2017-04

Mastodon: like Twitter, but open and federated

[2017-04-09] computers, decentralized, mastodon

Mastodon is like Twitter, but federated and based on open protocols. This blog post explains what that means and what it is like to use Mastodon. It also gives tips for using it.

Setting up multi-platform npm packages

[2017-04-01] dev, javascript, esnext, npm, jsmodules, babel

This blog post explains ways of targeting multiple platforms via the same npm package.

2017-03

Two ES6 features that help with CommonJS modules

[2017-03-26] dev, javascript, esnext, commonjs, nodejs

Even without ES modules, ES6 is a joy to use in Node.js. Two ES6 features eliminate some of the redundancy of CommonJS syntax.

The new 2ality blog setup: statically generated via isomorphic React, hosted on Amazon S3

[2017-03-21] dev, javascript, nodejs, static site generation, 2ality

The new setup for the 2ality blog was literally years in the making: First, I experimented with various approaches. Then fine-tuning took a while, too. In this blog post I explain the details.

ES2020: BigInt – arbitrary precision integers

[2017-03-19] dev, javascript, es2020, numbers

Warning: This blog post is slightly outdated. Tread carefully.


The ECMAScript proposal “BigInt: Arbitrary precision integers in JavaScript” by Daniel Ehrenberg is currently at stage 3. This blog post gives an overview.

Coming up: a redesign of 2ality

[2017-03-16] 2ality

I’ll soon migrate 2ality to a different hosting solution. This blog post tells you what you need to know.

Exercise: text as Unicode clock faces

[2017-03-15] dev, javascript, unicode

In this blog post, we explore how arbitrary ASCII text can be encoded as Unicode clock faces:

> clocksToPlain('🕔🕘🕖🕕🕖🕜🕖🕜🕖🕟🕒🕑')
'Hello!'

I’m explaining ideas by Maggie Pint and @FakeUnicode.

Communicating Sequential Processes: an alternative to async generators

[2017-03-13] dev, javascript, esnext, async

In this blog post I present Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) and how they can be used as an alternative to async generators. In the process, we will also take a look at the ECMAScript proposal that async generators are a part of: “asynchronous iteration

2017-02

ECMAScript 2018: the final feature set

[2017-02-28] dev, javascript, esnext, es2018, es proposal

The feature set of ECMAScript 2018 was finalized during the latest TC39 meeting (23-25 January 2018). This blog post describes it.

babel-preset-env: a preset that configures Babel for you

[2017-02-22] esnext, dev, javascript, babel

babel-preset-env is a new preset that lets you specify an environment and automatically enables the necessary plugins.