HN user

jbranchaud

845 karma

I write code, photograph things, and shoot pool. Co-founder of Lincoln's Beer and Code (beerandco.de).

Find me at joshbranchaud.com and @jbrancha.

Posts62
Comments141
View on HN
www.visualmode.dev 7mo ago

From Zero to GitHub: Starting a New Jj (Jujutsu) Repo

jbranchaud
2pts3
www.visualmode.dev 1y ago

A Decade of TILs

jbranchaud
9pts1
buttondown.com 1y ago

Pay for Good Tools

jbranchaud
5pts1
news.ycombinator.com 2y ago

Ask HN: How to build infinite grid in the browser?

jbranchaud
1pts3
www.putorius.net 5y ago

“Bit Bucket” and other names for /dev/null

jbranchaud
6pts1
github.com 5y ago

One Thousand TILs and Counting

jbranchaud
10pts6
www.youtube.com 5y ago

Show HN: Used SQL to solve Advent of Code puzzle

jbranchaud
2pts0
www.youtube.com 5y ago

Add Tailwind to a Next.js App

jbranchaud
1pts0
www.youtube.com 6y ago

Interactively Browse Package Versions with FZF

jbranchaud
3pts0
github.com 6y ago

I've been writing TILs for 5 years

jbranchaud
558pts135
www.youtube.com 6y ago

Vim Tips: Using the Equal Sign Character

jbranchaud
2pts0
www.youtube.com 6y ago

Vim Un-Alphabet Episode 13: Parentheses

jbranchaud
1pts0
www.youtube.com 6y ago

Vim Un-Alphabet Episode 12: Star

jbranchaud
1pts0
www.youtube.com 6y ago

Vim Un-Alphabet Episode 10: Hat

jbranchaud
1pts0
www.youtube.com 6y ago

Vim Un-Alphabet: Percent Sign

jbranchaud
1pts0
dev.to 6y ago

Vim Un-Alphabet

jbranchaud
1pts0
dev.to 6y ago

How I Built a Learning Machine

jbranchaud
2pts0
hashrocket.com 7y ago

Sql: Inner Join vs. Outer Join

jbranchaud
4pts0
hashrocket.com 7y ago

JavaScript Object Destructuring Tricks

jbranchaud
1pts0
github.com 8y ago

Awesome React Design Systems

jbranchaud
2pts0
hashrocket.com 8y ago

We Ported 'Today I Learned' to Elixir/Phoenix

jbranchaud
6pts0
github.com 9y ago

Show HN: 500 TILs and Counting

jbranchaud
2pts0
github.com 9y ago

Show HN: I just hit my 500th TIL

jbranchaud
20pts3
hashrocket.com 9y ago

Top Tweets of 2016 with Elixir and Ecto

jbranchaud
3pts0
github.com 9y ago

Show HN: A comparison of websocket servers in multiple languages/frameworks

jbranchaud
1pts1
hashrocket.com 9y ago

Websocket Shootout: Clojure, C++, Elixir, Go, Node.js, and Ruby

jbranchaud
12pts0
www.pgcasts.com 10y ago

The Skip Locked Feature in Postgres 9.5

jbranchaud
1pts0
www.pgcasts.com 10y ago

Generating Fake Email Addresses with PostgreSQL

jbranchaud
1pts0
hashrocket.com 10y ago

Working with Email Addresses (And Other Case-Insensitive Data) in PostgreSQL

jbranchaud
2pts0
github.com 10y ago

Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

jbranchaud
819pts150
Leave a Trace 1 month ago

One way that I leave a trace, which is a practice I've adopted from Simon Willison, is to record blogmarks for interesting and useful things I come across. Sometimes I just leave a pull quote, but usually I try to add my own thoughts or make a connection to something else.

https://still.visualmode.dev/blogmarks

I don't remember my first steps with subversion, mercurial, or git too well, but I don't think any of them were any more intuitive. My understanding is that jj is supposed to be easier to use for day-to-day version control. I'm very comfortable with git, but that was hard earned and I don't see that level of confidence with most devs that I've worked with over the years. Hoping jj can be more accessible to the average working software engineer than git has been.

Great article -- I'm going set aside some time with a notebook and pencil today and give this a try.

I'm not sure I agree with the left brain/right brain, analytical and logical vs creative and emotional dichotomy. I think good design work can be just as analytical as it is creative. I think it has to be when it comes to UI and UX.

Pandoc 2 years ago

I outsource most of my esoteric `jq` syntax questions to ChatGPT. It does really well with them, usually turning up solutions that I'd struggle to munge together from several different google search results.

I wonder how ChatGPT would do with focussed pandoc requests.

Hey, I'm Josh, the creator of this TIL repo. I've started it back in 2015 and still contribute to it a couple times a week. I reference TILs all the time to remember how to do something. It has been a great practice and I'd recommend to anyone to maintain their own TIL repo.

AMA!

I tend to use one tmux session per project. I usually have 2-3 open for various client projects, one open for my TIL repository, and then I go from there. Within those sessions I tend to have separate windows and panes as a way of organizing any (web) servers and other long-running processes. The 'first' window of each session is usually a split between Vim (where I'm working) and zsh (where I'm executing git commands, running tests, etc.).

I refer back to mine a LOT. The principal audience for them is future me - if anyone else finds them useful too that's just a bonus.

100% this. Several times a week I'll be trying to do something, remember I've written about, and then find a TIL my past-self wrote that explains how to do the thing. It's really satisfying each time it happens.

Because all these posts are 200 words or less, they tend to be the kind of thing you can read in ~90 seconds. I like sharing these smaller learnings to twitter. For a venue like HN though, I agree they don't meet quite the effort threshold.

Postgres, though not new, has some incredibly powerful features these days that make it worth investing in.

- JSONB column type, get NoSQL-esque document storage when you need it.

- Generated columns, computed from other columns without the need to maintain triggers or syncing app code

- Extensions, all kinds of OSS and SaaS-based extensions that add powerful facets to your DB

I usually remember when I've written on something even if I've forgotten the details. I tend to be able to do a Cmd-f search of the README for a keyword to turn up what I'm looking for.

All that said, I've been contemplating moving all of this into a Gatsby-powered site with either a custom search backend or Algolia to make it all a bit more accessible.

This sentiment is part of what inspired PG Casts. The database can do lots of powerful things that framework ORMs tend to keep in the shadows. We want to make the DB more accessible!