Mike Jansen

Twitter / Github / RSS / About Me

Software Craftsman at 8th Light.

Recent Blog Posts

BackboneConf in Review

May 31, 2012

What I came to realize over the past two days is that while Backbone is certainly a popular framework, in my mind the conference attracted as many people as it did not entirely because of the framework itself, but because people are fed up with lousy JavaScript... Read More

Easy Controllers

May 29, 2012

'So, for a class to be easy to unit-test, the class must have explicit dependencies that can easily be substituted and clear responsibilities that can easily be invoked and verified'... Read More

GUI Architecture - When to Facade

May 24, 2012

The Facade pattern can be applied in a few ways. A Facade provides a cleaner interface to a section of code that can be complex, ugly, 3rd party, or all of the above... Read More

GUI Architecture - The Importance of Observers

May 23, 2012

Of all the GUI design patterns out there, the Observer pattern may be the one that is the most important to master... Read More

GUI Architecture - Model View Something

May 22, 2012

Rather than learning the framework first, I think it is more beneficial to understand the patterns that frameworks implement. By learning design patterns, you gain understanding not only of the design of the framework, but how to best use them... Read More

GUI Architecture - When Do You Need Patterns?

May 21, 2012

Design patterns in client JavaScript aren't always needed. Over time, though, web applications experience an evolution of complexity, and that complexity uncovers the need for structured code that is easy to maintain over time... Read More