DEV Community: Mark Kozel

Mutability of JavaScript

Mark Kozel — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 19:46:02 +0000

I love the way JavaScript code has a dynamic aspect that allows for on-the-fly changes

Coming from a Safety-Critical Software background, any dynamic construct, like inheritance, was discourages

Now, learning web programming I am loving the freedom JavaScript includes. Some are likely an effect of being interpreted, but others are just plain cool

Object Bracket Notation

ability to reference object elements as an array, somewhat like PHP's associative arrays

let myObj = {'prop1': 14};
myObj['prop1'] = 41;

Adding Object Elements on-the-fly

Coming from C/C++ OOD/P, everything is fixed and unbending

With JS Object, you can tack on a new element, including functions

I had some fun with this in an NPM module Quick JSON Config I wrote a while back

As the node app reads in each top-level element of the JSON file, it adds get/set function to it's class instance

  /**
   * Embeds each json element into this class. Creates a simple get/set method for each
   * @param {object} el - json key-value pair for embedding
   */
  _embedElement(el) {
    let getName = `get${el}`;
    this[getName] = function () {
      return this._jsonData[el];
    }

    let setName = `set${el}`;
    this[setName] = function (newVal) {
      if (typeof newVal === typeof this._jsonData[el]) {
        this._jsonData[el] = newVal;
      }
    }
  }

Here I create the functions to get/set the element, then tack it on to the instance using the Bracket Notation

Promisify Functions

Working in Node and using some older (well, actually, it is more like not maintained packages), the mutations are used to wrap function is async/await and Promise constructs

I have not looked into how packages like bluebird does this, but I expect it is similar to the above items I expressed

Of Course...

This means developers must understand these constructs so they do not shoot themselves (or their customers) in the foot

While safety-critical software has rules and limitations, many are to prevent letting the runtime environment make decisions and change how your code executes

My NPM Modules

Mark Kozel — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 17:13:37 +0000

I created a few NPM modules to help with work and personal projects

I tried a few existing packages, but found that all had many other dependencies...creating large project repos

Since I needed simple functionality, I decided to make my own without dependencies

QuickGitJs: a simple node tool to interact with local repo for status and updates
QuickJSONConfig: a silly package that reads a JSON (such as package.json) and allows accessing and updating of the file. I say silly because it does a silly thing as it reads in each element...it creates get/set functions for each top-level JSON element. I did this for fun and realize is it not really practical
QuickAsk: a simple prompt function that gets and returns user responses
QuickTextColor: a library of ansi color codes to make cli node apps a little nicer
QuickHTTPD: simple node server using the http built-in module. Supports http and https. I built this to help me understand server-side certificate usage

Computer Organization Textbook

Mark Kozel — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 16:49:58 +0000

I am in the midst of creating a free, OER textbook for my computer science course

Using VuePress to organize and include interactive elements. Currently the site is built on GitHub and deployed to Netlify

Init Commit

Mark Kozel — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 13:58:50 +0000

obligatory first post
Interested to see how active this community is. Tried following dev tags and folks on Twitter, but mostly saw posts like:

Top 10 NodeJS Features You MUST Start Using Today!

So hoping algorithms here are a little less dramatic

Anyway, I love learning new things related to web programming. I love the NodeJs ecosystem and all the capabilities it provides

Currently learning ExpressJs as an add-on for my team's Launch Support display system