Danny Brian

Full Stack JavaScript with HTML5, Node.js and MongoDB

You don't need Node.js or MongoDB to build “full-stack” solutions, but they sure help! This stack is popular for its scalability, its promise of developer productivity, and the capability to develop all components with a single programming language. Not all use cases are a great fit for JavaScript on the server. But love it or hate it, there are valuable lessons and use cases here for all developers.

Hybrid Mobile Apps with HTML5: Easier Than You Think

You don't need massive frameworks to build mobile apps responsive to touch events, that contain fluid animations, or that are easily deployed to app stores. All you really need is a solid grasp of the JavaScript, CSS3, and HTML5 features and APIs that enable a compelling experience.

Pattern Matching Makes You Powerful! (In All Languages!)

Regular Expressions are an undervalued, underutilized tool in the developer toolbox. Few programming technologies have stood a comparable test of time for their capacity to improve developer productivity, to shortcut complex tasks, to reduce dependency on various libraries, and to encourage code reuse. They also help to teach patterns and improve pattern recognition, not only for code, but for programmers themselves. Competency with regexes will make you a better programmer, regardless of your choice of language or platforms. And it will impress your peers, too!

Foundational Front-End Architecture: Getting the Most out of Frameworks, Libraries, Events, and the Browser Platform (Without Losing Your Mind)

“There's a new JS framework every week! There's a new JavaScript feature every week! There's a new HTML5 feature every week! We are losing our minds OMG@#$HELPUS!”

Settle down everybody. Shiny new frameworks distract you from the stability offered by the web platform: ES6 is the first major update to JavaScript since 2009, and HTML5 was 18 years in the making! More importantly, few of these innovations significantly change the architecture of web applications — we owe browser innovation and frameworks for that. But since the browser evolved in to a full-blown application runtime, we now need solid front-end architecture, and front-end architects. It's not just about JavaScript, it's about the entire browser platform. And you can't pick frameworks to simplify that platform until you understand its underpinnings.

Coding the Future Web Today: Web Components!

HTML5 hasn't fundamentally changed the way we build web applications — JavaScript frameworks did that. Not so with Web Components! Web Components are the most important update to HTML and the Document Object Model in recent years. They have a major impact on client-side architecture, on framework selection, and on distribution and reuse of code.

Using Firebase for On-the-Wire Persistence with any Framework

Firebase can replace your existing database, but that isn't its main use case. Instead, it enables a live synchronized data store for all your desktop and mobile apps. With little effort, you can implement Firebase on top of your existing applications, easing the load on your own infrastructure and giving you flexibility with offline storage use cases. What's more, you don't need to write any backend code to use it.