How fast is a 2.5 GHz computer and what does that mean? — The term “gigahertz” is composed of two parts, “giga” and “hertz”. To understand “gigahertz” we’ll dive into what each of these parts mean separately, and then apply this understanding to what in relation to a computer, and more specifically a computer’s CPU. Let’s start with the “hertz” part of “gigahertz.” Hertz (Hz) and Frequency …

Reduce cognitive load with a consistent approach — Intro There are many ways to loop over collections, objects and arrays. Many of them are great for specific use cases. We’ll discuss a “nice” way to iterate over the items of collections, which will cover most use cases. What is “Nice”? Before I talk about the method of looping over collections, let me…

Using mongodump with mongorestore — The exercise here is to move the records of a Mongo collection from one Mongo server to another. One use case for this is to copy a collection, or part of a collection, from a production environment into a development environment. Our Setup In our example, we’ll have two database servers that…

How to get the data inside the data — Javascript Destructuring Assignment Modern JavaScript allows us to define variables quickly from existing collections, objects, and arrays, or values. This shorthand is called destructuring assignment, or destructuring for short. If a collection contains other collections as elements, those collections can also be destructured. Simple Object Destructuring Here we have a simple object obj from which we…

Helpful shorthands for modern JavaScript — Enter Javascript Ellipses (…) Modern JavaScript allows us to use three dots, …, also known as an ellipsis, to perform certain transformations and shorthand methods. The use of ellipses falls into two categories: rest syntax and spread syntax. I’ll explain each of these in turn. Rest Syntax Rest syntax allows a programmer to retrieve the remaining…

Tips for the beginner Vim user — What Is Vim? Vim is the de facto text editor for Linux. It can be thought of as the equivalent of Notepad for Windows or TextEdit for Mac. …

The first things to pick up when learning a new programming language — At some point, all engineers will have to pick up a new language. Here’s how I go about my first approach of a language. Avoidance of Syntactic Sugar In my first round, I avoid anything that makes the language nice. …

Hint: It isn’t to make sure new code works The Common Reasons Here are some reasons commonly cited in support of writing tests: To make sure new code works To find bugs before they happen To document your code If you’re an attentive engineer, most of the time when you’re finished with your…

What are they — and when are they used? — Serialization Serialization converts an in-memory data structure to a value that can be stored or transferred. Let’s say we have a users object in a JavaScript script that contains a total user count and a list of users, as follows: const usersObject = { "total": 2, "users": […