Zach Holman

I've been recently getting really into home automation- you know, making my house Smart™, which basically means half the time my lights don't turn on and the other half of the time apparently my kitchen faucet needs a static IP address.

But it's been a blast! It's a fun way to write code for yourself, outside of work, to have an impact in the real world. It's a nice way of falling in love with a different side of programming again.

I've used Apple's HomeKit for awhile, since we're pretty all-in in Apple devices at home, but the rough edges have been grating at me more and more. HomeKit is so opaque- you can't see what's wrong, why a device is unresponsive, and most importantly: the compatibility isn't there. HomeKit has a limited selection of — more expensive — accessories, and as you go beyond just simple LED lights, you want a bit more power. Also, we're programmers, dammit, gimme all the things.

Anyway, I've switched to Home Assistant the last few months, and I'm kicking myself I didn't make the switch earlier. As a programmer, it's great: you get the most capability than pretty much any other smart home platform (integrations have been written for most devices and technologies out there today), it's easier to debug, and when you want to go bigger than just simple lights on/off, HA has some really powerful stuff behind it.

I use Home Assistant in conjunction with Docker and Docker Compose; since the config is extracted out, upgrades are usually as easy as a pull of the latest version. I've just started digging into writing integrations for a lesser-used device that I have at home, and HA makes it pretty straightforward to just magically add it to the home network.

It plays well with others, too- we require a VPN connection in to the home network to access our Home Assistant install, and HA has a few tricks to help with that (ignoring the VPN route if you're on a local network, etc). Nice client support for iOS and Android, too.

Anyway, big fan of Home Assistant if you want to go beyond simple home automations and setup. Wish I would have done it a lot earlier. Also, big fan of jumping into all this if you have the time and interest to do so- it's been tickling a different part of my code brain than I've had access to in awhile, and that's been fun in and of itself.

Apollo is my favorite open source project.

Two things you need to worry about when making a statement like that: is the tool good, and how is the tool being built?

From a tool perspective... yeah, Apollo is great. I'm convinced that GraphQL is the way forward for me, and Apollo's just a great way to tackle it. Even beyond that, it just offers a good mentality to how you should build your database-backed app. I've used Relay in the past, back before they made a bunch of changes with Relay Modern (which all seem positive!), but switching to Apollo is just night-and-day. They've been doing better in the last 12 months or so at making smart abstractions in the React Apollo library, to the point where I'd just get these monster all-red pull requests where I can delete all my cruddy code and replace it with far fewer lines of their great abstractions.

But from a build perspective... Apollo fares even better, I think. By this, I mean their project inertia, their progress, their ability to ship stable code — but still ship meaningful new functionality, too. They're not afraid to move their ideas in other directions (integrating with React Native, for example). Kills me to see projects that are just heads-down on their little world as the world passes them by, and so far... yeah, Apollo's been on top of it.

Anyway, big fan. It's really changed how I write frontend code, and I feel hella confident while working with it.

Oof. I have truly hated JavaScript for a long time. Like, for over twenty years now. Like, since the Clinton administration. It's always been a nightmare to deal with all of the aspects of that silly language.

But wowza, things have changed. Tooling is just way, way better. I'm primarily web-oriented, and using React and Apollo together the past few years really opened my eyes to building rich apps. And I deeply apologize for using the phrase rich apps; I don't think I've ever said such Enterprisey words before.

But yeah, things are different now. I still love Rails, and still use it for a lot of apps I build. But it's that silly rich apps phrase that's the problem. Users have way more comprehensive expectations than they did even five years ago, and the JS community does a good job at building tools and tech that tackle the problems of making heavy, complicated UI and frontend work.

Obviously there's a lot of things happening here, so just saying "JavaScript isn't terrible" might encompass a huge amount of libraries and frameworks. But if you're like me, yeah, give things another shot- I'm somehow not hating on JavaScript anymore and... gulp... I kinda love it.