Switching to Linux

At the end of July 2018 Apple released their mid-2018 model MacBook Pro lineup. I went freelance in March, and having worked on an aging 2014 MacBook Pro that I bought with me from my previous gig until then, I was ready to make my first big purchase as an independent developer: my very own MacBook Pro. I was even prepared to go all in on the top of the line model, 32gb of RAM being the spec item I was waiting for the most.

At the end of February, the new fancy .dev domains entered general availability after a period of very expensive "early access" exclusivity. I waited, and sure enough, no one else thought of grabbing verycool.dev at early access prices. I now own verycool.dev, and I plan to put up a dev blog of some sort. More info to come when available.

Hello! This is my new website and blog. I hope you like it. I built it with Gatsby and Netlify CMS which has turned out to be a great decision. Well actually, first I built my tech blog verycool.tech (which is stealth-launched, shhh!) and then I copied that codebase and made some style changes.

Controlled forms with React

We all know about “controlled components”, right? The wonderful invention that almost effortlessly keeps our form inputs in sync with our state. It should come as no surprise that the “controlled component” idea extends to whole forms too and covers them quite nicely.

Going freelance, the first month (ish)

The first month of freelancing isn’t really over yet, but I’m long overdue for a blog post anyway. I never promised that these would be regular!

Going freelance, day 1 and 2

Days one and two of being a freelance developer.

Going freelance, day 0

After 5 years at Mirum Agency in Helsinki, where I started as a trainee and learned most of what I know, it’s time to move onward. I'm going freelance!

How to choose a Javascript framework

Everyone knows that the rate of which new Javascript frameworks are released is hectic, to say the least. For every deprecation, there’s a bunch new ones to take its place. When someone strikes gold on a new pattern that promises to change the world, there’s 20 new implementations released in a short amount of time. How to make sense of it all?

MobX in the real world

MobX has been surging in popularity during the last year. It is being used as the state container in apps of all shapes and sizes. Redux vs MobX comparisons are made constantly, with MobX being praised for its simplicity and ease of use. But MobX is very unopinionated about the structure of your app; the only thing MobX does is guarantee that your view stays in sync with your state. So what does it mean to "replace Redux with MobX"? What does using MobX look like in a real app?