DEV Community: David Sima

How do you start your css file?

David Sima — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 17:17:12 +0000

I usually start like this:

*:not(ul):not(ol) {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

It reverts most of the browser specific styles that I care of in the beginning preserving lists markers.

How do you set up a project with Preact?

David Sima — Sat, 25 May 2019 15:38:15 +0000

How do you separate and organize your Express.JS files?

David Sima — Sun, 12 May 2019 12:50:22 +0000

I am currently working on a project in which I have to also create a server using express.js. I am curious to know what is the best way to organize the files. Do you extract every endpoint function into a new file? How do you group them?

Personal site/portfolio

David Sima — Mon, 06 May 2019 20:33:31 +0000

I delayed the thought of making a personal site or portfolio for a long time. The main reason was that I didn't think that I had enough experience or projects to show off. On top of that, I needed a professional domain. So when .dev domains came out I got one basically forcing myself to build a personal site.

I gathered most of my projects, some of which I found scattered throughout different folders and uploaded them on GitHub (The ones that weren't already there). Then I started thinking of the design 🤔. I am not an artistic person but I was sure that with my personal site I wanted to show a part of me so I decided to include things that I like in general, not just development oriented. I used Adobe XD for designing as I am on Windows and I find it a pretty good replacement for Sketch. I finally settled for what I would call a minimalistic site. My main inspiration was Ali Spittel's article Building a Kickass Portfolio. Thank you @aspittel .

Then I probably made my first mistake. I didn't even think about what I was going to use to make it. I just used ReactJS even though it is so minimalistic that it can be created very easy without it. I also built a backend using Express.js for handling the form submission. I used an npm package called nodemailer to mail myself the form data. On top of that, I also added a Matomo script for tracking, optimized for a SPA and an opt-out option. The final step was building and deploying it on my RaspberryPi 3 B+ (which I love so much), getting a free SSL certificate, figuring out how to make NGINX serve content on two different domains, setting up Cloudflare (🍰) and automatically updating the IP inside Cloudflare because I have a dynamic IP. Really, apart from setting up Cloudflare, the backend part was way more challenging than the frontend. But, after all of that, I am proud of what I got.

Now, it is your turn. I ask you to check out my site and tell me: what do you like, what you don't like, what you would do differently, and overall, what are your thoughts on my site and my projects. 🤗

Here is the site: https://david-sima.dev/

Thank you for your time! 😄

Just finished my first app with Electron

David Sima — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 14:47:00 +0000

These days I challenged myself to build an app using Electron. It wasn't so much of a challenge because it's still JavaScript but it's more of the idea of building a desktop app instead of a web one.

Many times I found myself in the following situation: I find a very nice article or video online that I find interesting but I have no time to read/watch it at that moment.
I was dreaming of a simple app in which I could keep my findings for later but at the same time, I wanted something that stores data locally. Instead of searching for such an app, I woke up in the morning saying that it will be better to build one myself. So here I am with version 1.0.0, very basic and most probably very buggy but I am proud of what I made 😁

I'm leaving links to the Product Hunt page and to the GitHub repository.
I would appreciate if you would give me an upvote or a star ⭐ or even try my app if you find it interesting.
I'm waiting for suggestions 🤔 on improving the app and for bug reports 😫. Help me make this better! 💻

Also, this is my first DEV post 🎉

P.S: I'm 0% artistic, so any suggestions on improving the UI are most welcome 😊