When hiring front-end developers, there are many ways to evaluate candidates’ skills and abilities. However, some assessment methods can be exclusionary, while others may not accurately reflect the type of work the candidate will do.
In this article, we’ll explore some efficient ways to test front-end developer hires without relying on coding puzzles and algorithms and how to be mindful of inclusivity.
I come from a self-taught background, a time when self-taught invited increased scrutiny because being self-taught in the early to mid-00s wasn’t as common as it is now. We have numerous online courses, boot camps and other resources. When I learned to code, these thick phonebook-like books that came with one or more CD-ROM discs with software and code examples were how many learned.
If you’re distributing a package, say a plugin, you may want to test it against multiple Node versions (especially if you’re using Jest for tests). In my situation, I have a popular plugin for Aurelia called Aurelia Google Maps. It’s for Aurelia 1, but many people use it, so I wanted to test it against the LTS of Node and the latest version.
name: Node.js Jest Tests on: [push, pull\_request] jobs: build-and-test: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v3 - name: Use Node.js ${{ matrix.node-version }} uses: actions/setup-node@v3 with: node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }} cache: 'yarn' - name: Install dependencies run: yarn install - name: Run Jest tests run: yarn test strategy: matrix: node-version: [18.x, 19.x] You will want to save this file in your .github/workflows directory at the root of your project. You can save it as whatever you want: run-tests.yml
I hate to be “that guy” that publishes a blog post and says, “Stop using X” and “Why you should be using X instead”, but after a recent situation in some code I wrote ages ago and updated, I felt it was worthy writing a blog post about why you should use globalThis instead. That’s not to say if you’re currently using window that you’re wrong (because globalThis aliases window in a browser context). However, by using globalThis, you can save yourself a lot of trouble, especially in unit tests.
If you have an application that has HTML imports like this import template from './my-component.html and then attempt to test this code in Jest 28+ (or previous versions, for that matter), you will get a syntax error similar to this one:
SyntaxError: Unexpected token ‘<’ HTML
Fortunately, there is an easy fix. Firstly, you need to install the package jest-html-loader. npm install jest-html-loader -D. Then you need to configure your Jest configuration as follows.
It’s been well over a decade since I started my journey as a front-end developer. I’ve worked on numerous projects, built and maintained websites, and developed applications. I have numerous open-source projects and am on the Aurelia Javascript framework core team. Over the years, I’ve gained experience and learned a lot of things, but there are still times when I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.
I know I’m not alone in this. As developers, we face a lot of challenges, big and small. From dealing with complex algorithms to fixing simple bugs, obstacles always exist. But despite my experience, I still get caught up in stupid bugs, struggle to install and configure packages and spend hours stuck on things that ultimately have simple solutions.
TypeScript is a statically-typed superset of JavaScript introduced by Microsoft in 2012. It’s a language that some developers love to hate, but over the years, TypeScript has won over many sceptics, becoming an essential part of many modern JavaScript projects.
You now have developers that once hated TypeScript liking it. Perhaps one of the most known developer advocates to get their TypeScript stance wrong was Eric Elliott, who published an article where he discusses a TypeScript tax. To Eric’s credit, he doesn’t say not to use TypeScript but attempts to argue against its use.
The widespread tech layoffs over the past few months, and in January and February 2023 alone, have been causing concern for some. Is it a sign of a possible recession and economic avalanche that will see the unemployment rate skyrocket in different countries?
I am not an economist, so this is just more observational. But, I don’t believe the widespread tech exodus we are currently witnessing is symptomatic of an economic storm battering down on the tech sector. It’s a correction.
Just when you thought the return to office movement was gaining momentum, driven by high-profile companies and out-of-touch boomer CEOs that struggle to adapt to the new paradigm of flexible working, it appears there might be a few bumps in the road.
Some data has come out on productivity from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics since some workers have been forced back into the office, most notably showing that productivity has decreased.
Since taking the helm of Twitter, Chief Twit and manical entrepreneur Elon Musk has ruffled some feathers. From losing advertisers to claims he asked engineers to boost his popularity on the platform, it has been a wild ride.
The latest wild ride is Twitter has announced two factor authentication using text messages will be a Twitter Blue only feature. There is this image circulating and people are upset.
Is Twitter disabling text message two-factor authentication a security threat? Well, it is if you don’t configure something else in its place. Install Authy and spend the 2 minutes configuring it. Problem solved.
After a lengthy free period of constant downtime and unreliability, ChatGPT has opened up its paid Plus plan to more people and wanting to see what the difference was between Plus and free, I signed up.
For some, USD 20 might be too much to reconcile in this current economic climate. If you use ChatGPT as part of your daily tasks like some do, then $20 might be pretty valuable. If you’re a hobbyist user or just curious, $20 might be a cost you’ll have to weigh against your coffee budget.