DEV Community: Gus

How to Add a Newsletter to Your Markdown Blog

Gus — Sat, 13 Aug 2022 19:42:00 +0000

Let's say we have a markdown blog that is:

Using GitHub for its content
Hosted on Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages, or the like

How do we add a newsletter on top of this whilst keeping all our writing on GitHub? This tutorial shows how.

1. Create an account on GitLetter

Visit gitletter.vercel.app and create an account.

Full disclaimer: I'm the sole creator of this tool.

2. Connect your repo

Go to Settings and click Connect to GitHub.

Once back in GitLetter, select the repository and directory where your markdown content is stored (this is where your email issues will be deployed).

3. (Optional) Add a sign up form to your blog

Go to Subscribers and click Manage > Add form to your blog.

Copy-paste this sign up form to an apt place on your blog – like your home page.

Enjoy automatic deploys! 🎉

Now every time you send an issue, your blog will be automatically updated.

What Makes an Effective Engineer?

Gus — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 21:54:00 +0000

How come Twitter has 7500 employees, whereas FTX – the crypto exchange company – grew to $18B with just 6 engineers?

If you ask their CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, this is not an accident.

In fact, many of their 10- and 100x-ers were rejected by bigger employers like Twitter.

Sam claims these engineers learned to be effective on the job.

So what makes them special?

Effective engineers do not work more hours.

They simply follow 3 simple rules:

1/ Prioritize High-Leverage Work
2/ Give Accurate Time-Estimates
3/ Grow Your Team

I summarized them here:

How to Self-Teach CS

Gus — Sat, 30 Jul 2022 16:56:23 +0000

There are two types of programmer:

Those who understand what's happening under the hood.
Those who just get by because they're familiar with a few high-level tools.

Don't know about you, but I do not want to be a code monkey.

If you want to evolve too, you'll have to self-teach CS.

I summarized the 9 fundamental CS topics every practicing software engineer should know:

One-Click Sign In with Next Auth

Gus — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 19:23:55 +0000

In the frontend it's as simple as...

import { signIn } from "next-auth/react";

<button
  onClick={() => signIn("google", { callbackUrl: "/account" })}
>
  Sign in
</Button>

And your api/auth/[...nextauth].ts route stays the same, no extra configuration needed:

const options = {
  providers: [
    GoogleProvider({
      clientId: process.env.GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID,
      clientSecret: process.env.GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET,
    }),
  ],
  adapter: PrismaAdapter(prisma),
  secret: process.env.SECRET,
};

const authHandler: NextApiHandler = (req, res) => NextAuth(req, res, options);

export default authHandler;

How to configure Vercel deploys for a monorepo package

Gus — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:08:28 +0000

Without configuration, Vercel will create a new deployment any time your repository updates, which is not ideal for monorepos.

With multiple packages, you're probably only hosting one or two on Vercel. So deploying every time any package is changed is unnecessary and might eat up your deployment quota (100/day for the free plan). Luckily, Vercel makes it easy to configure deployments to only happen when a specific package is changed.

Step 1: Navigate to Git settings

Open your Vercel project's dashboard, go to "Settings" > "Git", and scroll to "Ignored Build Step".

Step 2: Add a Git command

If you've configured the Root Directory in Vercel to be the same package you want to trigger deploys, add the following command:



git diff HEAD^ HEAD --quiet ./

But if you've for some reason left the Root Directory as its default value ./, you''ll need to use the package's absolute path instead:



git diff HEAD^ HEAD --quiet ./packages/your-package/

Tip: If you're unsure what your Vercel project's Root Directory is, go to "Settings" > "General" and scroll to "Root Directory".

Step 3: Enjoy fewer deploys

Success! When pushing a change to outside of packages/your-package, Vercel will no longer create a new deployment.

But if you push a change to packages/your-package, Vercel will build and deploy as usual.

May you stay on the free plan for a little bit longer ;)