We developers often find ourselves faced with a problem that seems general enough and common enough that someone else could have already developed a solution for it. But what if an existing solution does not exist?

I recently open sourced an ESLint plugin for OkCupid called eslint-plugin-i18n-lingui. The plugin is an extension for ESLint’s core static code analysis rules that enforces localization best practices by catching and fixing errors during development. The best practice rules were inspired by the learning pains from our efforts to localize our website.

This post will discuss why we developed our own ESLint plugin, why we open sourced it, and the steps I took to open source a ESLint plugin.

Although this post will not discuss the localization best practices that eslint-plugin-i18n-lingui enforces or how to create an ESLint plugin, keep an eye out for future posts written specifically about these!

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A finite state machine (FSM) is an architectural design pattern that allows us to model a large system as a collection of loosely coupled components. Each component in the system changes its behavior when the internal state changes. This pattern allows us to write flexible, reusable, and testable code. In this article, we will explore the use of FSM in building complex React components.

The primary use of FSM has been in programming embedded systems but in recent years, there has been an emergence of FSM in other applications like managing states in the browser, modeling behavior, and building chatbots. The goal of this post is not to evangelize FSM as a better state management solution than its alternatives like Redux but rather, to introduce a pattern for simplifying the architecture of a system and write robust code that is understandable, extendable, and delete-able.

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The coding interviews / coding challenges are designed to assess how productive someone can be with the language. In contrast to the algorithm whiteboarding interview, which assesses how the candidate go about solving a problem, or the architecture design interview, which assesses how the candidate’s experience in system engineering and product design, the coding interview is is utilized by the company interviewing you to answer one question:

Can you be productive with JavaScript?

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Xiaoyun Yang

Software Engineer. Climber. Snowboarder.

Software Engineer

New York