John Masse

Hello Engineering Manager

Engineering management is a critical role for a team of engineers and programmers. The responsibilities of the engineering manager are varied. An engineering manager is responsible for the delivery of work, the quality of the work delivered, the personal needs for their team, and the professional development of the individuals

javascript

How to improve your JavaScript career

In this post, we are going to explore several topics that will have a meaningful impact on a professional programmer's career.

react

React: neatly make variables available to your event handlers

I keep forgetting to write this down or show it to other programmers. But I write a lot of React code... like TONS of it... and a lot of times I need to deal with events. One common challenge is I have some variable I need to pass along to

react

React PropTypes best practices

React components are great at allowing us to express all of the things a part of our application may need to care about. This includes the external information our component may need to function as a consumer of our component may need. Here are a number of considerations I have

javascript

NPM module of the week: webpack-bundle-analyzer

As software folks, we live and die by the performance, or perceived performance, of the stuff we write and publish. One of the many facets of performance is file size. And with the continued onset of new and exciting NPM modules and third party code bits for us to use

GraphQL

Bullet proof your technology stack with GraphQL

It has taken a little time for technology like GraphQL to settle in. I find myself in conversations with folks about the use of GraphQL and whether or not it makes sense to use for their project. Maybe GraphQL is good for you, perhaps it is too soon - but

javascript

NPM module of the week: ESLint-plugin-import

Save yourself some time debugging whether or not you have the correct paths to modules you are importing. I have found myself in a lot of discussion around Javascript standards and style. I have been a long time fan of the airbnb javascript style guide and while documenting the use

technical-interviewing

How to run a great technical screening (pre-screening)

I have been interviewing recruiting and coaching engineers since early 2013. During that time I have developed frameworks, onboarding strategies, and interviewing workshops that help folks succeed in recruiting. In this post, I wish to share with you one process for the technical screening, commonly known as the phone interview,

notebook

GraphQL Schema Design for Returning Lists of Things

How to define a graphQL type and build a schema that will return an instance or collection of the same type. Dummy data const people = [ { "_id": "1", "firstName": "John", "lastName": "Masse" }, { "_id": "2", "

es2015

Getting Started with ES2015

Stepping into ES2015 Here is a starter guide I had put together to help people get to know at least some of the more common constructs found in ES2015 / ES6. It references some of my favorite materials I have come across and sets up a few questions for you to

meteor.js

Contemplating the future of Meteor.js

I have been a huge fan of Meteor.js and the thinking behind the framework for the past couple of years. From the first time I hacked up a small todo's application over a weekend to building a large scale web application like ClassMate.io, I have really appreciated the

meteor.js

Meteor methods: How to provide a callback for error and success scenerios

In this tutorial will make the following assumptions: That we have a document set we are acting upon that is provided the Schedule symbol to be acted against. This is common in Meteor.js applications. We are using ES2015+ The code you are about to see is not optimized for

meteor.js

Meteor and MongoDB: Dynamically updating properties of objects nested within an array

Before we get into some of the code we will make the following assumptions: Our document set is named Schedule We are using ES2015+ Take this example document structure: { _id: '123-456-789', ownerId: '123', schedule: [ { _id: '432-1234-12', sectionTitle: 'Section 1', }, { _id: '222-111-232', sectionTitle: 'Section 2', } ], } The following will update sectionTitle to

rant

If you are Saying "ES6" You're Doing it Wrong

I Love the Term ES6 It easily rolls off the tongue and is slicker to write about. ES2015 sounds clunky and is hard to say. I always want to abbreviate it in conversations. I would say "ES15" or "Modern JS" or "ESNext", which of

team building

Working Better with Developers

Good Developers are a Rare, and Expensive Commodity A Developers time is best spent doing the work that really makes a difference for your team and your product. While there are many topics to cover for how Developers may manage their time, there are things we can do to allow

programming

5 Reasons for Having Your Code Reviewed

Why Code Reviews Are Important Getting on the soap box #tldr Have you ever written some code, or an entire application, that you came back to a month later and thought What the heck was I doing? Maybe you hope for the opportunity to refactor, rebuild or otherwise destroy your

ghost cms

My First Month With the Ghost CMS

It was Time for Redesign Previous State of Affairs During the last four weeks I have been on a mad rampage to rebuild and redesign my website. I have been neglecting jjmasse.com for well over three years. My tutorials are old and unpolished by todays standards, my blog was

team building

Working Through Avoidance

Over time I have found honesty to be feared. I am generally a passionate individual. Most of the feedback I get is positive. My direct reports are always very kind during reviews, and my peers have also been very kind. However, one piece of feedback tends to come up during

public speaking

Regaining my Grip on Public Speaking

There may come a time when either you yourself would like to share something you have learned. Maybe you have been asked by colleagues or friends to share your topic thoughts with them in a group format. When this starts to happen you are exploring public speaking. Why I Want