Tips - Preslav Rachev

How to Bring That Volume Widget Back

I found my way of living in peace with macOS Big Sur's new Control Center

Elixir Tip: Case vs. With

Dating back to version 1.2, the with operator is one of Elixir's features that need a bit of time to comprehend at first. It often gets used in situations where one would use case, or vice versa. The main difference between the two is that with will fall through,

Programming

Fixing That Nasty "SSL module is not available" Bug on macOS

Messing up with Xcode is a recipe for disaster. I knew this when I installed an Xcode Beta alongside an existing version of Xcode. Suddenly, one of my Python apps stopped working with the following error: Could not fetch URL xyz ... (Caused by SSLError("Can't connect to HTTPS URL because

Programming

Go Tip: Copy a Reader Into a Writer

Something so simple, and yet, so easy to forget right when you need it. How does one exhaustively read from a Reader and write to a Writer at the same time? One way is to set up a []byte buffer, use to read a chunk from the Reader, write the

Programming

A Simple Way to Keep a Go App Up and Running

Poor man’s Kubernetes

Programming

Auth0 Struggles: Access A Signed-Up User's App Metadata

For quite some time, I have been fighting with Auth0 to get the app metadata I am storing for each user. It wasn't easy, which is why I decided to document my steps.

Programming

Use the Git History to Identify Pain Points in Any Project

Have you heard of Adam Tornhill's work? If not, I highly recommend that you set some time aside and check out Your Code as a Crime Scene or Software DEsign X-Rays. In both books, the author dives into a bit of an unexplored territory - looking at the evolution of

Programming

Developer Tool Tip: DevDocs

Here is a handy developer tool tip for today: DevDocs As developers, we spend a large portion of our time, searching for the "name of the function abc that did thing xyz". Not surprisingly, sites like StackOverflow have become so popular. Yet, SO answers are often full of

Micro

Change the Default Working Directory in iTerm

iTerm protip: If it bugs you that every new side pane opens up in your home directory and not in the one that the previous pane pointed at, there is an easy fix. Go to Preferences -> Profile and under Working Directory, choose Advanced. There, you will be able

Programming

Use Dotenv Files When Developing Your Python Apps

Hard-coding configuration is bad. This is one of the things that newbie programmers learn quickly after they realize that have committed sensitive information to a public GitHub repository. And it happens so easily. Often, you are in the spur of the moment, wanting to test something locally, when you figure

Programming

Use Dotenv Files When Developing Your Python Apps

Hard-coding configuration is bad. This is one of the things that newbie programmers learn quickly after they realize that have committed sensitive information to a public GitHub repository. And it happens so easily. Often, you are in the spur of the moment, wanting to test something locally, when you figure

Productivity

Dark Mode for the Web Using Dark Reader

Switch to using a dark UI everywhere, even when browsing your favorite Web pages.

Programming

Connecting to a MongoDB Instance Using KMongo

Often, the seemingly simple things can make you spend hours chasing around your tail. Like trying to connect to a MongoDB instance using KMongo. Basically, if you have checked out the KMongo quick start, setting up a client and fetching some data should be extremely easy: val client = KMongo.createClient(

Programming

Git Tip: List the Most Recent Branches You Have Been Working On

List and switch back and forth between multiple git branches with ease.

Programming

Python: Automatic Argument Unpacking from a Dictionary

Programming often involves creating configuration objects/dicts and passing them around to functions. Let's say we want to pass the following configuration dict to a function: config = { 'prop_a': 'foo', 'prop_b': 'bar' } Usually, a function that consumes this configuration dict would either expect a single parameter: def do_something(

Programming

Live-reloading of Python Modules in the Python REPL / IPython / Jupyter Console

Often, I would work on a Python module and add changes to it live, which I would then want to test immediately. Piece of cake! Add the changes and execute the script again. Well, that’s certainly a way, but as modules get bigger, they tend to import other modules,

Programming

Debugging Network Calls in React Native Using the Chrome Debugger

TL;DR! Just give me the code In your index.js file (or your platform-specific index file for that matter), simply add the following line to the top, directly after the import statements: XMLHttpRequest = GLOBAL.originalXMLHttpRequest ? GLOBAL.originalXMLHttpRequest : GLOBAL.XMLHttpRequest; You will also need a Chrome plugin that overrides CORS.

Programming

What’s with the 50/72 rule?

It is part of common sense to assume that the worthiest commit messages lie far from any extremes. Years ago, I often fell in the trap of hastily sending a commit after commit, annoyed by the fact that I have to add a summary to it (let alone a description)