DEV Community: Adrian Grimm

Hello, my name is Adrian Grimm!

Adrian Grimm — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 17:45:44 +0000

I've been a member here for a few years, but I haven't done much writing. This introduction is my first step in a new, focused direction.
I've been writing front-end code for about three years. I had been taking classes in Database Administration. I also took a class on HTML and CSS, followed by a JavaScript course. I enjoyed these classes so much that I realized this was what I wanted to do.
Finally! After years of searching, I was able to find my direction. When I say finally, I mean I've worn many hats. I was a professional chef with a degree from Johnson & Wales University. Then I earned the title of United States Marine. Leaving active duty, I found employment as a Correctional Officer. Currently, I work as a senior tech support agent helping with alarm systems.
I completed the front-end developer program and continued my learning journey. Expanding on what I had learned, I went more in-depth with React. I added Gatsby and crafted a website for a small Swedish band that has become my pride and joy. Imagine how happy I was to find #VetsWhoCode, where I could start learning in earnest.
I have a voracious thirst for knowledge and am always looking to learn. While expanding my skills, I hope to have more free time to dive into Ruby and Ruby on Rails, among others.
Life isn't only about writing code, and when I'm not at my desk, I'm spending time with my wife, kids, and cats. I love Star Wars (recently finished reading the Thrawn Trilogy!) and Colts football, and I work so much better listening to music!
So hit me up on Twitter as @usmcamgrimm and check out my GitHub as usmcamgrimm and let's talk!

VetsWhoCode Extension Pack

Adrian Grimm — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 13:30:57 +0000

Vets Who Code is a non-profit organization providing veterans with software development training. As part of the training, the students set up their development environment, including VS Code. Most students are not aware of the available extensions they could use and they receive a list to install from the marketplace.

Realizing there must be a better way, we built a VS Code plugin to flatten the productive learning curve. This plugin is an extension pack filled with common extensions used in the training program. We asked for feedback from the VetsWhoCode community, and added the most common extensions into the plugin.

The value in using this plugin is the time saved getting new veterans up and running. The troops install the extension pack, increasing the amount of instructional time. This translates to a faster transition into writing software.

The VetsWhoCode Extension Pack contains the following extensions:
-Alphabetical Sorter
-Axe Accessibility Linter
-Bookmarks
-CSS Peek
-DotEnv
-Drawio
-ESLint
-GitBlame
-GitLens
-JavaScript Booster
-LiveServer
-Markdown All in One
-Path-Intellisense
-Prettier
-Quokka
-React-VSCode-Extension-Pack
-Sort JSON objects
-Thunder Client
-VSCode-Dash
-VSLiveShare Pack

We are always open to more feedback and grateful to those who support us in our learning and building journey. Don't hesitate to provide feedback or ideas via GitHub discussions. Our open-source extension pack can be found here.

Why I Use SSH with Git

Adrian Grimm — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 19:59:05 +0000

I have been using git actively since 2014. When I first started, it was annoying to enter my password every time I cloned and pushed updates to repos. The answer, I was told, was to set up SSH keys. I was amazed! The process was so much faster after I set up SSH key pairs with my laptop, build server, and Github.

Github recommends using an HTTPS connection over SSH, the primary reason being universal availability through firewalls. HTTPS access is slightly less involved, requiring only a GitHub username and password. The downside to connecting via HTTPS is that you will have to enter your username and password when you perform git actions such as pull and push. A workaround for this is to set up a cache for your credentials, but this only stores them for a specified time.

I recommend using SSH because I find it faster, more convenient, and more secure. Faster, because there's no more entering your credentials and more convenient because once your keys are set up, you're good to go. SSH is also more secure than HTTPS. For example, if your account credentials are compromised, an attacker can gain access to your entire GitHub account. If your SSH key is compromised, you have the ability to log in and change/delete your SSH key.

Setting up an SSH key is easy, as demonstrated below:

Open a terminal and type the following:

You will be asked to enter a file to save the key. Pressing enter will save your key pair in the default location.

Next, you will be asked to enter a passphrase. If you don't want to associate a password with the key, just pres enter to leave this blank.

Now that the key pair has been created, you have to start the SSH-Agent so your key can be added.

Now add your key to the SSH-Agent:

The last step is to add the public key to your GitHub account. Go into your GitHub account settings, to "SSH and GPG Keys". Click the green button to add a new key. Add a title and copy the public key from your .ssh folder (or wherever you store the key).

And that's it, SSH is setup for your account. Get started by selecting "use SSH" on the green "clone or download" button.

Learning React

Adrian Grimm — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 20:43:53 +0000

This week at the VetsWhoCode cohort, we started learning React. One of our homework assignments? To create this post. A post in which we were tasked with describing our newly-acquired knowledge of this library. So I started where anyone else would: dev.to, where I found a post titled "Explain React.js Like I'm Five". The post can be found here.

A benefit of using React over vanilla Javascript is the ability to re-use components. Components are snippets of code used in various portions of the application. With React, these components are imported into multiple pages, allowing them to be re-used. Not only does this cut down on development time, but eliminates duplicate required if using vanilla Javascript. When building complex web applications, these components become very useful for maintaining the state of a page, and handling the way data is managed and passed down through elements. React uses these components to manage state; by using these components effectively, the data is passed down to each component. Effective state management is a key aspect of using React.

Another benefit of using React is the Virtual DOM. React is built for better DOM management, and calculates the necessary changes needed, and refreshes only what is needed. React uses reconciliation to build the web page in virtual memory. Updates are run, and only the necessary changes are rendered in the browser. React uses a diff to check what changes need to be made to the HTML DOM, and then compares the collected diffs to update only the parts of the DOM indicated by those diffs. In this way, the rendering process is faster, because React only has to change or update a small part of what could be a large DOM.