I'm an experienced web developer, software engineer, and leader. Welcome to my blog. If you need to reach out you can continue the conversation with a tweet to @geedew. I hope you find what you are looking for here. You can also find me on Github and StackOverflow.

Because, I play chess

I recently passed a job offer to a friend who gave the offer consideration, but decided that they were better suited with their current direction. Indirectly related, I also found myself two years ago facing the same choice, and two years prior the same exact choice. In my case, I took the offer both times. I was newly married with very little bills and out of college. At that point taking a risk was not a bad choice, as it is now with multiple loans and a baby. Life makes risk harder to swallow.

You know that 'sweep the pieces off the board and see it in your mind' thing? Doesn't work.
XKCD 232

The assumption that I blindly jumped into the new jobs however, is way off target. The same approach has played out in my code development strategies. I may make what seems like a risky choice that later, pays off nearly every time. It’s not random. I saw the jobs and code requirements coming; because, I play chess.

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Your Code Reeks

Drudging through the each line of fluff; var i, .length, foreach.

“How in the world does this code even work?”

We’ve all been there.

A text editor with colored JS code on a dark background

As a code review artist myself, I run into problems daily that make absolutely no sense upon initial understanding. Frustration leads to anger, anger leads to retaliation, and then the pull-request has been denied with prejudice. The problem with the code however; is you.

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Mustache as a Second Language

The mustache template language is ubiquitous with speed and efficiency. While many different templating engines and languages exist in web development, mustache crosses support for many different languages including PHP and JavaScript. Many times on a project, a point arrives when the project grows larger than the initial thought or intention. Walls are run into and hurdles to slow down work get in the way. Embedding the language, simple strings of communication, into your code is something many projects succeed well at, unfortunately. Once languages lives in the code, the difficulties to altering to a new language increase exponentially. In fact, adding a language becomes such a large project, that it stymies growth and becomes a large feature if not entirely scrapped; whereas it should just be part of the initial design. A unique solution to this that I found though is using the mustache templating language to make the localization process much easier.

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