Learning Update: May 2020

26 May 2020 learning

Starting this month, I want to record and track all my learnings in this blog. I have been learning so many things, but I did not track or wrote it down systematically in one place. This is my attempt to capture all my learnings or at least what are the subjects that I read or practice.

Since this is the first in this series, I want to record things that I have learned since Jan 2020.

Serverless framework #

I did an endpoint using serverless framework with NodeJS runtime. It does have quite tight integration with AWS Lambda so deploying to AWS is as easy as running a deploy command.

Nuxt.js #

Nuxt is a Javascript frontend framework using Vue. It does have interesting modes to suit your use cases. Assuming your content is stored in a database, here are some of the modes and use cases:

Server Rendered (Universal SSR)

Loads content in the HTML then served to the client.
Usually picked to improve SEO.
Suitable for user-generated content, new content will be available instantly.
Deploy as a separate service alongside your backend API.

Single Page Applications (SPA)

Loads an empty HTML, then populates the content via Javascript, some web crawlers might have a problem recognizing the content.
Suitable for user-generated content, new content will be available instantly.
Deploy as static file, less complexity.

Static Generated (Pre Rendering)

Using nuxt generate command to generate all the content in the HTML when deployed.
Suitable for content that does not change frequently and/or user-generated. Any changes in content need to regenerate the web app.
Deploy as static file, less complexity.
Cannot use dynamic routes eg. example.com/product/:id (well you can, but need to keep in mind the changes is only reflected when you regenerate the web app).

GraphQL subscriptions #

Made a simple project to test out GraphQL subscriptions. It is kinda a twitter clone that live updates the feed.
Code is done using VueJS SPA as frontend with Vue Apollo for integrating GraphQL in Vue, and GraphQL Yoga as backend.

https://github.com/amirulabu/twotter, https://twotter.mirul.xyz/

Strapi CMS #

I did a side gig for my friend and decided I do not want to build the backend from scratch using KoaJS, so I tried using Strapi CMS instead. It very fun to work with and I would say Strapi is quite flexible to add functionality. Among additional features I have added for the project:

ReCaptcha for the contact form
Facebook login to save long-lived page access token for background tasks
send telegram message when new content is added.

Clean Code #

I started reading and watching the video series Clean Code, right now I am at chapter 4, Function Structures. I was very glad I started reading Clean Code since there are lots of gems that I can apply for my day to day task as a software engineer. I probably will write a separate blog post on the summary and my opinions on Clean Code.

Now I realize why certain frameworks and libraries write code in a certain way. Why they have certain naming, and how to pick a good name for a class, variable or function.

Eleventy #

This blog is made using Eleventy. It is always a good idea to start with a starter project rather than starting from scratch with any static site generator.

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