https://survivejs.com/blog/extendsclass-interview/ 2020-09-03T00:00:00.000Z 2020-09-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the great things about being a developer is that you can literally create your own tools to make it easier to do your work. Cyril Bois has been developing a set of tools at ExtendsClass for a while and now we have a good chance to learn more.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-book-updated-to-webpack-5/ 2020-08-28T00:00:00.000Z 2020-08-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Webpack 5 is getting near and it felt like a good time to update the book. Although it's still in beta, it seems quite stable already and it's worth experimenting with it. During this work, I went through my long list of TODOs that had accrued since…

https://survivejs.com/blog/midway-interview/ 2020-08-24T00:00:00.000Z 2020-08-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Serverless computing is one of those approaches that has taken the world by storm. The idea is to make computing a flexible resource you consume on-demand. Compared to earlier models, it scales in terms of demand instead of requiring an upfront…

https://survivejs.com/blog/enroute-interview/ 2020-08-12T00:00:00.000Z 2020-08-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When developing APIs, you often get questions like how to combine and control data coming from different sources. That's where proxy-based approaches come in. To understand one such in better detail, I am interviewing Chintan Takker as he developed…

https://survivejs.com/blog/detox-interview/ 2020-08-06T00:00:00.000Z 2020-08-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Testing mobile applications is a tough topic as you have to worry about different devices, and the interaction model is challenging. Detox is a solution built specifically for React Native, and in this interview we'll learn more about the approach…

https://survivejs.com/blog/sematext-monitoring-interview/ 2020-06-18T00:00:00.000Z 2020-06-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Anything you don't measure or test, you cannot improve. The wisdom applies particularly to web as we develop our websites and applications. Without any kind of monitoring solution in place, you are flying blind. To learn more about the topic, I am…

https://survivejs.com/blog/javascript-security-interview/ 2020-04-28T00:00:00.000Z 2020-04-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Given JavaScript dominates the world of web development, it has become a good target for malicious actors. Furthermore, the flexibility has led to a plethora of attack vectors for cybercriminals making JavaScript security an important topic for web…

https://survivejs.com/blog/monolisa-interview/ 2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z 2020-03-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As a developer, font is something you end up using every day at your work. One year ago I teamed up with Andrey Okonetchikov and Marcus Sterz, to create a new typeface for programming. In this interview, you'll learn more about MonoLisa from Marcus'…

https://survivejs.com/blog/debugging-interview/ 2020-03-04T00:00:00.000Z 2020-03-04T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Debugging JavaScript is one of those topics where people tend to be divided into two camps - those that console.log and those that use a debugger. In this interview, I am learning more about the topic from Mehdi Osman, the CEO of a company called…

https://survivejs.com/blog/cosmos-interview/ 2020-02-13T00:00:00.000Z 2020-02-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing user interfaces can be complex as you have to think about different ways it's going to be used and you have to design patterns and components to use for defining it. That's where tools like style guides come in. Earlier, I interviewed…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webix-interview/ 2020-02-07T00:00:00.000Z 2020-02-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's something that has changed during the past few years, it's the way we develop user interfaces using JavaScript. Earlier we've learned about solutions, such as Reakit. Now it's time to look into a library designed especially for rapid…

https://survivejs.com/blog/vpn-interview/ 2020-01-28T00:00:00.000Z 2020-01-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one web technology I never looked that much into, it's VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). In these times when privacy is more valued than ever, the technology has become more relevant to many users and developers. To understand the topic…

https://survivejs.com/blog/squareboat-interview/ 2019-12-16T00:00:00.000Z 2019-12-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

What is it like to grow an IT business? At least in my experience, it's not the easiest thing to do, and there are many things you have to get right to stay floating. To learn more about the topic, I am interviewing Gaurav Gupta about his company,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/tomo-interview/ 2019-09-04T00:00:00.000Z 2019-09-04T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Although tools like create-react-app (CRA) are great, they can at times be inflexible. They might provide great defaults but at the same time you lose some power and room for experimentation. To learn more about an alternative tool, I'm interviewing…

https://survivejs.com/blog/secure-coding-interview/ 2019-07-31T00:00:00.000Z 2019-07-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There's more than one way to code, and you'll find multiple programming styles. One aspect that's perhaps neglected sometimes is secure coding. To learn more about the topic, I'm interviewing Liran Tal, a security expert. Can you tell a bit about…

https://survivejs.com/blog/csscamp-jscamp-2019/ 2019-07-27T00:00:00.000Z 2019-07-27T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to CSSCamp 2019 (17.07) and JSCamp 2019 (18-19.07) by David Pich, the main organizer, to help out. I performed speaker interviews and a part of the Twitter coverage while documenting the event a bit. Overview of CSSCamp and JSCamp 2019…

https://survivejs.com/blog/sketch-sh-interview/ 2019-07-16T00:00:00.000Z 2019-07-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Often learning a new programming language like ReasonML can be an arduous process as you have to set up the environment and tooling before you can begin learning. That's where Sketch.sh by Nguyen Dang Khoa comes in. It's an online service addressing…

https://survivejs.com/blog/workerconf-2019/ 2019-07-02T00:00:00.000Z 2019-07-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to WorkerConf 2019 (27-28.06) as a speaker. I also participated a workshop and went hiking after the conference. It was a small-scale conference (about 80 people) held in Dornbirn, Austria. It was my second time in the city and I…

https://survivejs.com/blog/minima-interview/ 2019-06-17T00:00:00.000Z 2019-06-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one thing that transformed my life, it's the adoption of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. The key part for me was to begin what's to be done and then committing on doing it. I use OmniFocus and Google Keep for this and while it…

https://survivejs.com/blog/reakit-interview/ 2019-06-10T00:00:00.000Z 2019-06-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When building web applications and sites using React, you have to think carefully about the user interface. You might either go with an established user interface library, develop your own, or try a bit of both. One of the aspects that often is…

https://survivejs.com/blog/benefit-interview/ 2019-06-03T00:00:00.000Z 2019-06-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the developments that has began to change the way we style our applications and sites is the introduction of utility classes. Tailwind is an example of a popular framework that has adopted the approach. To learn more about the approach, I am…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-ui-interview/ 2019-05-31T00:00:00.000Z 2019-05-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Webpack is infamous for being a bundler that's not entirely easy to configure. That's one of the main reasons why I wrote the webpack book available on this site. To be fair, webpack doesn't require as much configuration as it did before. To…

https://survivejs.com/blog/reasonml-interview/ 2019-05-27T00:00:00.000Z 2019-05-27T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I've had the chance to observe the evolution of the ReasonML ecosystem up close. For me, it seems to solve many pain points of the current JavaScript/TypeScript based web ecosystem by addressing many of the issues in the language itself. To…

https://survivejs.com/blog/express-gateway-interview/ 2019-04-22T00:00:00.000Z 2019-04-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you are dealing with microservices, you get questions like how to manage and orchestrate them. Vincenzo Chianese has come up with a solution designed for the popular Node.js web framework Express.js. Learn more about Express Gateway in this…

https://survivejs.com/blog/typeof-2019/ 2019-04-06T00:00:00.000Z 2019-04-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to typeof 2019 (27-29.03) as a speaker and a workshop instructor. It was a small-scale conference (about 200 people) held in Porto, Portugal. It was my second time in Portugal (first time in mainland) and I enjoyed the trip a lot.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/fp-interview/ 2019-04-05T00:00:00.000Z 2019-04-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one programming style I like a lot, it's functional programming. Although it's not the best fit for all problems, often having means to decompose a problem into smaller parts to be solved separately through composition has proven to be…

https://survivejs.com/blog/dredd-interview/ 2019-03-22T00:00:00.000Z 2019-03-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one thing developers have to deal with most of the days, it's APIs. For web developers, this often means dealing with HTTP and external services. The question is, how to test the APIs and make sure everything works as we expect. For this…

https://survivejs.com/blog/managing-css-in-js-with-namespaces/ 2019-03-19T00:00:00.000Z 2019-03-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I've settled on using Emotion for styling my React applications. The API is close to styled-components and especially Emotion 10 is filled with functionality. I use only a small part of it in my daily work. As I've been working on the print graphics…

https://survivejs.com/blog/atomic-layout-interview/ 2019-03-15T00:00:00.000Z 2019-03-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Often layouting a web page is an afterthought. Put a div here and there, sprinkle some CSS, and call it done. Perhaps you are more advanced and use CSS Grids to figure out exact positioning. What if there was an alternative way to achieve the same…

https://survivejs.com/blog/pesto-interview/ 2019-03-08T00:00:00.000Z 2019-03-08T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the unique aspects of the internet is that it makes us all equal in a strange way. What it means is that collaboration is possible on a new level as we aren't restricted by our local communities anymore. The internet has led to changes in the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/codecrumbs-interview/ 2019-03-01T00:00:00.000Z 2019-03-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developers spend most of their time reading and understanding code. That said, not much has changed in the past decades in the way we do it. Perhaps the IDEs have become smarter but we still use roughly the same techniques as before. I prefer to…

https://survivejs.com/blog/packtracker-interview/ 2019-02-22T00:00:00.000Z 2019-02-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When using webpack to bundle your project, it's important to keep an eye on the output. There are multiple tools for this purpose. Now there's also a service. In this interview with Jonathan D. Johnson, you'll learn about packtracker.io. Can you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/overmind-interview/ 2019-02-15T00:00:00.000Z 2019-06-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Although state management solutions like Redux have become the standard, at least with React, there's still room for innovation in the space. Sometimes what happens is that technology becomes reinterpreted. When you can see the technology in…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-config-plugins-interview/ 2019-01-18T00:00:00.000Z 2019-01-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Managing webpack configuration can get tough especially if you try to track best practices and optimizations. To address this problem, Jan Nicklas has come up with a solution in the form of webpack plugins. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Jan…

https://survivejs.com/blog/summary-of-2018/ 2019-01-03T00:00:00.000Z 2019-01-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

2018 was mostly a consulting year for me. I also did travel within Europe and discovered countries such as Croatia and Armenia. It was my first year as a conference organizer as I helped to set up two conferences in Helsinki, Finland. Both were well…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-plugin-serve-interview/ 2018-12-13T00:00:00.000Z 2018-12-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Usually, when you use webpack, you also have to set up its development server as well. Traditionally doing this hasn't been trivial and has required a certain amount of expertise. That is one of the reasons why I wrote the webpack book available on…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-union-interview/ 2018-12-02T00:00:00.000Z 2018-12-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

React has uses beyond application development. One of the perhaps surprising use cases is to integrate it within a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress. To get a better idea of how this could work out, I am interviewing Tomáš Konrády.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/unicon-interview/ 2018-11-26T00:00:00.000Z 2018-11-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

So far design and development have been considered separate disciplines. Recently tooling has begun to appear to bridge this gap. To understand more about the topic, I am interviewing Travis Arnold, the author of Unicon. Can you tell a bit about…

https://survivejs.com/blog/halfstack-2018/ 2018-11-18T00:00:00.000Z 2018-11-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to HalfStack London 2018 as a guest as we are considering bringing the conference series to Vienna. Therefore it was vital for me to get an idea of the format and how the event runs. It was my second visit to London. Although the city…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-india-interview/ 2018-11-11T00:00:00.000Z 2018-11-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It is exciting to organize a conference, especially when it's the first of its kind in a region. To learn more about one such event, I'm interviewing Manjula Dube from the React India (22-24.08.2019) team. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Manjula…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webcampzg-2018/ 2018-10-10T00:00:00.000Z 2018-10-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to WebCamp Zagreb as a speaker and a workshop trainer. I gave one of my webpack workshops at the event and discussed static websites and the way I see them in my talk. It was my first time in Zagreb, and I was pleasantly surprised by…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webexpo-2018/ 2018-09-24T00:00:00.000Z 2018-09-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to WebExpo 2018 as a visitor since I spoke at the conference last year. Prague is one of my favorite cities in Europe, and the conference was good last year, so I decided to go again. Like last time, also this time most of the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/refract-interview/ 2018-09-16T00:00:00.000Z 2018-09-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's difficult to write an application without side effects. Consider handling requests, dealing with third parties, managing storage for example. These concerns come up often. Refract by Thomas Roch provides a solution to the problem for React…

https://survivejs.com/blog/dss-interview/ 2018-09-05T00:00:00.000Z 2018-09-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

CSS is perhaps one of the most controversial parts of web development. For some, it's the favorite, for some the least pleasant part. As a result, many solutions have appeared around it to make it more palatable to web developers. To learn more…

https://survivejs.com/blog/fall-2018-events/ 2018-09-04T00:00:00.000Z 2018-09-04T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Summer is over and I've made travel plans for the Fall. More details below. WebExpo - 21-23.09.2018 WebExpo 2018 I went to WebExpo last year for the first time. It's one of my favorite crossover conferences. It spans from development to business to…

https://survivejs.com/blog/uppy-interview/ 2018-07-17T00:00:00.000Z 2018-07-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Let's say you are building a CMS or a blog with an admin interface. It won't take long until you want to upload files to your service. There are standards for this, but eventually, you want to do something more complicated. That's where solutions…

https://survivejs.com/blog/graphql-finland-interview/ 2018-07-05T00:00:00.000Z 2018-07-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Following the success of React Finland, we decided to organize another event this year. GraphQL Finland has a different scope, and it's going to be the first Nordic GraphQL focused conference. To tell you more about the conference, I am interviewing…

https://survivejs.com/blog/pwa-interview/ 2018-06-25T00:00:00.000Z 2018-06-25T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though the web started from content, it has transformed into an application platform. Approaches like Progressive Web Apps are a clear sign of this. Maciej Caputa will explain the topic in more detail in this interview. Can you tell a bit about…

https://survivejs.com/blog/proppy-interview/ 2018-06-22T00:00:00.000Z 2018-06-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

You might be familiar with packages like Recompose that make it easier to compose components. Recompose is React-specific solution. What if there was something broader available? Proppy by Fahad Ibnay Heylaal is such a solution. T> I interviewed…

https://survivejs.com/blog/summer-2018-events/ 2018-05-30T00:00:00.000Z 2018-05-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Summer is a great time to travel and see new places. So far I've scheduled three events for the Summer although more may appear depending on the public interest. GrazJS - 06-07.06.2018 The first event where I'll take part this Summer is GrazJS…

https://survivejs.com/blog/fastpack-interview/ 2018-05-29T00:00:00.000Z 2018-05-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Tools like browserify and webpack popularized the idea of bundling. The idea is to transform your web application into a format that can be distributed to browsers. Bundlers operate on module level and can combine the assets in various ways.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/lint-staged-interview/ 2018-04-08T00:00:00.000Z 2018-04-08T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Although linting a project is a good technique to adopt, it comes with a cost as you have to wait for the linter to complete its work. Andrey Okonetchnikov figured out a way to solve the problem. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Andrey…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-book-updated-to-webpack-4/ 2018-03-19T00:00:00.000Z 2018-03-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Quite a bit has happened in the world of webpack. Most notably, the webpack reached version 4 recently. The purpose of this release of the book is to update it to support webpack 4 while preparing towards the next paper edition. Compared to the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-in-munich-may-2018/ 2018-03-17T00:00:00.000Z 2018-03-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In addition to writing and consulting, I do occasional training. Most often it's around my webpack book and it supports different levels of sessions well. Workshops also improve the material so the work feeds back to the book and strengthens it. To…

https://survivejs.com/blog/concat-2018/ 2018-03-05T00:00:00.000Z 2018-03-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I participated Concat 2018 at Salzburg this year. I held a four-hour webpack workshop with Tobias Koppers, the author of the tool, and visited the event itself. Overall, it was a great one-day dual-track conference, and I don't regret going. The…

https://survivejs.com/blog/verdaccio-interview/ 2018-02-26T00:00:00.000Z 2018-02-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you develop JavaScript applications, you most likely use npm, the most famous package manager available for JavaScript. At the time of writing, it hosts over 600 thousand packages, and the amount keeps rapidly increasing year by year. That said,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/parket-interview/ 2018-02-16T00:00:00.000Z 2018-02-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

State management is one of those topics that divides opinions. So far we've seen a couple of options so far. In this post, we'll cover Parket, a solution by Leah Ullmann. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Leah Ullmann|100|100|author I'm a (mostly)…

https://survivejs.com/blog/substyle-interview/ 2018-02-08T00:00:00.000Z 2018-02-08T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the tricky things about writing React components meant for public consumption is making them compatible with various styling approaches used by the community. The problem exists because application styling isn't considered as a first-class…

https://survivejs.com/blog/agentconf-2018/ 2018-02-06T00:00:00.000Z 2018-02-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to AgentConf 2018 on its second iteration about a month ago as one of the organizers saw a presentation of mine about npm packaging. I gained free entry to the conference against a lightning talk but more on that later. The concept is…

https://survivejs.com/blog/scriptconf-2018/ 2018-02-01T00:00:00.000Z 2018-02-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the benefits of living in Vienna is that it's easy to reach central Europe and its conferences. Given Linz is close to Vienna (about 90 minutes by train), I decided to visit ScriptConf. ScriptConf is a JavaScript themed single-track…

https://survivejs.com/blog/illuminate-interview/ 2018-01-30T00:00:00.000Z 2018-01-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the core features of this site is custom syntax highlighting. I had to figure out ways to deal with custom syntax provided by Leanpub. Initially, I implemented a solution based on PrismJS, but I wasn't entirely happy with it, and the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/logux-interview/ 2018-01-26T00:00:00.000Z 2018-01-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When you build a web application, you often have to communicate with a backend. It's not uncommon to do this using AJAX against a RESTful API. Logux by Andrey Sitnik is one possible alternative. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Andrey…

https://survivejs.com/blog/fastify-interview/ 2018-01-17T00:00:00.000Z 2018-01-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Servers, servers, servers. I've written a lot of Node.js servers since I began using it. Initially, I went through the API it provides but after a while most of the community settled on using Express. In this interview you'll learn about an…

https://survivejs.com/blog/bem-interview/ 2018-01-12T00:00:00.000Z 2018-01-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Developing large scale applications requires a certain amount of discipline. Sometimes it is enforced by the environment; sometimes you have to apply it yourself through conventions. Likely both are needed to some extent. As applications grow in…

https://survivejs.com/blog/summary-of-2017/ 2017-12-31T00:00:00.000Z 2017-12-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It was quite a year for me. You could say a life-changing one even. I visited at least ten countries in Europe, and most of them were new acquaintances to me. I traveled more in one year than in my entire life before. I made more friends in one year…

https://survivejs.com/blog/controllerim-interview/ 2017-12-27T00:00:00.000Z 2017-12-27T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When you are writing applications, eventually you have to decide how to manage state. You can get far with React setState and lift the state in the component hierarchy as you go. Eventually that might become cumbersome and you realize using a state…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-finland-interview/ 2017-12-23T00:00:00.000Z 2017-12-23T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There are a lot of React conferences these days. React has become one of the most popular web technologies during the past few years so this is understandable. Given I, Juho Vepsäläinen, am one of the organizers of React Finland (24-26.4.2018,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redux-saga-test-plan-interview/ 2017-12-20T00:00:00.000Z 2017-12-20T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Redux Saga is famous for being easy to test but what if it could be even more comfortable. redux-saga-test-plan by Jeremy Fairbank was designed precisely for this purpose. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Jeremy Fairbank|100|100|author I'm a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redux-form-interview/ 2017-12-11T00:00:00.000Z 2017-12-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Forms are a frequent topic in web development as we saw in the earlier interview about a-plus-forms. This time around, I'm interviewing Erik Rasmussen about a popular option, Redux Form. T> Erik has published a library agnostic successor to Redux…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redux-zero-interview/ 2017-12-04T00:00:00.000Z 2017-12-04T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Although using Redux is straight-forward once you understand the approach and its nuances, after a while it gets repetitive. It's easy to end up with a lot of "boilerplate" code that wires all the logic together. For this reason, multiple solutions…

https://survivejs.com/blog/flow-runtime-interview/ 2017-11-26T00:00:00.000Z 2017-11-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As discussed in the maintenance book, typing your code can be valuable in many ways. In part, it's about communication. Having the type information available makes it easier to develop tools that make it easier to manipulate code (think refactoring,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/a-plus-interview/ 2017-11-20T00:00:00.000Z 2017-11-20T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you think about it, a lot of web development has something to do with forms. Every time you capture information, you most likely require a form. It's one of the basic skills for a front-end developer. There are plenty of options for React and…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-and-maintenance/ 2017-11-17T00:00:00.000Z 2017-11-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

What do you do when you realize a book has become too big? You split it of course. The webpack book began to feel this way after the previous release and this is the reason why I started to write a new book about maintenance with Artem Sapegin.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/cabbie-interview/ 2017-11-13T00:00:00.000Z 2017-11-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Testing is a lasting topic in software development. There are lots of tools, especially for JavaScript. In this interview, you'll learn about Cabbie, a WebDriver based browser automation library by Forbes Lindesay. Can you tell a bit about yourself?…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-lite-interview/ 2017-11-06T00:00:00.000Z 2017-11-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though React API is small, the implementation is quite sizable due to all the work it does behind the façade. For this reason, people have developed solutions that implement the API with different trade-offs. react-lite by Jade is one of these…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-day-berlin-interview/ 2017-10-17T00:00:00.000Z 2017-10-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There are a lot of React events out there these days and it seems a new one appears every week somewhere around the world. To continue on the theme, this time I'm interviewing Robert Haritonov of React Day Berlin organized early December. T> Read…

https://survivejs.com/blog/unexpected-react-interview/ 2017-09-29T00:00:00.000Z 2017-09-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Testing React components is a constant topic. You can test through solutions like Jest or Enzyme. Or you could try something else like unexpected-react. The solution by Dave Brotherstone builds on top of another testing library, Unexpected. T> Read…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webexpo-2017/ 2017-09-24T00:00:00.000Z 2017-09-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I was invited to WebExpo 2017 to discuss how I bootstrapped my business. Prague is one of the favorite cities of mine, so it was hard to say no. I'm happy I went there, and I picked up a few lessons while at it. The tenth anniversary of the event…

https://survivejs.com/blog/kea-interview/ 2017-09-18T00:00:00.000Z 2017-09-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Redux took the React world by a storm when it was introduced. The simple idea provided a guideline for the community and "solved" state management for a lot of different kinds of applications. That said, Redux comes with a certain amount of wiring.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-next-2017/ 2017-09-15T00:00:00.000Z 2017-09-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I had the privilege to participate in React Next 2017 as an invited speaker. Participation gave me a good chance to learn more about Israel and also a good excuse to showcase webpack to a wider audience. I also gave a surprise talk about my site…

https://survivejs.com/blog/frint-interview/ 2017-09-06T00:00:00.000Z 2017-09-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

React gives a lot of freedom by default. You can choose which libraries to use to complement it. Freedom comes with responsibility, though. Now you are responsible for your decisions. FrintJS by Fahad Ibnay Heylaal and his company has developed a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/neutrino-interview/ 2017-08-28T00:00:00.000Z 2017-08-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Setting up a project can require a significant amount of effort if you want to control every single detail. This might be one reason why there are so many boilerplates out there as people tend to have different tastes. To make things easier, Eli…

https://survivejs.com/blog/idyll-interview/ 2017-08-21T00:00:00.000Z 2017-08-21T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Since the early days of the web, people have wanted to visualize data to share with others. Even though the platform provides something basic for these purposes (i.e., tables, images), typically some amount of programming has been required. Idyll by…

https://survivejs.com/blog/motorcycle-interview/ 2017-08-18T00:00:00.000Z 2017-08-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Functional reactive programming allows us to think carefully about state and side effects. The question is, how to do that in JavaScript? Motorcycle.js by Tylor Steinberger is one solution to this problem. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Tylor…

https://survivejs.com/blog/nextjs-interview/ 2017-08-15T00:00:00.000Z 2017-08-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Building universal web applications combining server side rendering with front-end is popular these days. The approach is not without its problems, though. Now you have the extra challenge of managing code so that it works on the both sides. Due to…

https://survivejs.com/blog/rekit-interview/ 2017-08-09T00:00:00.000Z 2017-08-09T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Perhaps the greatest thing about React is how flexible it is. It contains some opinions but not too many. You still have plenty of freedom. Sometimes this is a blessing, but it can also be a curse. Nate Wang realized the same, and as a result, he…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redux-first-router-interview/ 2017-08-07T00:00:00.000Z 2017-08-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Routing is one of those classic topics that comes up again and again. HTML5 History API itself is quite simple, but there are different opinions on how to apply the idea of routing on web applications and sites. James Gillmore decided to tackle the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/documentationjs-interview/ 2017-07-31T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When you are using a library seriously, you will spend a lot of time with its documentation. It's one of those things that sets good libraries apart from the rest. Even a fantastic idea can go overlooked if it's too difficult to get into and…

https://survivejs.com/blog/rill-interview/ 2017-07-28T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There's a lot of talk about universal web applications but developing them tends to be harder than it might sound. You will have to worry about the differences between environments, and you will find problems you might not have anticipated. To…

https://survivejs.com/blog/dll-interview/ 2017-07-24T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Perhaps one of my favorite webpack performance related tricks is setting up DLLs so that you avoid work. The problem is that maintaining the setup requires time and effort. What if there was a better way? James Wiens has been exploring a better…

https://survivejs.com/blog/material-ui-interview/ 2017-07-21T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-21T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Design is difficult as you have to come up with a set of rules to describe it – a system. You don't always have to devise one yourself, and Material Design by Google is one starting point. To understand the topic better, I'm interviewing Olivier…

https://survivejs.com/blog/fall-tour/ 2017-07-19T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though I have traveled a lot this year already, it looks like more travel is in store. The travels so far have been valuable regarding experience. I've seen more places in this year than during my previous year alone. And I like to think it has…

https://survivejs.com/blog/dont-break-interview/ 2017-07-17T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Releasing new versions of npm modules is an npm publish away. But how do you make sure you don't accidentally break a dependent project? Even if you are careful and test your module well, someone may be depending on a behavior you are not testing.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/rollup-interview/ 2017-07-10T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Given JavaScript application source cannot be consumed easily through the browser "as is" just yet, the process of bundling is needed. The point is to convert the source into a form the browser can understand. This is the reason why bundlers, such…

https://survivejs.com/blog/jss-interview/ 2017-07-07T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one thing that divides web developers, it's styling. A part of this has to do with the different requirements of websites and web applications. What is good in another domain, is an anti-pattern in another. To understand the topic better,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/renovate-interview/ 2017-07-03T00:00:00.000Z 2017-07-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There's one pain most JavaScript developers share - dependency management. More specifically, how to keep them up to date. Sometimes even one month is a long time as improvements keep coming and the dependencies changing. To understand a potential…

https://survivejs.com/blog/most-interview/ 2017-06-26T00:00:00.000Z 2017-06-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one trend that has been nice to notice, it's the rise of reactive programming. You can see this in technologies like RxJS and cycle.js. To learn more about the topic, I'm interviewing Brian Cavalier, one of the authors of Most.js. Can you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-alicante-interview/ 2017-06-23T00:00:00.000Z 2017-06-23T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There are plenty of events out there. What is it like to organize one? I know it's hard work based on what I've seen. To get more perspective, I'm interviewing Victoria Quirante, one of the organizers of React Alicante, a new React conference…

https://survivejs.com/blog/hardcover-webpack-book/ 2017-06-22T00:00:00.000Z 2017-06-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Print on Demand services like KDP are ideal for self-publishers like me as they take a lot of pain out of the process. You don't have to worry about printing or distribution. It's not free money as you still have to worry about marketing and getting…

https://survivejs.com/blog/junior-interview/ 2017-06-20T00:00:00.000Z 2017-06-20T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though software development is often seen from a technical perspective, there's a softer side to it. It is hard to avoid not having to work with people unless you are a mythical programmer living in a cave somewhere in Finland. To understand…

https://survivejs.com/blog/vx-interview/ 2017-06-12T00:00:00.000Z 2017-06-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Data visualization is a big topic itself. When it comes to the web, D3 is perhaps the most well-known solution. Even though you can wrap it with React quite quickly, there is value in having specific solutions. This is where vx by Harrison Shoff…

https://survivejs.com/blog/unmarshaller-interview/ 2017-06-05T00:00:00.000Z 2017-06-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Serialization, or the process of transforming data from a shape to another, is a common problem you encounter eventually when programming. Perhaps you want to store some state to the hard drive from memory or restore it. Or you may want to share it…

https://survivejs.com/blog/popper-interview/ 2017-05-29T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There are times when a vanilla ` or ` doesn't cut it. What if you want to do something more complex? Popper.js by Federico Zivolo achieves exactly this. Read on to learn more. Can you tell a bit about yourself? Federico Zivolo|100|100|author I'm…

https://survivejs.com/blog/euro-summer-tour-2017/ 2017-05-28T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's time for another tour. This time around I'll be focusing on training. I have material specifically for webpack and React and this will be a good excuse to improve my book offerings while at it. I've found working on training material forces you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/es-modules-interview/ 2017-05-22T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though ES6 (ES2015) brought modules to the language, it missed one important thing - a loading method. Proper support is currently being implemented for browsers. To learn more about the topic, I'm interviewing Bradley Farias. Can you tell a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/blue-arrow-awards-winner-2017/ 2017-05-21T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-21T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In the beginning, there was a swamp, a hoe, and Jussi. Originally a large part of Finland was swamp and life were hard, but as Jussi worked on the swamp, it paid off eventually. Interestingly you can still see the same pattern. You can always find a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/async-reactor-interview/ 2017-05-15T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One common way to deal with asynchronous concerns (fetching for example) in React is to push the problem to a state manager or handling it through life cycle methods. Sometimes that can feel a bit much, though, and a lighter solution would be nice.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpackbin-interview/ 2017-05-09T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-09T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Online tools are great for prototyping ideas and even workshops. You avoid the pain of setup while giving up some degree of control. Often this is a good trade-off, though. The interview series covered CodeSandbox, an online React playground…

https://survivejs.com/blog/euro-tour-2017-recap/ 2017-05-03T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In this post, I will go through the biggest realizations gained in my Euro tour. I know it's a cliché thing to say, but trips like this grow you as a person. Spending a month outside of your comfort zone leads to realizations you might not otherwise…

https://survivejs.com/blog/fluture-interview/ 2017-05-02T00:00:00.000Z 2017-05-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Dealing with the asynchronous code has always been a challenge in JavaScript. Callbacks are the classic way, and since then we've gained higher level abstractions and constructs for handling the problem. This time around we'll discuss Fluture, a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/codesandbox-interview/ 2017-04-24T00:00:00.000Z 2017-04-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Getting started with React can be daunting especially if you want to understand the entire setup. Solutions like create-react-app have hidden a lot of this complexity. But there's more to it. CodeSandbox by Ives van Hoorne pushes the problem online.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/scrimba-interview/ 2017-04-17T00:00:00.000Z 2017-04-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

YouTube and the web are filled with screencasts. They provide a great way to learn difficult concepts as you can see in practice how something specific is done. This is the way I learned to use Blender, a 3D suite, in the past. It all made sense…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-20-results-errata/ 2017-04-12T00:00:00.000Z 2017-04-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Enough time has passed since the major release of the webpack book so it's a good time to evaluate how well it went. As no release is perfect, I've been pushing smaller patches to the content and I cover the fixes later in this post. The fixes are…

https://survivejs.com/blog/sanctuary-interview/ 2017-04-10T00:00:00.000Z 2017-04-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's something that's easy, it's making mistakes while coding JavaScript. Overlook one detail and you have a runtime error! One way to deal with the problem is to use a programming style which leads code that's harder to break and also easier…

https://survivejs.com/blog/rambda-interview/ 2017-04-03T00:00:00.000Z 2017-04-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though you can get far with JavaScript's native functionality, eventually you'll find yourself writing little utilities to make it easier. For this reason, we have libraries such as Lodash, Ramda, and others. In this interview, you'll learn…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-20/ 2017-03-29T00:00:00.000Z 2017-03-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Here we go then. This is the big release I've been working towards for the past few months. Compared to the previous release this one is more polished and also available in a paper form. The digital edition has 458 pages while the paper version grew…

https://survivejs.com/blog/hyperapp-interview/ 2017-03-13T00:00:00.000Z 2017-03-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Micro-sized JavaScript libraries are a niche of their own. Often the idea is to use modern JavaScript APIs and expose them in an easier way. The earlier RE:DOM interview discussed one option. This time around I am interviewing Jorge Bucaran, the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/euro-tour-2017/ 2017-03-10T00:00:00.000Z 2017-03-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

You know how rockstars tour to support their albums? Who is to say a book author could not do the same? Through a couple of coincidences, it looks like I'll be touring Europe this April. I'll start the tour from Finland and visit countries like…

https://survivejs.com/blog/code-quality-interview/ 2017-03-06T00:00:00.000Z 2017-03-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

What makes code good? How do you tell bad code from good one? Issues like this come to mind when you think about the concept of code quality. To get a better idea of the topic, I'm interviewing João Caxaria Can you tell a bit about yourself? João…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-19/ 2017-03-01T00:00:00.000Z 2017-03-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If the previous release was a big step, this is another one. By the looks of it, the final paper version will be around 450 pages. Don't worry, though, I've taken special care to keep the chapters short and focused. I consider the current release…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-18/ 2017-02-18T00:00:00.000Z 2017-02-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Compared to the previous release this one has gained more weight. The PDF version of the book is close to 400 pages due to new content and enhancements. There is still one chapter and two appendices to write, but the finish line is close! T> If you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-170/ 2017-02-04T00:00:00.000Z 2017-02-04T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Compared to the previous release we've proceeded a step or two closer towards paper. This time around in addition to the usual tweaks there are a couple of new chapters and more content. It will likely take at least one more release till we get to…

https://survivejs.com/blog/unexpected-interview/ 2016-01-30T00:00:00.000Z 2016-01-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When it comes to testing, often you assert certain truths. At the very least you might have simple asserts sprinkled in your code. Or you might push them to separate suites which you then execute using a test runner. Unexpected by Sune Simonsen…

https://survivejs.com/blog/ajv-interview/ 2017-01-23T00:00:00.000Z 2017-01-23T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Describing what things are is an essential skill for a programmer. We might do that implicitly, but we often have to think about structure regardless. JSON Schema is a specification that allows us to do this in a more formal manner. Assuming you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-160/ 2017-01-19T00:00:00.000Z 2017-01-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

You might have noticed that webpack 2 reached a final release. That means it's a good time to update this book as well. Even though it's mostly a maintenance release, there's some new content in store. Compared to the previous release this one feels…

https://survivejs.com/blog/isomorphic-webpack-interview/ 2017-01-10T00:00:00.000Z 2017-01-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

A lot of people see isomorphic rendering as a holy grail given it gives advantages a SPAs lost compared to earlier solutions. The fact that you can provide initial markup has SEO and performance implications. It is a hard problem, though, as your…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-150/ 2017-01-03T00:00:00.000Z 2017-01-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

New year, new chance to write. The previous release put the writing gear back on and it's time to continue. This time around there are quite a big changes in the content and it's starting to feel more and more something worth publishing in a paper…

https://survivejs.com/blog/styletron-interview/ 2016-12-26T00:00:00.000Z 2016-12-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Styling is one of those topics that's under flux. My React styling chapter alone covers quite a few approaches and Michele Bertoli's list has a lot more. There was an interview on glamor earlier. It's time to continue on the theme and check out a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-142/ 2016-12-19T00:00:00.000Z 2016-12-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Alright, here we go again. It has been a while since the previous release and it's time for a big Winter update! Quite a bit has happened since. I spent most of the intermediate time in consulting and training mode. Since I became a part of webpack…

https://survivejs.com/blog/inferno-interview/ 2016-12-12T00:00:00.000Z 2016-12-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the cool things about React is that it managed to pull a lot of people into the component world. Even though there was initial resistance, the ideas seem to have stuck. Maybe the question is, what next? Inferno, a blazing fast React-like UI…

https://survivejs.com/blog/svelte-interview/ 2016-12-07T00:00:00.000Z 2016-12-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If jQuery gave us proper control over the DOM, and React brought components to the limelight, what's next? Svelte by Rich Harris might be an answer to this conundrum. You might remember him from tools such as Bublé and Rollup. Read on to learn what…

https://survivejs.com/blog/webpack-merge-interview/ 2016-11-29T00:00:00.000Z 2016-11-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's almost funny how far a simple idea can fly sometimes. When writing my first book, I ran into the problem of configuring webpack. I prefer to keep my configuration in a single file and duplication goes against my nature. As a result…

https://survivejs.com/blog/starratio-interview/ 2016-11-14T00:00:00.000Z 2016-11-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Comparing different JavaScript projects is surprisingly tough. This is a problem encountered by many developers daily. Most often it's the easiest to go and pick the solution with the most GitHub stars, but that's not always the whole story. Dmitry…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redom-interview/ 2016-10-31T00:00:00.000Z 2016-10-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Sometimes small is beautiful. Juha Lindstedt's FRZR, a 4kB view library, was a nice example of that as we saw earlier. This time we'll discuss evolution of Juha's work - a solution known as RE:DOM. How would you describe RE:DOM to someone who has…

https://survivejs.com/blog/glamor-interview/ 2016-10-17T00:00:00.000Z 2016-10-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you ask multiple React developers their styling approaches, you will also get multiple different answers. One trend is clear, though, the movement towards inline styling. This is something that was considered an anti-pattern before React, but as…

https://survivejs.com/blog/teaching-javascript-interview/ 2016-10-03T00:00:00.000Z 2016-10-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I have chosen one approach when it comes to teaching JavaScript and related topics. Books are just a way amongst many others. Today I'm interviewing another professional, Bianca Gandolfo, about the topic. Let's see what she thinks about teaching…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-game-kit-interview/ 2016-09-26T00:00:00.000Z 2016-09-26T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

What's more fun than making applications with React? Making games of course! I remember coding Pong in Python (harder than it sounds) and writing a text adventure or two. Games look deceptively simple but are quite difficult to code. Today I'm…

https://survivejs.com/blog/reactotron-interview/ 2016-09-19T00:00:00.000Z 2016-09-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one thing that has set React community apart, it's the focus on developer experience (DX). Historically developer tools haven't been the greatest, but this is slowly and surely changing. Reactotron by Steve Kellock is a good example of…

https://survivejs.com/blog/reactabular-interview/ 2016-09-12T00:00:00.000Z 2016-09-12T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Writing a little HTML table isn't particularly hard. It all gets more complex when you need logic like filtering, pagination, or fixed headers. A simple problem becomes difficult fast as requirements appear. When it comes to React, there are a few…

https://survivejs.com/blog/assetgraph-interview/ 2016-09-05T00:00:00.000Z 2016-09-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you have written a web application or site, you have had to deal with various assets like images, fonts, HTML, JavaScript code, whatnot. It's not a simple task to keep it all organized. This is why we have tools like webpack, browserify, or jspm…

https://survivejs.com/blog/purescript-interview/ 2016-08-22T00:00:00.000Z 2016-08-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's interesting how JavaScript development proceeds in cycles. While a lot of people might be happy with the standard language, there are always some that are willing to go further and push the envelope. Sometimes this leads to a better standard as…

https://survivejs.com/blog/codeceptjs-interview/ 2016-08-15T00:00:00.000Z 2016-08-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Testing is a complicated topic. Just peppering your code with unit tests isn't often enough. You'll need something more, especially if you are developing something user facing. That's where techniques like integration or acceptance testing come in.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/mostly-interview/ 2016-08-01T00:00:00.000Z 2016-08-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

You might have heard about Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming (in JavaScript) by Brian Lonsdorf. It's one of the better known free books discussing JavaScript. Today I'm bugging Brian about the topic. Functional programming is close to…

https://survivejs.com/blog/tcomb-interview/ 2016-07-25T00:00:00.000Z 2016-07-25T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Given JavaScript is loosely typed, it can be amazingly productive language for prototyping. The problems begin once your project grows in complexity. It is very easy to end up with a runtime error if you miss a simple check at the right place.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redux-saga-interview/ 2016-07-18T00:00:00.000Z 2016-07-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When developing front-ends, handling asynchronous behavior is always bit of a challenge. Yassine Elouafi's redux-saga provides one solution to this problem. Read on to learn more about sagas and redux-saga in particular. T> Check out the earlier…

https://survivejs.com/blog/snabbdom-interview/ 2016-07-11T00:00:00.000Z 2016-07-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you have been using React, you have used one implementation of virtual DOM perhaps without thinking too much about it. It's one of those concepts that's worth understanding in greater detail, though. There are specific virtual DOM implementations…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-131/ 2016-06-14T00:00:00.000Z 2016-06-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Compared to the previous release this is a conservative release. There are certain bug fixes and content improvements, but no new chapters. The focus was on pushing the current content further based on feedback. I am very happy that the book split…

https://survivejs.com/blog/npms-interview/ 2016-06-13T00:00:00.000Z 2016-06-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As I lamented earlier this year, it's increasingly difficult to find npm packages. One way to describe this is npmopeia. The feeling that the package you need exists. The problem is how to find that package. That is where services like npms.io by…

https://survivejs.com/blog/mikey-interview/ 2016-06-06T00:00:00.000Z 2016-06-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It is tedious and boring to do the same thing over and over. That's where generator tools come in as they take some grunt work out of coding. Mikey by Michael Farrell is a tool like that for React and Redux. To learn more about the tool, read on.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-react-253/ 2016-06-01T00:00:00.000Z 2016-06-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It has been a while since the previous release and a lot has happened. In addition to ramping up my consulting and training business, I managed to publish a book on webpack. That was the first part of my planned split. This is the second. From now…

https://survivejs.com/blog/builder-interview/ 2016-05-16T00:00:00.000Z 2016-05-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Builder by Formidable Labs is one of those projects tackling the boilerplate issue. It is a project that repurposes npm scripts into something more powerful. To learn more, let's let Ryan Roemer discuss builder in detail. Can you tell a bit about…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-120/ 2016-05-11T00:00:00.000Z 2016-05-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As I've been working towards splitting the first book, I realized I must do one more release of this webpack one before I can complete it. That's what the current release, 1.2.0, is about. I've moved certain content there (mainly linting, npm…

https://survivejs.com/blog/nwb-interview/ 2016-05-09T00:00:00.000Z 2016-05-09T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Boilerplate code is perhaps one of the leading causes of JavaScript fatigue. You often have to go through certain motions to set up a project or maintain a boilerplate of your own. In the previous interview about kotatsu we saw one possible…

https://survivejs.com/blog/kotatsu-interview/ 2016-05-02T00:00:00.000Z 2016-05-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

npm alone has more than three thousand JavaScript boilerplates. Often it's easier to maintain your own than to use one designed by someone else. Everyone has their own preferences. At best boilerplates work as inspiration for your own work. The…

https://survivejs.com/blog/hashnode-interview/ 2016-04-25T00:00:00.000Z 2016-04-25T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

One of the challenges of being a web developer is keeping up with the world. The field moves ahead constantly and it's easy to fail to see the forest from the trees. In part, SurviveJS was born to address this problem, but obviously it's only a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-110/ 2016-04-24T00:00:00.000Z 2016-04-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Compared to the first release a couple of weeks ago, this version has matured quite a bit. I've been reviewing the content with my editor (thanks Jesús!) and that has lead to some nice insights. Our work is still in progress and so far we've combed…

https://survivejs.com/blog/frzr-interview/ 2016-04-18T00:00:00.000Z 2016-04-18T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Often when you pick up a JavaScript library it's going to be a little chunky - tens, or even hundreds of kilobytes. Though this can be entirely acceptable given the benefits, it might be a little much at times. What if it was possible to begin from…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs210/ 2016-04-17T00:00:00.000Z 2016-04-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It has been a while since the previous release and quite a bit has happened. As you might have noticed, there's actually a new book about webpack out there now. The idea is that I will split this one in two. This book will continue as something…

https://survivejs.com/blog/relax-interview/ 2016-04-11T00:00:00.000Z 2016-04-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Even though I've spent a lot of time with web development, I never really delved into the world of Content Management Systems (CMS). I'm of course aware of WordPress, Drupal, and such. I've managed to get away with either something entirely custom…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-webpack-100/ 2016-04-02T00:00:00.000Z 2016-04-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I'm currently in process of splitting up the big book (SurviveJS - Webpack and React). The split allows me to dig deeper in both topics. This book, SurviveJS - Webpack, focuses on webpack as you might guess. Given this is the very first edition, you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-rocks-interview/ 2016-03-14T00:00:00.000Z 2016-03-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Given there's a lot going on in the React ecosystem, it can be difficult to keep up. Jeff Winkler maintains a service known as React.rocks to alleviate this problem. To get a better idea of what the service is about, read on. Can you tell a bit…

https://survivejs.com/blog/reindex-interview/ 2016-03-07T00:00:00.000Z 2016-03-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

More often than not, you are going to need a back-end for your application. Particularly RESTful APIs are popular. They are not the only choice, though. GraphQL is a specification that has been designed apps in mind. Rather than separating our API…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-interview/ 2016-02-29T00:00:00.000Z 2016-02-29T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There is always some level of tension between getting things done and learning new technologies. A lot of the recent JavaScript fatigue stems from that. A year ago I decided to take some preemptive moves against it. The whole point of the SurviveJS…

https://survivejs.com/blog/styleguidist-interview/ 2016-02-22T00:00:00.000Z 2016-02-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

People have been developing style guides for their sites and applications for quite a while. They define basic building blocks and aesthetics. This is valuable as it helps you to keep your design consistent and communicate it to your developers…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs200/ 2016-02-15T00:00:00.000Z 2016-02-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When I started this project roughly a year ago I had no idea how rewarding and demanding one it would be. Writing books is way harder than it sounds. Especially when you go through the self-publishing route, you have a lot to learn! Overview of the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs200-rc4/ 2016-02-07T00:00:00.000Z 2016-02-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

The previous release candidate prompted a nice amount of feedback. I've taken that into account in this release. I have a date for the final in sight and I won't be making any significant changes for the final release. It's not going to be the…

https://survivejs.com/blog/towards-common-components/ 2016-02-02T00:00:00.000Z 2016-02-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

There has been talk of JavaScript fatigue. It's true the field is progressing fast. And as you move fast, it can be tiring for sure. Fortunately, as we understand better what we are doing, we can actually standardize our ways of doing. That should…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs200-rc3/ 2016-01-22T00:00:00.000Z 2016-01-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If the previous release candidate had few changes, this one is the opposite. I consider this good news as it's better to catch bigger issues now rather than later. Thanks for feedback! Overview of the Situation I managed to improve the Redux version…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs200-rc2/ 2016-01-10T00:00:00.000Z 2016-01-10T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Not a lot has happened since the previous release candidate. The biggest change has to do with a little bug that the recent release of Babel 6.4 revealed. All property initializer based declarations were missing a semicolon as Babel treated them in…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs200-rc1/ 2016-01-06T00:00:00.000Z 2016-01-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Since the beta was launched, I've been working on remaining improvements. This has mostly meant tuning the existing content, although there are some new bits as well. Obviously the released book won't be complete in sense that it contains everything…

https://survivejs.com/blog/codemod-interview/ 2016-01-01T00:00:00.000Z 2016-01-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Performing big changes to a codebase is always a little daunting. Doing each change by hand is time consuming and generally leads to errors, unless you have a good test suite in place. Codemod is a tool that has been designed to help in this…

https://survivejs.com/blog/recap/ 2015-12-30T00:00:00.000Z 2015-12-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I know the common wisdom is that you shouldn't write technical books. It's a difficult way to earn your income, especially when you live in a country with heavy taxation and price level. Strangely enough, it's working out for me at the moment. I'll…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs200-beta2/ 2015-12-28T00:00:00.000Z 2015-12-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

The long awaited 2.0 is getting very close. babel-plugin-react-transform reached version 2.0 last Wednesday. This was all I needed to push the book to Babel 6. I released 2.0.0-beta1 as a xmas present of some sort to my Leanpub readers in early…

https://survivejs.com/blog/whitestormjs-interview/ 2015-12-22T00:00:00.000Z 2015-12-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I remember, when a few years ago a friend asked me what JavaScript game engine to use. As a result, I set up a little gist that in turn lead to something larger, namely jswiki, and eventually jster.net. The game engine listing and game engine…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs1915/ 2015-12-11T00:00:00.000Z 2015-12-11T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

This is perhaps the last release before the long awaited 2.0. Alt reached version 0.18. As a result a certain part of the book broke. I have fixed that issue in this release. There are also plenty of other tweaks here and there, and even some new…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-indie-bundle/ 2015-12-07T00:00:00.000Z 2015-12-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It is amazing what a great year this turned out to be. I launched this site around July. Since then a lot has changed. While the situation might have looked a little desperate back then, I feel we are on a sustainable track now. And there is still a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/starhackit-interview/ 2015-11-24T00:00:00.000Z 2015-11-24T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I discussed my React component boilerplate earlier on. It is focused and deals only with the frontend. Often you need more than just a frontend, though. This is where Frederic Heem's StarHackIt fits. It is a full stack boilerplate. Read on to learn…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs1910/ 2015-11-22T00:00:00.000Z 2015-11-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's time for another maintenance release with minor tweaks here and there. Probably the biggest change is the fancy new cover which I crafted based on the logo design of Prospect One. Cheers for that. Probably the biggest news this time around is…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-router5-interview/ 2015-11-09T00:00:00.000Z 2015-11-09T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

When people ask about what routing solution to use with React, they often get pointed at react-router. It is a powerful solution and used by many so it can make sense. That doesn't mean it's the only alternative, though. This time I'm interviewing…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-195/ 2015-11-03T00:00:00.000Z 2015-11-03T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

You could say a lot has happened since the previous release. React 0.14 came out mere hours after it. React DnD gained 0.14 compatibility in its 2.0 release. Node.js reached 5.0.0 (v4 is LTS, supported for four years). And a couple of days ago Babel…

https://survivejs.com/blog/baobab-interview/ 2015-11-02T00:00:00.000Z 2015-11-02T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I remember running into Baobab through Christian Alfoni's post about it. In short, it's a library that provides you optionally immutable data trees with cursors. Admittedly that's quite a mouthful. In order to understand the topic a little better,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-component-boilerplate-10/ 2015-10-22T00:00:00.000Z 2015-10-22T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you try searching GitHub for React boilerplates, you'll find over thousand results. Nothing is harder than to agree on a standard boilerplate. As a result we have many to choose from. Given I like to author React components, such as Reactabular,…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-bootstrap-interview/ 2015-10-13T00:00:00.000Z 2015-10-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Bootstrap is easily one of the most popular CSS frameworks out there. Beyond grids and basic layout utilities, it provides a nice set of widgets to use. Even though you can use the CSS with React, this may become cumbersome quite soon. You will…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-19/ 2015-10-07T00:00:00.000Z 2015-10-07T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Compared to 1.8.0, 1.9.0 can be seen as a more conservative release. There are plenty of smaller fixes and even some new content too. I decided to fix the chapter structure to the current. I rather provide less but better content. This also helps to…

https://survivejs.com/blog/cerebral-interview/ 2015-10-05T00:00:00.000Z 2015-10-05T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I ran into Christian Alfoni through his original blog early this year (2015). He had written a nice post about Webpack. That led me to provide a several suggestions and I realized we might want to combine some of our knowledge in the form of a…

https://survivejs.com/blog/shaderfrog-interview/ 2015-09-28T00:00:00.000Z 2015-09-28T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

It's always impressive when people take an idea and turn it into a concrete service. Andrew Ray did this with his ShaderFrog. It's a portal where you can design 3D shaders using WebGL. Most interestingly, it has been developed using React. As…

https://survivejs.com/blog/cycle-interview/ 2015-09-21T00:00:00.000Z 2015-09-21T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one thing that has been bubbling below for a couple of years now, it must be reactive programming. There have been solutions, such as RxJS or bacon.js, but they haven't quite made it to the mainstream yet. I feel the time for that might…

https://survivejs.com/blog/redux-interview/ 2015-09-14T00:00:00.000Z 2015-09-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I remember seeing these strange webpack.config.js files in JavaScript projects for a long time. I didn’t give Webpack a good look until the promise of hot loading with React drew me in. Dan Abramov’s React Hot Loader was life changing for me.…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-18/ 2015-09-13T00:00:00.000Z 2015-09-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

We have once more new chapters in the book. I'm going to try a new model with these. For now the full versions of the testing and typing chapters will be available through Leanpub only. The community version will contain TLDR;s for these so you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/frontend-singularity-is-here/ 2015-09-06T00:00:00.000Z 2015-09-06T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Technological progress is both exhilarating and terrifying thing. And by the looks of it, it just keeps on progressing faster and faster. This has lead to an idea of technological singularity. As singularity is reached, technology develops so fast…

https://survivejs.com/blog/succeed-at-technical-books/ 2015-09-04T00:00:00.000Z 2015-09-04T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I've written about book publishing earlier at my personal blog. It is an interesting yet difficult business. I sort of stumbled into the world by chance. In this post I want to share some of my learnings. Long story short I wrote a little Webpack…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-175/ 2015-08-30T00:00:00.000Z 2015-08-30T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Onwards we go. v1.7.5 can be characterized as a refinement release. I went through "React and Flux" and "From Notes to Kanban" with my editor (thanks Jesús!). As a result we should have something that's a notch better together. I took some…

https://survivejs.com/blog/mobx-interview/ 2015-08-19T00:00:00.000Z 2015-08-19T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As React deals only with the view layer you will often have to complement it with something else. Flux architecture is one answer but not the only one. MobX by Michel Weststrate is a refreshing alternative. But what is it really about? Can you tell…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-17/ 2015-08-16T00:00:00.000Z 2015-08-16T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

I skipped doing a public post for v1.6 as I was too tired (berry season is taxing). Now I'm going to give you release notes for both v1.6 and v1.7 at once. I have also some news of the future plans. So stay tuned. Development Model Changes I've…

https://survivejs.com/blog/react-books/ 2015-08-01T00:00:00.000Z 2015-08-01T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

As an author I like to keep an eye on the market. You have to know who you are against after all! It's not an understatement to say could that it's about to get swarmed with books. In this post I'll go through the ones I could find and provide you…

https://survivejs.com/blog/survivejs-15/ 2015-07-31T00:00:00.000Z 2015-07-31T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Compared to the previous tagged release (v1.1.0, 10th of July) this new one (v1.5.0) is a monster. 274 commits went into it and nine contributors took part. Of course it was up to me to do most of the work. That said it is always amazing to get…

https://survivejs.com/blog/web-design-is-scrappy/ 2015-07-17T00:00:00.000Z 2015-07-17T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If you had to describe my approach to web design in one word the word would be scrappy. I rather get something to work fast than agonize on details. It is going to take a fair amount of iteration no matter what. This site is a good example of…

https://survivejs.com/blog/reaching-towards-the-next-level/ 2015-07-15T00:00:00.000Z 2015-07-15T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

In my previous post I discussed some of the difficulties of related to technical publishing. I also presented a possible solution, a mixed model that might make open publishing more feasible. The idea is that starting closed and asking for money…

https://survivejs.com/blog/balance/ 2015-07-14T00:00:00.000Z 2015-07-14T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

If there's one thing technical authors have in common, it's that they all want to help other people. The question is how to achieve that most effectively. In my previous post I discussed how I have fared with my first effort so far. The results have…

https://survivejs.com/blog/the-story-so-far/ 2015-07-13T00:00:00.000Z 2015-07-13T00:00:00.000Z Juho Vepsäläinen

Given I'm a first time author I've done my fair share of mistakes with SurviveJS - Webpack and React. It was an attempt to change the direction of my career. Being a subcontractor's subcontractor provides income, sure, but was a dead end for me with…