Your Architecture is Bad, So Make It Easy to Change
Feb 10, 2023 by Lane WagnerHave you ever started a new software development job and thought: “Wow, what a beautifully architected system!
Snake Case or Camel Case? A Guide to Programming Naming Conventions
Dec 09, 2022 by Lane WagnerThe following names are all valid variable names in nearly every programming language: dogName dog_name DOG_NAME dog-name But which one should you use in your projects?
Your Code isn't Correct
Nov 29, 2021 by Lane WagnerThere is a common trap that we fall into as developers, and it is believing that because some code “worked” that the code was written “correctly”.
Death, Taxes, and Database Migrations
Aug 17, 2021 by Lane WagnerIn this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and migrations.
What are UUIDs, and are they better than regular IDs?
Jul 23, 2021 by Lane WagnerIn the context of back-end web development, an ID is just a unique identifier for a record of data.
Beautiful Language and Beautiful Code
Jun 30, 2021 by“Dead Poet’s Society” is a classic film, and has become a recent favorite of mine. There’s a scene in particular that I enjoy, where Robin William’s character explains that it’s bad practice to use terms like “very tired” or “very sad”, instead we should use descriptive words like “exhausted” or “morose”!
Check for Standards Before Creating a New One
Jun 07, 2021 by Lane WagnerI recently had a ticket opened on my team’s backlog board requesting the ability to bypass our API’s caching system.
Backend Developers are UX Designers Too
Apr 12, 2021 by Lane WagnerToo often I neglect the idea of UX design in backend work. The goal of user experience design is to give users a product that’s easy to use.
Naming Variables the Right Way
Apr 01, 2021 by Lane WagnerI’ve noticed that bugs introduced into an existing code base are often due to poor variable naming more than one might suspect.
Top 8 Benefits of Functional Programming
Feb 25, 2021 by Lane WagnerFunctional programming is a way to writing code where programs are created strictly through functions. Functional programming has gained quite a bit of traction in recent years among the development community, mostly because of the benefits it provides.
What Is Dry Code, and Is It Always A Good Thing?
Jan 25, 2021 by Lane Wagner“Don’t repeat yourself”, or “DRY” for short, is a somewhat controversial principle of software development. It aims to make code cleaner, which is to say less buggy and easier to work with.
Writing Good Unit Tests; Don't Mock Database Connections
Nov 23, 2020 by Lane WagnerUnit tests are incredibly important because they allow us to demonstrate the correctness of the code we’ve written.
Best Practices for Commenting Code
Oct 29, 2020 by Lane WagnerI often hear that we need more and better comments in the code we write. In my experience, we frequently need better comments, we rarely need more, and we sometimes need less.
The Nuances of Constants in Go; Go Isn't JavaScript
Oct 22, 2020 by Lane WagnerConstants can be confusing and easy to misuse in Go if you are coming from an untyped language.
Practical Patterns for Technical Writing
Sep 22, 2020 by Ben BartenWriting technical documents like API or architectural documentation which exceeds a simple flow diagram can be a daunting task.
How to Make Pure Functions in Golang
Sep 07, 2020 by Lane WagnerPure functions are often hyped up in the JavaScript world, probably because of the abundance of stateful front end applications.
Guard Clauses - How to Clean up Conditionals
Sep 06, 2020 by Lane WagnerOne of the first concepts new developers learn is the if/else statement. If/else statements are the most common way to execute conditional logic.
Should You Return Empty or Nil Slices in Go?
Sep 03, 2020 by Lane WagnerIn Go, we often need to return zero values. Idiomatic Go encourages the use of guard clauses, and guard clauses necessitate the need to return early.
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast - 25% of Our Time Refactoring
Sep 01, 2020 by Lane WagnerMy team has been spending less of our “free” time working on bugs and features from the backlog, and more time refactoring our code and tests.
Make Maps and Slices in Golang - A Guide to Initialization
Jun 29, 2020 by Lane WagnerThere are quite a few ways to create new maps and slices in Go, for example, they can both be initialized using the make() function, the new() function, as literals, or by using the var keyword.
How to Get Consistent Line Breaks in VS Code (LF vs CRLF)
Jun 18, 2020 by Lane WagnerHave you ever had the problem where you submit a pull request and the diff is much larger than it should be?
How to Sort a Slice in Go
May 27, 2020 by Lane WagnerSorting is a common task in programming, and for that reason, most languages have a default sorting algorithm in their standard library.
Don't Go To Casting Hell - Use Default Native Types in Go
May 21, 2020 by Lane WagnerGo is strongly typed, and with that, we get many options for simple variable types like integers and floats.
Range Over Ticker In Go With Immediate First Tick
Apr 30, 2020 by Lane WagnerThe Go standard library has a really cool type - Ticker. Tickers are used when you want to do something at a regular interval, similar to JavaScript’s setInterval.
Using 'Go Generate' To Deploy Multi-Process Apps
Apr 22, 2020 by Lane WagnerIn microservice architectures, it’s fairly common to have a project that includes different worker types. A Makefile can be used to manage the creation of multiple programs, but the Go toolchain has a tool that can be used as well, go generate.