Sam Cook

TRPC Developer Experience in Remix

2023-01-18T00:00:00Z

The below video tutorial shows how you can build highly interactive, typesafe full-stack apps in Remix – TRPC style – using Zod, Remix's built-in useFetcher hook, and a few hundred lines of simple helper boilerplate setup.

Final code can be found here: https://github.com/sjc5/interactive-typesafe-remix

Using Material Design Components In A Svelte App

2021-09-27T00:00:00Z

The below video tutorial shows how you can use plain old Material Design Components (Web) in your Svelte apps. Specifically, we walk through how to make a re-usable button component (with ripple effect) by copying the code directly from https://material.io (with a few extra tricks to make things work smoothly with Svelte).

Final code can be found here: https://github.com/sjc5/svelte-material-starter

Update: A few commenters have noted that there are other more efficient ways of accomplishing component binding in Svelte (compared to the unique id method shown in my video), and at least one person made a fork of the repo above implementing an alternative, more Svelte-ish method. I am not a Svelte expert per se (as I am more focused on React), so I highly recommend going and reading through the YouTube comments and taking a look at that forked repo after watching the video.

Paternalistic Benefits Are Dumb

2021-05-18T00:00:00Z

Basecamp’s latest move is really smart. No, I’m not talking about Basecamp’s decision to prohibit political discussions on company time and using company resources. I have nothing valuable to add on that topic that hasn't already been said. Instead, I’m talking about Basecamp’s decision to stop making paternalistic financial decisions with portions of their employees' overall compensation packages.

I've advocated for this privately for years. Here's the general idea: Instead of paying for things like use-it-or-lose-it childcare subscription packages, health club memberships and roadside assistance services for employees that may or may not have any need or interest in such services, Basecamp will instead pay the appropriate proportional amount in cash to the employees themselves to do with what they will.

The obvious counterargument to this is that individual employees do not have the same level of bargaining power as a corporation does, such that individuals will on average pay higher per-unit prices than a corporation for the same benefits (let's call this the a la carte premium).

Consider, however, that the average employee probably only really uses one or two of the, say, nine or ten offered goods/services that the corporation pays for in bulk. When you take that into account, it turns out that the aggregate cash payment to the employee will, on average, exceed the amount the employee would actually freely choose to pay for their desired goods/services, despite the above-mentioned a la carte premium.

Moreover, consider that employees under the new Basecamp model have more free choice in what goods/services to actually buy. To be sure, having more choices isn’t always desirable (option paralysis is a very real thing). But I’d certainly rather choose my own cell phone provider, fertility counselor or veterinarian network than be stuck with the one my corporation just happens to have a contract with.

Basecamp’s choice here is Pareto optimal:

The employee gets the same (or better) goods/services plus the applicable cash delta.
The employer has a neutral cash outflow plus enjoys a material reduction in HR, legal and general admin time spent choosing and negotiating with benefits suppliers plus has (potentially) happier, healthier and more productive employees (the extra cash and extra personal choice make this last part a possible, though hard-to-measure, outcome).

This move by Basecamp was a win-win all around. I like to think that, over the long haul, obviously good ideas win. And this is an obviously good idea.

Well done, Basecamp.

You Can Live Like You're Wealthy Now

2021-05-14T00:00:00Z

Here's a potentially useful exercise:

Ask yourself what you would do if you won a billion dollars in the lottery. Really think about it. Make a super detailed list – brainstorm down to the minute details.

Got it? Good!

Now, go through the list and ask yourself if there's anything on the list you can afford to do now, even though you didn't actually win the lottery.

Chances are, there's at least one thing on there that you could see yourself doing if you were rich that, if you stop to think about, you could actually be doing now.

As a personal example, one thing I could see myself doing if I were to win the lottery would be to throw away or donate all my clothes and replace them with a few really nice pieces that I love and wear often. Another one would be, now that I don't have to worry about money, go to the gym every day and really get into good shape.

The truth is, the only things stopping me from doing both of those things now are (a) scarcity mindset and (b) plain old laziness. These aren't actually money issues; they're mental ones. They just happen to be mental issues that I could see myself being free from if money were no issue.

Actually, if you really stop to think about, doing those things would probably only increase my earning capacity via increased self esteem, energy, etc.

What about you? Yeah, you probably can't go quit your job and buy a yacht tomorrow, but is there anything in your life that you could imagine doing if you were rich but can actually afford to do now?

The ironic thing is that the "rich and successful" life often includes a lot of things that basically anyone can do: eating healthy yet delicious foods, living in minimalism with a few nice things, going on periodic silent retreats (even if that just means going to a local campground for a few nights), working out consistently at a nice gym, drinking high-quality coffee, etc.

It's something to think about, at least.

Will Extreme Longevity Harm Human Drive?

2021-05-13T00:00:00Z

The topic of longevity seems to be capturing an increasing amount of our collective attention lately. There are multiple reasons for this – chief among which is likely that extreme longevity really feels possible for the first time ever (though I'm not certain exactly why that is).

I was recently listening to a podcast about deep work and productivity by Lex Fridman and Cal Newport in which they were discussing the positive psychological impact of deadlines on human productivity.

And that got me thinking – death itself is an inherent deadline in all of our lives (you might call it the ultimate deadline).

You don't have to be an actuary to know, roughly speaking, when you're most likely to die. We really just know it intuitively, even though we don't often think about it explicitly. There is something of a perpetual undercurrent in our minds that constantly keeps the likely timing of our deaths in play (consciously or not) when we decide whether – and when(!) – to do something.

So, you can probably see where I'm going with this. If deadlines are inherent motivators, what happens when we remove the greatest deadline of all? Will humans, having solved (or at least greatly delayed) their greatest problem (death) also necessarily lose what is arguably their greatest source of motivation (also, ahem... death)?

I'm sure someone smarter than me has already written about this, but it seems likely (inevitable?) that once advances in longevity science are fully implemented, there will be a new downward force on humanity's natural drive to get things done (which may just be the greatest and sickest irony of all time).

Perhaps (and hopefully) I am wrong, but if 100 becomes the new 30, then it would make sense to spend the lion's share of your first 100 years living like you're in your 20s, no? And maybe that's not even so bad, assuming we all have robots to do things for us anyway. Or will that just make us all even more hopelessly depressed than we already are? God only knows.

Improve Your Digital Privacy

2021-05-03T00:00:00Z

I believe privacy is a fundamental human right because – just like lack of food, clothing or shelter – lack of privacy puts real people in real danger.

How so? Well, countless individuals across the world are put in real danger when their personal details are shared or leaked online, including victims of sexual violence and harassment, domestic abuse, stalkers, identity theft, financial and credit fraud, violent mobs and more.

I implore you to start taking your own personal privacy and security seriously, especially online. Even if you think you have nothing to hide, you never know when you will fall into one of the categories listed above.

Here are a few things you should look into doing if you aren't already:

Use an open source password manager, and use it religiously (I recommend KeePass or BitWarden).
Use an end-to-end encrypted email service, such as ProtonMail.
Use email forwarding/masking services wherever possible and appropriate (SimpleLogin works well for this, as does using a custom domain with "catch-all" turned on).
Activate multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all of your online accounts where it's available (and leave any important or sensitive services that don't offer it). Favor hardware keys (e.g., YubiKeys) over software tokens (e.g., Authy), and favor software tokens over SMS. If SMS is all that's available, that's still better than no MFA at all.
Get a post office box or similar mail collection/forwarding service, and be very careful about giving out your real address online (or IRL for that matter).
Get off social media. Alternatively, if that's too big a pill, at least enable as many privacy-friendly settings as are available for your social media accounts (e.g., turn off location services and personalized ads), and do a periodic audit of your social media presence. And, obviously, always be careful what you post (e.g., don't post a picture that includes a street sign or license plate in the background, use a fake birthday, etc.).
Get a VPN and use it properly. Make sure the "kill switch" setting is enabled at all times. ProtonVPN is good.
Do a periodic audit of all your online accounts (email, cloud, financial, entertainment, social, shopping, etc.). Keep a list, but don't keep it in a cloud account unless it's end-to-end encrypted (Standard Notes is always a good option). Delete anything that isn't needed, and fix any privacy or security issues that you find.
Start favoring your local hard disk over the cloud. If you must use the cloud, choose end-to-end encrypted services wherever possible.
Start following blogs and podcasts via RSS feed instead of handing over your email address or social account information. And yes, by all means, do this with my blog also!
Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, and use Firefox instead of Chrome. Turn on as many of Firefox's privacy settings as you can tolerate.
Never sign up for rewards programs or mail-in rebates. The risk-adjusted return for the consumer is always negative!

If you take the above steps, you will undoubtedly get pushback from friends and family members – not to mention the corporations that want to mine and sell your data. But don't give in!

This is important, and the peace of mind you get from implementing and maintaining a strong and reasonable personal privacy policy is worth the corresponding reduction in convenience. Again, privacy is a basic safety issue and, ultimately, a fundamental human right.

A Few Ground Rules

2021-05-01T00:00:00Z

My approach to this site (and writing in general), in rule form:

Rule 1 #

I reserve the right to edit my posts when I feel they need improvement or updates.

None of my ideas are written in stone, so why should my blog posts be? This blog is a collection of ideas, and I want my posts to be maximally helpful to the reader at the time of reading. Further, I am a human being and often make mistakes. I'd like to be able to go back and correct those mistakes.

Rule 2 #

I will try to stay positive and apolitical.

I may fail at this from time to time, but by and large I want this blog to be a place of refuge for my readers that, among other things, encourages clear thinking. IMO, negativity and politics both distract from that goal, so I will aim to avoid them.

Rule 3 #

I may use the word “their” even when a singular pronoun would be more grammatically correct.

I prefer this because it’s how most normal people actually speak, and I like writing in a conversational tone. IMO, whenever (a) you have to twist yourself into a pretzel to follow a grammatical rule and (b) breaking the rule wouldn’t introduce any undue ambiguity, then your best option is to break the grammatical rule (I call this the Pretzel Rule).

For most normal people, saying “Any experienced manager will tell you they made a lot of mistakes along the way” just rolls off the tongue better than “Any experienced manager will tell you he or she made a lot of mistakes along the way.” The latter sounds less conversational, so I prefer the former.

NOTE: In cases where using “their” actually would cause undue ambiguity, then of course it's better to use the appropriate singular pronoun(s). This is a judgment call (and is the point of item (b) of the Pretzel Rule). Precision and conversational tone are both valuable – just try to balance them as best you can under the circumstances.

Rule 4 #

I may end sentences with prepositions.

Similar to Rule 3, this one also stems from the Pretzel Rule. Although (arguably) grammatically incorrect, I’d prefer saying “Niles is fun to argue with” instead of “Niles is a person with whom it’s fun to argue.” The latter sounds snooty, and the never-end-a-sentence-with-a-preposition rule often leads to needlessly confusing syntax (which, IMO, means it's a stupid rule).

Sure, there are usually ways to re-write your sentence in a smoother way while still following the rules of grammar. For example, I could just say “It’s fun arguing with Niles.” But sometimes there is an aesthetic or rhetorical reason to start a sentence with a particular word or clause, and in those cases it often makes sense to eschew technical grammatical rules that may otherwise prevent you from making your point in the clearest, most efficient way.

Rule 5 #

No pop-ups, ever.

I hate pop-ups, and I also try to live by the golden rule. Fortunately for you, that particular combination of personal preferences and beliefs prevents me from adding pop-ups to this site!

Rule 6 #

I won’t use Oxford commas unless required to avoid ambiguity.

Omitting Oxford commas (aka serial commas) is an intentional stylistic choice for me. That said, in my personal hierarchy of writing values, clarity trumps both style and consistency (which is why I add the “unless required to avoid ambiguity” exception). This means that I’ll still use Oxford commas now and then. If you think I’ve been needlessly inconsistent on this, please feel free to point it out. If I think you’re right, I’ll fix it (per Rule 1).

Rule 7 #

I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

I practiced as a full-time corporate attorney for about five years, and I still have a small side practice. That said, absolutely nothing on this site constitutes legal, financial or tax advice! Unless I have indicated otherwise to you in direct, written, personal communication, I am not your lawyer, and you should not make any important decisions based on anything I say here or on any of my social channels.