Toots for alexanderbird@mstdn.ca account

Written by Alex Bird on 2025-02-02 at 08:05

🥳 I wrote a tetris-inspired mini game for practising regex: https://alexanderbird.github.io/regextris/

You write regex against the clock to clear out falling letter tiles.

Suggestions, feedback, or pull requests welcome!

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Written by Alex Bird on 2025-01-26 at 21:05

Things that hurt my pride but help me succeed:

👉🏻 asking questions that make me look foolish (instead of acting like I understand)

👉🏻 sharing incomplete work to get feedback (instead of waiting until it's "perfect" before sharing it)

👉🏻 for bugs, following the investigation wherever it leads, even if the results make me look bad (instead of avoiding data that shows I made a mistake)

👉🏻 teach junior team members to question my advice (instead of doing nothing when they believe everything I say)

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Written by Alex Bird on 2024-12-13 at 18:33

A platform engineering team "provides critical systems to other engineers"

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Written by Alex Bird on 2024-12-13 at 18:31

🧵 Notes and quotes while reading Platform Engineering: A Guide for Technical, Product, and People Leaders

👇🏻

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Written by Alex Bird on 2024-12-11 at 15:22

That said, I have learned that often when I get the types, method names, and code style correct, then the logic is a lot easier to see. Usually, I start with the types; sometimes, I sprinkle 'as any' everywhere until the logic works and then remove the 'as any's one by one.

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Written by Alex Bird on 2024-12-11 at 15:22

A common workflow for me in TypeScript is to sprinkle 'as any' or 'thingy as Partial as Thingy` throughout the code while roughing the pieces into shape, then when it mostly works I comb through my new code and sort out all the types.

I like having the freedom to do either types or logic first, whichever fits the problem I'm solving.

I don't like being interrupted in my problem solving by a tool that insists I make my code correct before I have made it work.

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Written by Alex Bird on 2024-12-11 at 15:17

One of the things I love about TypeScript is that I can choose whether I want to figure out the types or the logic first. Often I start with the types, but not always.

When working with stricter compiled languages (or in node projects with Very Strict linters and no tool-supported auto-formatting), it was not uncommon to have an idea, try to get feedback by running the code, but to be prevented because of a quibble that I would have dealt with later but am forced to deal with now.

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