Blog
Practical articles on the tools, formats, and tradeoffs behind everyday developer work. New posts roughly weekly.
Cron Expression Cheatsheet With Real Examples
The handful of cron patterns you actually need, the difference between 5-field and 6-field syntax, and the timezone gotcha that will burn you.
Favicon Sizes That Actually Matter in 2026
The classic 'generate 47 favicon files' advice is outdated. Here's the minimum viable set modern browsers and PWAs actually use.
CSV ↔ JSON Conversion Pitfalls: Escaping, Quoting, Encoding
CSV looks trivial until you ship it. Embedded commas, Excel's auto-formatting, UTF-8 BOMs, and the locale wars — with rules for getting it right.
Encrypt Text in Your Browser Without Sending It Anywhere
How WebCrypto's AES-GCM works, why PBKDF2 iteration count matters, and what passphrase-based encryption actually protects you from.
The Developer's Guide to Regex Lookaheads and Lookbehinds
Positive and negative lookarounds explained with practical JavaScript examples — password validation, currency matching, URL slug extraction, and more.
Choosing Between CODE128, EAN-13, UPC, and ITF-14 Barcodes
A decision tree for picking the right barcode format — what each encodes, length limits, checkdigit rules, and when to pick CODE128 versus retail-specific formats.
How to Merge PDFs in Your Browser Without Uploading Them Anywhere
Why client-side PDF merging matters for privacy, how pdf-lib works under the hood, and the limitations you need to know before trusting a browser tool.
JSON vs YAML for Config Files: Pick the Right Tool, Skip the Pain
A practical guide to choosing between JSON and YAML for configuration files, with concrete gotchas and recommendations for Kubernetes, APIs, and more.
Why Client-Side Image Compression Matters for Your Page Weight and LCP
When to compress images in the browser versus on a server, how WebP, AVIF, and JPEG actually compare, and the Lighthouse wins that follow.