Blag

I'm on Stack Overflow a lot.

A lot.

So I often see people ask questions along the lines of:

I have [problem], how do I write code to solve [problem].

And then they proceed to not show any relevant code or even attempt to help themselves.

Writing code is a lot like drawing an owl:

There's no trick to writing code, it's two simple steps.

1. Write some functions
2. Write the rest of the fucking code

⚠ This package is now deprecated ⚠

Use URLSearchParams instead.

I made a JavaScript query string parsing library because all the others sucked.

It's on NPM.

It has unit tests!

And it's pretty simple to use (example uses browserify):

I do not know what good code looks like.

I would not recognize it if I saw it.

I know this because I do know what bad code looks like. I see bad code every day. Most of the bad code I see every day is my own. I know what bad code looks like because I see it whenever I fix a bug. I see it whenever I refactor code to be shorter, more concise, and more readable.

I am fortunate when the code I'm debugging was written in a clean manner. I am fortunate when the code I'm debugging is well formatted. These qualities make my job easier, but they do not make good code.

With the prevalence of jQuery tutorials and JavaScript advice in general, it's common to see JavaScript events bound to the click event.

Without jQuery this is done with:

document.querySelector(selector).addEventListener(
  "click",
  function (e) {
    // ...code here...
  },
  false
);

_{(for purposes of this example, we'll assume that there's only one element in the selection)}

With jQuery this is done with

$(selector).click(function (e) {
  // ...code here...
});

...or...

$(selector).on("click", function (e) {
  // ...code here...
});

Seeing this code, you could be forgiven for thinking that ...code here... is where you start writing your functionality when adding a click handler to a hyperlink.

Simple AJAX examples often appear as:

$("a").click(function (e) {
  $.get(this.href).then(doStuffWithResults);
  e.preventDefault();
});

That code is terrible. Don't ever use it.

The problem with that code is it completely ignores what is doing the clicking.

You see, when a link is clicked, the user has the option of telling the browser how they want to navigate with that link. The majority of the time the user will simply left click, because the user wants to navigate directly to that link.

But occasionally users do things differently. Users might middle-click or Ctrl + click a link to open it in a new tab. They might Shift + click the link to open it in a new window.

In those cases, the click handler will do the wrong thing.

For the first time since 2008, my home computer is not connected to my Das Keyboard Model S Ultimate with it's exquisite Cherry MX Blue clicky switches. It's been a good run, and seven years is nothing to shake a USB cable at. My keyboard served me exceptionally well for the last seven years, and I can honestly say it's the best keyboard I've ever owned.

After more than five years of knuckle-hair and dust, I removed all the keycaps and gave it a good cleaning. It was around that time that the Enter key on the numpad began to stick a bit. Nothing a little silicone spray couldn't fix, but I'd just never gotten around to fixing it because I hardly ever used that Enter key anyway.

I read a lot of blogs. Blogs that have rich and meaningful content. They tell stories and provide nuanced perspective into many aspects of life. They are often written by people who are not writers, but still have something important to share.

Unfortunately, they are often designed by the same people.

Some days, everything is Comic Sans. This link is a bookmarklet that will help with that.

Comic Sansify!