I'm continuing to experiment with React and TypeScript. The weekend-long project this time was a Covid-19 data tracker. In this blog post I will share how I built c19stats.now.sh. I exposed the data as a public API at the same URL. I guess you, as many other people, follow the situation so you may want to glue your fingers on the keyboard and create something useful around the data. I got lots of fun playing with the diagrams.

2020 for me started with the release of several OS projects. Two of them reached 100 stars in a week and I was thinking that would be nice sharing my workflow. Not like it is working every time, absolutely not, but leads to some good results.

I'm using Git and GitHub in particular a lot. And when I say a lot I really mean all the time. Recently I tracked a week of work and found that 62% of my working time goes into code reviews. Sometimes I'm checking out a branch locally and trying stuff but really most of my time goes into github.com. I spent some time analyzing why the code review process is so time consuming for me. I identified couple of reasons, made a tool and changed some of my habits. In this article I'll show you how I improved my code review speed and lower the time to 38%.

The hooks API is a wonderful idea. There are some slick patterns involved that push the React development to a more functional approach. I'm interested in trying that new API and decided to use it for my latest project. However, after a couple of days, it looked like I can't build my app only with hooks. I needed something else. And that's mainly because each hook works on a local component level. I can't really transfer state or exchange reducers between the components. That's why I created Jolly Roger. It has similar helpers but works on a global app level.

I'm a proud father of two and programmer for more then 15 years. My kids are small so I'm really into parenting right now. A bit of a problem for me is to stay up-to-date with the latest technologies in the Web. I really love my job but I just don't have enough time to look after all these frameworks, libraries or tools. I used to read Twitter, monitor RSS feeds and spend hours reading Reddit or Medium. However, no time for that anymore.

One of my favorite conferences Bulgaria Web Summit 2017 is just around the corner. I’m happy to attend again. The organizer prepared a good set of speakers and the event is two days this year.

When we start using React we very soon also start asking questions. Where I’m suppose to put my data, how to communicate changes or how to manage state? The answers of this questions are very often matter of context and sometimes just practice and experience with the library. However, there is a pattern which is used widely and helps organizing React based applications - splitting the components into presentational and containers.

I could split my programming experience in two parts. The first one is a little bit more creative. That's the time where the application still does not exist. You invent and architect the program. The second part is extending and fixing the already created system. They, these two parts, have their own interesting and boring sides. However, I believe that they both are in the essence of delivering quality software. This article focuses on bug fixing. It aims to give you bunch of advices how to properly handle the problems in your applications.

The year is 2005. At that time I was a student in Technical University of Varna. As every normal student I had to visit the building of the university from time to time.

I’m reading and watching a lot of interesting things regarding client-side performance. I’m interested in the browser’s processes happening before and just after the page’s load. There are tons of stuff to think about. Before a couple of days, I joined the online workshop of Vitaly Friedman. I had a great time and learned some clever facts about performance optimization.

The browsers nowadays are smart. They optimize everything and help us to produce better applications. They process our code as fast as possible and even on mobile devices deliver a pleasant experience. However, at the same time, it is possible to write buggy code and make the browser freezing. We are not talking about slowing down the rendering. We are talking about no rendering at all. There are cases where we want so much from the browser that it just can’t handle it.

I'm currently working on a JavaScript application which is using the facebook API. There are some things which I need to pass from one page to the other. So, I decided to use cookies. The storing works like a charm, but the deleting doesn't. I needed one hour to find the exact problem.

That's a guest blog post provided by Chatwing.

The cinemas will be filled with new movies again and I will be expecting more honest reviews from film buffs and wannabes from different parts of the world. Well, one can say that there are always new stuff in the Internet—new trend, new meme, new films, and new books. Everything becomes old in the Internet so fast. Along with these new things, my favourite chat box has started launching new updates. Wait—what is my favourite chat box?

It's really interesting to work on an extension for Chrome. However, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to debug. Especially when you work on a dev tools add-on (i.e. a new tab).

I really don't like FlashBuilder. Mainly because I'm losing a lot of time just to setup the project. Usually when I receive the files I need around 10 hours just to compile successfully. The reasons for those problems are different Flex SDK, different directories' tree, wrong paths, missing libraries or fonts. Today I encounter a brand new type of problem.

Everyday I'm reading or watching something which I find helpful. Normally I bookmark those things, but at the end I have dozen of folders and subfolders which I never check. So, I decided to make such blog post where I'll share valuable things in the net.

A bunch of cool stuff ;-)

Douglas Crockford’s Function Challenges. Test your knowledge of function scope and and learn to compose functions that can be called multiple times through function returns.

PHP is one of the most popular back-end solutions available. However, I think that there is something wrong with the way we are using it. It is really popular to use some giant framework, with a lot of features. Generally, I'm not a big fan of this approach. Even if the framework is well documented and has big community it still adds some restrictions and complexity. Many people are trying to build the perfect framework, which covers as many cases as possible, but the true is that it is not possible. In this article I'll present you my vision about PHP programming and I will be very happy if you share yours.

I'm not exactly a performance perfectionist, but currently I'm working on a tool which will be used in a large system. It will deliver texts to a multi-language environment and there will be several sites/apps which will performe big amount of request to it. It is the right moment for me to choose how to speed up my code and the work of the tool overall.

Adobe is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. We are transforming from software in boxes to solutions in the cloud, and to a world of touch interfaces on devices, and social connections everywhere. This is a time of both innovation and change for Adobe and for the Adobe community ...Read the full article here.

Today I received my Pomodoro Robotlegs timer. Special thanks to Stray and Robotlegs team for this little gem.

Amazing lineup ...

Finally I finished some bugs of my own project management system and I think it's ready for use. SVET is one of my biggest projects and it's a web based project management system, that helps you to organize your work. Basically it's an online notebook which you can use to store the information for your projects. It enables you to track your working time and communicate with your team and clients. You can also make detailed reports of what you've done for a specific period of time. Please check out here.