At the start of this year, we could only write end-to-end tests using Selenium in Scala here at Lucid. This was just fine for the developers here who mostly write in Scala. The problem was that learning Scala and Selenium was a high bar of entry for developers to just…
Why JSON isn’t a Good Configuration Language Many projects use JSON for configuration files. Perhaps the most obvious example is the package.json file used by npm and yarn, but there are many others, including CloudFormation (originally JSON only, but now supports YAML as well) and composer (PHP). However, JSON is…
In my last change detection post, we looked at an Angular demo where the central component rendered its own component tree as a literal tree graph, with nodes and edges and whatnot. That demo allowed us to visually follow the change detection system’s path through an actual component tree as…
If you’re new to JavaScript, you’ll come across various keywords, syntax sugar, and shorthands that make you scratch your head. This article introduces a few of the most common boolean expression tricks I encountered when I began coding in JavaScript. Truthy and falsy Chances are, you’ve seen something like this…
Last summer a team of engineers converted our front-end code from Closure-annotated JavaScript to TypeScript, you can read about it here. It has been a long journey to take that converted code that was smattered with anys and turn it into idiomatic and type-safe TypeScript. The strict compiler flags have…
Error handling is important for many common operations—from dealing with user input to making network requests. An application shouldn’t crash just because a user enters invalid data or a web service returns a 500. Users expect software to gracefully handle errors, either in the background or with a user-friendly and…
Lucidchart was built on AWS from day one, so I was very excited for the opportunity to go to Seattle and have Lucidchart featured on the AWS video series, “This is My Architecture.” I talked about our database migration to Amazon Aurora—you can watch the interview below, and for those…
Chrome DevTools is a powerful suite of web development tools built right into the Chrome browser. One of the most useful features of DevTools for web developers is the ability to live edit the HTML and CSS on a page. This functionality allows any developer, even those with weaker HTML…
Lucid realized that crowdsourced testing could be helpful in our transition towards a more automated testing process. As a result, Lucid introduced Rainforest QA, a crowdsourced testing service, into our testing process last year. We now have over 200 active tests in our suite, which has freed up quality resources…
It is impossible to imagine modern web development without the use of Chrome DevTools. Thanks to a clean UI and continuous improvements to meet real-world needs, the tool has become the go-to live development environment that surpasses many contemporary IDEs in both functionality and performance. But how productive are you…