After a recent post on Martin Fowler's blog, there's been a lot of chatter online about micro-frontends. I am taking this opportunity to share my opinion of them, and highlight a recent project I worked on that utilized the micro-frontend idea.

Last month saw the release of React v16.3, and with it the much talked about new context API. The official docs have some great examples of how the new API works and even has a brief description of why you might use it. I'd like to take a moment to clearly lay out exactly how and why I've been using context in my applications, and why I'm so excited for this new API.

Firebase is a really cool Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) similar to the now defunct Parse. They have a great free tier that I think is quite generous. Firebase offers a real-time database, storage options, hosting, and many other nice features worth checking out.

When someone new to React asks online how to handle state or passing of props in their application, the answer often includes using Redux. While I think that Redux is a fantastic library and love using it, this post will hopefully illustrate why it isn't always necessary or even a good idea.

I recently was tasked with starting a brand new project at work that would be used for taking some simple internal surveys. Something like SurveyMonkey was overkill for what we're looking for, but using the built-in survey features in SharePoint (I know, I know, ugh) weren't going to be powerful enough. I originally planned on writing the application in Angular 1, but after going to a local Angular user group meeting, I decided to try writing it with Angular 2.

At my job we're very much a Microsoft shop. Almost all of our code is C# and written for ASP.NET and its various frameworks. Recently management made the decision to switch to iPhones from Windows phones. This was mostly done because it turned out to be hard to find vendors that supported Windows phones.

I've been playing around with creating a simple web API using NodeJS and Express recently. I've found it to be a lot of fun to work with, however, I'm still fairly new to Node. In particular, I'm still trying to figure out how best to structure my code. This has led to some seriously ugly and over-indented code.

With some of the recent big game releases and game convention season being underway, I've been thinking a lot about the difference between big release games and smaller indie titles. I can see the difference between the tremendous amount of work, money, and manpower that goes in to making something as big as Bioshock Infinite, but I also understand that the simple design of a game like Fez takes a large effort as well. However, my ability to recognize the tremendous amount of work that goes in to these so-called "simple" designs, does not mean that everyone can recognize it. By and large, the majority of the game purchasing public overlook these indie darlings. I'd like to think that it's simply because they are unaware of their existence, but the cynic in me believes that a large part of that is simply because it isn't all new and shiny.