I've been searching for a way to describe what the DefinePlugin actually does. The docs say:

Define free variables. Useful for having development builds with debug logging or adding global constants.

I'm a great lover of ES2015's Map. However, just recently I tumbled over something I find a touch inconvenient about how you initialise a new Map from the contents of an Array in TypeScript.

You may know that Angular ships with a cutdown version of jQuery called jQLite. It's still possible to use the full-fat jQuery; to quote the docs:

This technique actually applies to pretty much any web stack where you have to supply templates; it just so happens that I'm using Angular 1.x in this case. Also I have an extra technique which is useful to handle the ng-include scenario.

I'd like you to close your eyes and imagine a scenario. You're handed a prototype system. You're told it works. It has no documentation. It has 0 unit tests. The hope is that you can take it on, refactor it, make it better and (crucially) not break it. Oh, and you don't really understand what the code does or why it does it either; information on that front is, alas, sorely lacking.

I hate LINQ's Enumerable.Concat when bringing together IEnumerables. Not the behaviour (I love that!) but rather how code ends up looking when you use it. Consider this:

Every now and then when I try and update my packages in Atom I find this glaring back at me:

To my lasting regret, TFS 2012 has no direct support for PowerShell. Such a shame as PowerShell scripts can do a lot of heavy lifting in a build process. Well, here we're going to brute force TFS 2012 into running PowerShell scripts. And along the way we'll also get Karma test results publishing into TFS 2012 as an example usage. Nice huh? Let's go!

So you're creating a link with the Angular UI Router. You're passing more than a few parameters and it's getting kinda big. Something like this:

TypeScript first gained support for tsconfig.json back with the 1.5 release. However, to my lasting regret and surprise Visual Studio will not be gaining meaningful support for it until TypeScript 1.8 ships. However, if you want it now, it's already available to use in beta.

So, you want to use C# 6 language features and you’re working on an older project that’s still rocking .NET 4.5. Well, with some caveats, you can.

I’ve a love / hate relationship with Coded UI. Well hate / hate might be more accurate. Hate perhaps married with a very grudging respect still underpinned by a wary bitterness. Yes, that’s about the size of it. Why? Well, when Coded UI works, it’s fab. But it’s flaky as anything. Anybody who’s used the technology is presently nodding sagely and holding back the tears. It’s all a bit... tough.

This is a guide on how not to expose all your static files to the world at large when working with the ASP.Net Framework. How to move from a blocklisting approach to a allowlisting approach.

I've seen it go by many names; live reload, hot reload, browser sync... the list goes on. It's been the subject of a million demos. It's the focus of a thousand npm packages. Someone tweaks a file and... wait for it... doesn't have to refresh their browser to see the changes... The future is now!

I wrote a while ago about how I was using some different tools in a current project:

So there I was, tip-tapping away at my keyboard when I became aware of the slowly loudening noise of a debate. It wasn't about poverty, war, civil rights or anything like that. No; this was far more contentious. It was about the behaviour of <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb351562(v=vs.100).aspx">IQueryable&lt;T&gt;</a> when mixed with <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/9eekhta0(v=vs.100).aspx">IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;</a>. I know, right, how could I not get involved?

...to protect my wallet.

This is just a quick post - the tl;dr is this: jQuery Validation Globalize has been ported to Globalize 1.x. Yay! In one of those twists of fate I'm not actually using this plugin in my day job anymore but I thought it might be useful to other people. So here you go. You can read more about this plugin in an older post and you can see a demo of it in action here.

I'm a member of the Definitely Typed team - and hopefully I won't be kicked out for writing this. My point is this: .d.ts files should live with the package they provide typing information for, in npm / GitHub etc. Not separately.

Some people fear change. Most people actually. I'm not immune to that myself, but not in the key area of technology. Any developer that fears change when it comes to the tools and languages that he / she is using is in the wrong business. Because what you're using to cut code today will not last. The language will evolve, the tools and frameworks that you love will die out and be replaced by new ones that are different and strange. In time, the language you feel you write as a native will fall out of favour, replaced by a new upstart.