Our Latest Insights
Thoughts from our team on current events, new techniques and tools, trends we're seeing, and our culture.
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JavaScript Power Tools: redux-saga
May 10, 2017At Formidable, we're always refining our knowledge of modern JavaScript tech. This blog series, entitled JavaScript Power Tools, will take a deeper look at some of the tools, frameworks, and libraries we use to deliver reliable and maintainable code. Today, I want to talk about [`redux-saga`]...Don't Fear the Fractal: Infinite State Composition with Freactal
May 3, 2017In the beginning, there was React. You used `createClass` to define an OOP-style UI component with associated reactive state, and custom mixins managed cross-cutting concerns. It was good. Then came ES6 classes. You used standard language features and semantics to define a component...Join Formidable at SeattleJS Conference
April 26, 2017The SeattleJS Conference conference is coming this August 10th and 11th, and Formidable is the presenting sponsor. Have you bought your tickets yet? For background, when we heard that CascadiaFest wasn’t happening this summer, the Formidable crew was super bummed. As the ongoing...Fun with Fiber Custom Renderers at React Amsterdam
April 18, 2017Ken Wheeler, Formidable at large, will be speaking at React Amsterdam on April 21st. His talk, Fun with Fiber Custom Renderers, will explore the new custom renderer API in React Fiber, a soon-to-be-released architectural rewrite of React. Ken will cover Fiber basics, the anatomy...Your Docs and You: A Guide for Your First OSS Portfolio
April 12, 2017Open Source Software is arguably fated to a life of loneliness without great documentation. I’ve heard more than one developer proclaim the importance of docs, and their corresponding awe and appreciation when they find docs that are really well-made. One of my favorite responses to a docs site...Introducing Appr: A New Review Workflow for Mobile Developers
March 29, 2017Appr builds pull requests in your Create React Native App project, deploys the changes to Expo, and posts a link and a QR code to your PR, so you can run the app on your device or emulator in seconds! I'm sure you'll agree: code reviews are a useful tool in a development...Formidable at React London: Offline-First Apps & React Native for Hardware
March 22, 2017Ken Wheeler and Jani Eväkallio will be speaking at React London on Tuesday, March 28th. Ken's wild talk, “Weapons Grade React,” will explore the trials and tribulations he experienced while building a remotely controlled robotic crossbow with React and React Native. Using that experience...React Native App Stack, March 2017
March 14, 2017This week, we started writing a new React Native app. With every new project, I experience a mix of giddy excitement and intense anxiety: an opportunity to right all past mistakes, and a chance to make a thousand new ones. Discussing greenfield tech choices inevitably devolves into...Be Bold For Change on Women’s Day
March 8, 2017Happy International Women’s Day! March 8th celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievement of women. As part of our celebration today, we (Autumn and Elise) are reflecting on the state of women at Formidable. As technology workers, we are lucky to be some of the most...Eric Baer Speaking at Voxxed Days Bristol
March 1, 2017Formidafriends in the UK: Formidable Eric Baer is speaking at Voxxed Days Bristol today. Attending? Be sure to check out his talk. Eric will attempt to lay bare the lessons learned from nearly 60 years of API design, from RPC to REST. With mounting pressure on APIs from mobile devices/networks...Faster React SSR with Rapscallion
February 28, 2017React has gained significant momentum over the four years since its initial release, and for good reason. I'll admit that I was initially a skeptic, particularly when it came to the strangeness that is JSX, but I was quickly won over by its codification of small, testable units of code...Introducing Whackage
December 1, 2016We love React Native. Sometimes, though, it doesn't feel like it reciprocates your love. One such time is when working with codebases that span across multiple repositories. When you want to make changes to a package your app depends on, achieving that snappy hot-reloading workflow you’ve grown...Flexible Charting in React with Victory (and Introducing FormidableCharts)
November 9, 2016Victory: React charts tailored to your data Charting directly with d3 can be difficult, but other libraries are often too simplistic. Enter Victory: React charting that is easier than direct use of d3.js but with as much flexibility as possible. Victory allows fully customized charts ranging from...On releasing my first OSS project at thirty-five
October 25, 2016A couple weeks ago I released my first open source project at the ripe old age of thirty-five. A dinosaur by tech industry standards or whatever. Computers and programming were something that always came naturally to me in my youth— my first languages were C and x86 assembly. Growing up I...