All posts
IT Literacy for Non-Developers #1: What Is a Website Made Of? — Frontend, Backend, and Database
The three things planners, designers, and marketers should learn first when working with developers. This post explains, without any code, how the websites and apps we use every day are split into three layers: frontend, backend, and database.
React Basics #6: Event Handling
Look at how React handles events: synthetic events, handler patterns, and how to pull information out of the event object.
React Basics #5: State and useState
Learn how a component handles changing data — the concept of state and the useState hook.
React Basics #4: Components and Props
Learn how to make components — the core unit of React — to break the screen into small pieces, and how to pass data using props.
How Computers Represent Everything in 0s and 1s
An intuitive explanation of how computers ultimately handle text, numbers, images, and sound as nothing but 0s and 1s, written so that non-programmers can follow along.
React Basics #3: What Is JSX?
We look at the basic syntax and rules of JSX, the special syntax used when writing React components.
React Basics #2: Setting Up the Development Environment (Node.js + Vite)
To start writing real code, we install Node.js, create our first React project with Vite, and launch the dev server.
React Basics #1: What Is React?
This tutorial is for React beginners. We'll learn what React is, why it was created, and which problems it's designed to solve.
JavaScript Practice #6 Build a Small App — Todo App
Build a Todo app from start to finish in vanilla JavaScript — DOM, event delegation, FormData, local storage, and a small store all in one place.
JavaScript Practice #5 Local Storage and Lightweight State Management
How to use localStorage / sessionStorage and their pitfalls, plus patterns for managing UI state cleanly without a library.
Where the Word "Bug" Came From — The Story of the First Computer Bug
This post traces the origin of the word "bug" through Grace Hopper and the 1947 moth incident, and reveals the twist that the word actually existed long before that.
JavaScript Practice #4 Working with Forms
Form validation, working with FormData, and patterns at submit time — leveraging HTML built-in validation while augmenting with JavaScript.