Answers to questions nobody asked me

Carl Vitullo

I have all these opinions, but nobody ever asks me about them. To remedy this imbalance, I’m going to start broadcasting them into the void.

The hustle and grind

2024-07-18, 20 hours ago. 6 minutes to read

Bike stories

2024-02-15, 5 months ago. 9 minutes to read

Reflections on a year as a podcaster

2024-02-09, 5 months ago. 2 minutes to read

Coinbase Card has been compromised

2022-11-29, 2 years ago. 3 minutes to read
Coinbase Card is unsafe. Newly shipped cards are cracked before arriving in the mail.

One Year Self Employed

2022-11-22, 2 years ago. 5 minutes to read

Buying a home in Brooklyn

2022-10-06, 2 years ago. 11 minutes to read
The real estate market in NYC and the surrounding area is like nothing else in the country.

Optimizing a dockerfile

2020-08-05, 4 years ago. 6 minutes to read
There are 3 major points to consider when optimizing a Docker file: Build context size, cached layers, and final image size.

Securing a large Gatsby site with a CSP

2020-01-21, 4 years ago. 6 minutes to read
Content security policies are a great way to lock down your website, and it can be relatively painless to get some benefit.

How a walkout happens in tech

2019-07-05, 5 years ago. 7 minutes to read
Wayfair employees walked out this week after learning that their employer sold beds that would be used in detention centers. Here's how they turned anger into action.

The future of Bitcoin and Ethereum

2019-02-08, 5 years ago. 7 minutes to read
The world has gushed over Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the future doesn’t look so rosy.

Symptoms of a dysfunctional team

2019-01-21, 5 years ago. 9 minutes to read
A lot of teams don't operate well. Learn how to spot them and you'll have a more rewarding career.

Everything you need to know about React Hooks

2018-10-25, 6 years ago. 15 minutes to read
React announced new features that will change the way React code is written. Here's what you need to know.

The Lerna license and ethics in software

2018-09-03, 6 years ago. 6 minutes to read
The recent snafu with the Lerna project is a good opportunity to discuss our role in what we build, and what responsibilities we have in behaving ethically.

Staying on top of new Javascript features

2018-08-27, 6 years ago. 7 minutes to read
Keeping up to date with new features in Javascript is hard—unless you know where to look.

How to ship code

2018-08-20, 6 years ago. 5 minutes to read
How to ship code that you'll be happy to maintain.

Testing npm packages before publishing

2018-07-27, 6 years ago. 5 minutes to read
Some problems with using npm link to test packages, and what I do instead.

Error handling with async/await and promises

2018-07-21, 6 years ago. 7 minutes to read
An exploration of different ways to handle errors with JS promises and async/await, with the advantages and problems of each.

Performance Profiling a Redux App

2018-07-10, 6 years ago. 2 minutes to read
Redux is pretty fast by default, but when you're trying to optimize you need to know where time is spent. This middleware will help you identify slow or redundant code paths.

Questions to ask your interviewer 4 posts

Onboarding and the workplace

2018-05-14, 6 years ago. 7 minutes to read

Development and emergencies

2018-05-17, 6 years ago. 7 minutes to read

Growth

2018-05-21, 6 years ago. 6 minutes to read

Project management & prioritization

2018-06-07, 6 years ago. 6 minutes to read

A brief history of web app loading

2018-05-12, 6 years ago. 6 minutes to read
A (somewhat) short summary of the iteration of technology used to build and load web apps.

Overly defensive programming

2018-02-16, 6 years ago. 7 minutes to read
When you're guarding against errors, have you considered what might cause those failures? If you add checks “just to be safe” you may be writing overly defensive code.

Debugging node without restarting processes

2018-01-17, 7 years ago. 3 minutes to read
I love the Chrome devtools when debugging node.js, but sometimes I want to begin debugging a process that is already running. Luckily node.js has a way to do so.

Role based authorization in React

2017-01-20, 7 years ago. 7 minutes to read
Restricting parts of your app to different types of users can be difficult. Here's how you can do it maintainably and extensibly.

Moving 140,000 commits from Mercurial to Git

2017-01-17, 8 years ago. 6 minutes to read
I converted our repo from Hg to Git while preserving history. I ran into some hitches, some of the tools failed outright.