Thoughts regarding an app that'll aggregate and display #devdiscuss discussions?

Ifeoluwa Arowosegbe — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 21:27:51 +0000

I've been thinking about ways which would make it easier for folks not on UTC-4 to catch up on things discussed during #devdiscuss on Twitter. Personally, I miss out on the discussions most times because I'm on UTC+1 and it's usually around 2am when #devdiscuss happens.

So, I was hoping to get suggestions regarding what the community thinks about having a platform that aggregates the discussions and, maybe even show past topics (for as far as the Twitter API permits).

Do you think this would be better than searching the hashtag on Twitter and just reading discussions around topics there?

Discovering JavaScript: lets, vars and ifs

Ifeoluwa Arowosegbe — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 01:21:33 +0000

Learning is beautiful, the process is even more fascinating. How we transcend being ignorant about a subject to gaining varying levels of proficiency is simply mind-blowing. I've been programming professionally for a relatively short period but I thought it'd be nice to document some things I find interesting as I go through the learning process. I'm excited to share my first entry in what would hopefully be a series with you.

let & var

The major difference between let and var is the scope of both keywords -- let is block scoped while var is function scoped.
-source

You see, I've been aware of this rule but it didn't really mean much till recently when I personally experienced this behavior while working on a project feature.

This code snippet demonstrates the behavior and is somewhat similar to what I was working on when I hit my light-bulb moment regarding what distinguishes let from var.

function checkProperty(userObject){
    if(userObject.hasOwnProperty('name') && userObject.hasOwnProperty('age')) {
        let name = userObject.name;
        let age = userObject.age;
    }
    //proceed to work with variables, in our case we log it to the console
    console.log('Name:', name);
    console.log('Age:', age);
}

let user = {name: 'Dev', age: 10};

checkProperty(user); //execute function: should throw Reference Error

Running this snippet should throw a ReferenceError that says name is not defined. This is because the let keyword is bound to the code block in which it is declared. In this case, variables declared with let are bound to our if block and are therefore inaccessible outside it. This quote from MDN best explains the behavior of the var keyword;

"The scope of a variable declared with var is its current execution context, which is either the enclosing function or, for variables declared outside any function, global."

The next thing I did, albeit intuitively after verifying that this wasn't a typo was to change let to var and voila, it worked as it should. This was when the "scoping" of both keywords made sense to me.

After identifying and understanding this behavior, I adapted my code and declared my variables in the checkProperty function scope and that fixed the error. The updated code looks like the following;

function checkProperty(userObject){
    let name, age;
    if(userObject.hasOwnProperty('name') && userObject.hasOwnProperty('age')) {
        name = userObject.name;
        age = userObject.age;
    }
    //proceed to work with variables, in our case we log it to the console
    console.log('Name:', name);
    console.log('Age:', age);
}

let user = {name: 'Dev', age: 10};

checkProperty(user); //execute function: Logs "Name: Dev \n Age: 10" to console

if

I needed to make sure certain properties of an object were set before using them and I didn't want to write if conditions that would stretch so far that one would have to scroll horizontally, that is just not pretty. So I set out to experiment with if till I found something that works and is pretty.ðŸ˜Š

I had something like this in my first iteration*ðŸ’€ :face palm:

function checkProperty(user){

    if(user.name !== 'undefined' && user.age !== 'undefined' && user.email !== 'undefined' && user.level !== 'undefined') {

    }
}

That was painful to see, I know :(. There had to be another way and I indeed found something!

function checkProperty(user){
    if((user.name && user.age && user.email && user.level) !== (undefined || null)) {
        console.log('It passed.')   
    }
}

The caveat of using this approach is that it passes for properties that don't exist on the object. This means one would have to ensure the properties exist using the `hasOwnProperty' function before proceeding to use this. Oh, welp! :(

For robust object schema validation though, you should probably look into joi.

Comments and corrections are welcomed. Thanks for reading!

Hiii, I'm Ifeoluwa

Ifeoluwa Arowosegbe — Mon, 22 May 2017 12:30:59 +0000

I have been coding for 2 years.

You can find me on GitHub as iifeoluwa

I live in Lagos.

I mostly program in these languages: [PHP, JavaScript].

I am currently learning more about Algorithms, Data Structures, Money and Life.

Nice to meet you.

DEV Community: Ifeoluwa Arowosegbe

Thoughts regarding an app that'll aggregate and display #devdiscuss discussions?

Discovering JavaScript: lets, vars and ifs

let & var

if

Hiii, I'm Ifeoluwa