Glenn Stovall

Author Archives: Glenn Stovall

Test Clicks On Connected Components In Under 10 Lines of Code

Here’s a fairly benign component, that can give developers pause when its time to write unit tests for your components: const ClickableButton = props => ( <button onClick={props.doSomething}>Click Me!</button> ) const mapDispatchToProps () => ({ doSomething: dispatch(someFancyAction()) }) export default connect( null, mapDispatchToProps, )(ClickableButton) There is only thing worth testing here: That when we click […]

Write Redux Reducer Tests Fast

Redux may come with a lot of boilerplate, patterns, and libraries, but at its core it’s simple. A current state and an action go in, new state comes out. Just because the code is simple doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tested. If you are using Redux in your application, that means your store is a […]

How to Test Async Redux Thunks

In a previous post, you learned how to make HTTP requests inside your redux application. We use redux-thunk, a library that enables you to dispatch functions in addition to flux-style actions. With it, you can dispatch functions to handle more complex cases such as asynchronous operations. But then how do you test them? Testing can be more […]

How to Perform HTTP Requests with React & Redux

Async is one of the toughest problems in front-end development. It’s one of the reasons Redux and React were created. React all started when Facebook had what seemed like a trivial problem: Sometimes, the “unread messages” count in the header and the footer of the page would be different. This Skinner box is so important […]

Which version of JavaScript is “Vanilla JavaScript”?

There are so many different versions of JavaScript floating around, and browser support is always changing. How do you know which features you can use without transpiling or some kind of build step? Correct Answer: ES6 (a.k.a. ECMAS 2015) is supported in all major browsers. In April of 2017, all major browsers added support for […]

I Google Simple Functions Daily… Am I A Bad Developer?

“Help! I Landed A Job, And I Have No Idea What I’m Doing!” Do you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing… like you’re a fraud? Impostor syndrome is common in our industry. Wondering when you’ll “just know” something and not be so reliant on Google & Stack Overflow? That day never comes. Anxiety comes from […]

Why You Should NEVER Walk Out of A Job Interview

Have you ever had a disastrous interview experience? My worst: Three years out of college, working in web development, I was struggling with a linked list problem. The interviewer pauses, looks me in the eye, and says: “…are you sure you studied computer science in college?” spoiler alert: I didn’t get the job. Doing well in a […]

Choose Your Next Article Topic With This Exercise

When I fall out of my writing habit, most often it’s because I can’t decide what to write about. Choosing an article topic can be paralyzing. Here’s an exercise I use to come up with new topics. Afterward, the issue is not that I have too little to write about, but too much. When coding, […]

Pure Array Modifications: Plain JavaScript vs. Modern JavaScript

When working with Redux or other state managers, you want to keep your code pure. That means no side effects. Instead of updating an array instead you want to return a new copy of the array with the changes applied. This is tricky with JavaScript arrays since it isn’t clear which native functions change the […]

Get Out Of Your House & Out of Your Head With A Coffee Co-Work

To people who don’t work remotely, it sounds like a dream job. Stay in your pajamas all day; no commute, no distracting open floor plan static. People don’t think about the downsides: The isolation, the loneliness. Left unchecked, extended periods of working from home are a mental health hazard. Isolation leads to depression and anxiety, […]

1 2 3 … 10 Next »