TIL: Today I learned...

Today I learned that as of npm cli v8.3.0 (2021-12-09), you can use the overrides field in package.json to “override” nested dependency versions. This is handy for several scenarios, but for me I used for a third-party react component that has a peerDependency on v16 of react even though it works just fine with v18 but it isn’t under active development at the moment so I had to override the version it accepts: ...

I’ve been discovering recently that ChatGPT is actually pretty good at helping write Architectural Decision Records (ADRs). Like most writing tasks, I’m finding ChatGPT is good at giving me a nice starting point instead of staring a blank template. Even with as simple a prompt as “write an architectural decision record on why we chose to go with react instead of angular”, it’ll give a decent list of pros and cons on the topic in a common ADR template. I can also refine it further by saying “write it using the following template instead…” ...

Today I learned that in a web page, when you’re working with Blob or File objects you can call URL.createObjectURL() to create a Blob URL that can be used as the source for anything that normally takes a URL like images or download links. It’s also apparently a good alternative to base64 encoded Data-URIs especially when dealing with larger amounts of data since a base64 encoded file will be 33% larger than the raw binary. ...

Today I learned that the javascript array method .every() will always return true for an empty array. [].every((x) => x > 1); // true [].every(() => true); // true [].every(() => false); // true For me at least, this was a bit surprising and I realized I’d been thinking about this function works incorrectly. Your first thought might be that this is another one of javascript’s quirks, but this is actually how most languages implement similar functions including Rust, Python, and C#: ...

Today I learned that if you need to update (or delete) credentials that were previously saved with the git-credential-manager, then you have to go the Windows Credential Manager. Find it under Control Panel -> Credential Manager -> Generic Credentials. Read more.

Today I learned that you can call an extension method on a null instance of the type. I had always assumed without thinking about it too hard, that the reason string.IsNullOrEmpty isn’t defined as an extension method in the framework is because you would get NullReferenceException. But if we were to define an extension method like public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(this string s), and call it like if(s.IsNullOrEmpty()) this is just syntactic sugar for if(StringExtensions.IsNullOrEmpty(s)) and therefore it’s safe to call on a null instance. ...

Today I learned about a cool project called Zeal that let’s download and browse the documentation for a bunch of projects. I’ve always liked the idea being able to continue working even without internet.

Today I learned that you can have conditional expressions in Azure Pipelines YAML files: steps: - script: tool env: ${{ if parameters.debug }}: TOOL_DEBUG: true TOOL_DEBUG_DIR: _dbg ${{ else }}: TOOL_DEBUG: false TOOL_DEBUG_DIR: _dbg

Today I learned that the little .cls button in the Chrome devtools is a handy way to toggle classes on an element: I imagine the trend of using utility classes was the main motivation for this feature (although apparently it’s been there for a few years and I only just figured out what it was for).

2025-06-16 Update: This is now built-in to Visual Studio. Today I learned about the Copy Git Link extension for Visual Studio which will give you the url of currently selected lines on your git hosting provider i.e azure devops or GitHub. Especially handy for quickly pointing a teammate to a particular part of the codebase.