Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Over the last month, I’ve been on holidays and haven’t spent too much time working on my various devices. As such, I’ll be covering some updates to past topics, and also give a sneak peek at some articles that are in progress.
Updates
Exercism
I previously mentioned Exercism in my “learning to code” articles, and alongside similar topics. Specifically, I mentioned it in issues 73, 99, 110, and 135. It is, however, worth noting again – because the website was recently updated. Exercism now offers two tracks - independent study, and mentored learning. My main issue with Exercism has always been that you sometimes get wonderful feedback, and other times you’ll have to track down other people’s solutions to try to learn. Now each track has a mentor assigned, who will respond to your solutions and offer feedback. They’ve also redesigned the site to be a little more user friendly (at least that was my experience), though their approach in the CLI has changed (it seems like you need to now join a track on the website before you can fetch the problems).
Codefights
I previously mentioned this website in issue 122. It’s a site that essentially offers coding challenges that were user-submitted. They also offer problems from companies, and even offer an interview preparation course. I’ve recently started working through their interview problems, and the results have been quite interesting. Most of the problems I’ve done so far aren’t terribly difficult - the difficulty (for me) comes from the runtime constraints (memory limits, maximum runtime, etc). They also always mention which company has previously had similar questions in interviews. So if you’re looking to prep for an interview (or, like me, just want to practice something different), I highly recommend giving it a shot. Before you do, I’d also recommend working your way up to it a bit with other programming challenges or things like the Euler Project. Or simply plan out every problem with pen and paper to optimize your process as much as possible before coding.
Hugo
I mentioned Hugo last month (issue 135). A brief recap - it’s a static site generator written in Go. Since then, there have been a few major updates to the application - it now supports PostCSS, SASS, and resizing images using Resources.Get. However - if you use Netlify, you will need to include your resources folder in the git repository as Netlify does not currently regenerate these assets or CSS files. Last I heard, they are currently investigating options for supporting both versions of Hugo.
Tailwind CSS
I mentioned this in my last two articles - issues 134 and 135. Just a small update though - I recently used Tailwind on a project, and had to spend some time optimizing the file size. I originally edited the configuration file, until I discovered the official documentation on using Tailwind CSS with PurgeCSS. This article, specifically. The key part there is their TailwindExtractor function, which adds support for special characters (as Tailwind uses : in CSS classes). I had to check a few other articles to get it working in my workflow, so here (on the next page, top right) is what my postcss.config.js looks like.
This file is then utilized by webpack and npm to generate my CSS. I haven’t had any issues with @apply support, or classes utilized in my templates. This is because PostCSS processes the file after tailwind, meaning the @apply sections are executed first and converted to CSS. I wouldn’t recommend trying to utilize purgecss outside of your actual build pipeline unless you’re doing a one-off optimization. I also wouldn’t recommend purging stuff from your CSS file while you’re still developing (just comment out the purgecss lines while you’re working).
The Future
My intention is to order (and possibly assemble, depending on how much time I want to spend on this) a Redox keyboard (a slightly “reduced” Ergodox). Once I’ve ordered and received it, I’ll be covering setup for the keyboard under Linux, and most likely also doing a review. For those readers who don’t know what an Ergodox keyboard is - it’s a split keyboard (roughly hand-shaped) that is programmable. Essentially my goal is to have a split keyboard that is comfortable to use that will use some custom layout (probably inspired by a US layout), while having multiple layers for special characters (such as German umlaut like äöü). I’d also have a layer that will just be a numpad (as I do tend to use it). The reasoning behind this is to improve my programming efficiency and typing speed (on DE layouts, the curly braces and square brackets are hidden behind alt-gr keyboard combinations, etc) – while not losing the ability to quickly and easily write emails in German when the need arises.
Conclusion
I hope that my updates to previous articles might entice a few readers who were previously on the fence to give some of these websites and applications a shot. If there are any readers out there who are interested in the redox keyboard (or already own one), please feel free to email any questions or comments to lswest34+fcm@gmail.com. Similarly, if you have any requests for articles or suggestions about the format, you can direct those comments to the above email address as well.