Trevor I. Lasn Thoughts

I'm a seasoned software engineer and product strategist with entrepreneurial drive. Since 2014, I've built successful products from scratch, led engineering teams, and shared my technical insights through writing since 2017.
https://www.trevorlasn.com/ (RSS)
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Exploring JavaScript Symbols
15 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Deep dive into JavaScript Symbols - what they are, why they matter, and how to use them effectively

Ghost Jobs Should Be Illegal
15 Nov 2024 | original ↗

How fake job postings became a systemic problem in tech recruiting

Can Scrum Be Salvaged?
14 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Scrum is failing engineering teams and what it's actually costing us

Understanding Bitwise Shifts in JavaScript: << and >>
12 Nov 2024 | original ↗

A practical guide to left and right shift operators in JavaScript

Promise.try: Unified Error Handling for Sync and Async JavaScript Code (ES2025)
10 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Stop mixing try/catch with Promise chains - JavaScript's new Promise.try handles return values, Promises, and errors uniformly

JavaScript Import Attributes (ES2025)
10 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Understanding the new import attributes syntax and why we can't rely on file extensions alone

Why I moved from Google Analytics to Simple Analytics
9 Nov 2024 | original ↗

How I ditched Google Analytics bloat for a privacy-focused analytics tool that bypasses ad blockers

JavaScript's &&= Operator: Understanding Logical AND Assignment
5 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Use the &&= operator to safely update truthy values while preserving falsy states

The JavaScript ??= Operator: Default Values Made Simple
5 Nov 2024 | original ↗

A guide to using ??= in JavaScript to handle null and undefined values elegantly

When Will We Have Our First AI CEO?
4 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Welcome to the future of corporate leadership. It's efficient, profitable, and utterly inhuman

The Monday Morning Test to Measure Engineering Team Health
4 Nov 2024 | original ↗

Why the first day back can reveal everything about your engineering team's health

Pkl: Apple's New Configuration Language That Could Replace JSON and YAML
1 Nov 2024 | original ↗

A deep dive into Pkl, Apple's configuration language that aims to replace JSON and YAML

No, Quantum Computers Won't Break All Encryption
31 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Symmetric encryption algorithms like Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) are largely quantum-resistant already

Introducing the Legendary Programmer Hall of Fame
29 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Meet the innovators who laid the foundation for modern computing. Their contributions span decades, creating the tools and concepts developers use every day.

What is JavaScript's Pipeline Operator |>?
29 Oct 2024 | original ↗

A deep dive into how pipeline operators can make your code more readable and maintainable

The Problem with window.localStorage
28 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Understanding the security risks of localStorage and what to use instead for tokens, secrets, and user data

JavaScript Truthy and Falsy: A Deep Dive
27 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Grasp JavaScript's type coercion with practical examples and avoid common pitfalls

JavaScript Operators: '||' vs '&&' vs '??'
26 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Master JavaScript logical operators with practical examples and best practices

Why Browsers Block CSS File Modifications
25 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Understanding CSS Object Model (CSSOM), browser security and practical alternatives for dynamic styling

Inside the CSS Engine: CSSOM Explained
25 Oct 2024 | original ↗

A deep dive into how browsers parse and manipulate CSS, its impact on web performance, and why it matters

Why Can't JavaScript Modify CSS Files?
25 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Understanding CSS Object Model (CSSOM), browser security and practical alternatives for dynamic styling

How to Land Your First Tech Job
24 Oct 2024 | original ↗

A developer's guide to tech interviews - from someone who sits on both sides of the table

Why Anthropic (Claude AI) Uses 'Member of Technical Staff' for All Engineers (Including Co-founders)
23 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Inside Anthropic's unique approach to preventing talent poaching and maintaining organizational equality

Offload Your Third Party Scripts With Cloudflare Zaraz
23 Oct 2024 | original ↗

How I used Cloudflare Zaraz to offload third party scripts and improve my website performance.

SecretLint — A Linter for Preventing Committing Credentials
22 Oct 2024 | original ↗

A guide to catching and preventing credential leaks in your code using Secretlint

Repopack: Pack Your Entire Repository Into A Single File
21 Oct 2024 | original ↗

A tool that packages your code to easily share with LLM models.

Software Engineer Titles Have (Almost) Lost All Their Meaning
20 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Examining the Devaluation of Software Engineer Titles and Its Impact on Tech Industry Integrity

Optimize Your Astro Site's with astro-capo
19 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Learn how to automatically improve your Astro site's performance using astro-capo

How To Implement Content Security Policy (CSP) Headers For Astro
16 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Content Security Policy (CSP) acts like a shield against XSS attacks. These attacks are sneaky - they trick your browser into running malicious code by hiding it in content that seems trustworthy. CSP's job is to spot these tricks and shut them down, while also alerting you to any attempts it detects.

VoidZero: Threat or Catalyst for Open Source JavaScript Tooling?
15 Oct 2024 | original ↗

When Evan You announced VoidZero, I'll admit - I got excited. And a little nervous.

Small Habits, Big Impact
12 Oct 2024 | original ↗

We're often focused on big innovations and breakthrough moments. But what if the real key to long-term success lies in the small, everyday actions we often overlook?

Open Dyslexic Font: Improving Web Accessibility
12 Oct 2024 | original ↗

How to implement the Open-Dyslexic font to enhance readability for users with dyslexia

Is Age Really a Factor in Tech?
8 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Silicon Valley has a reputation for youth worship. The 'move fast and break things' mentality often translates to a preference for younger, supposedly more adaptable workers.

The Credit Vacuum
7 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Being a developer sometimes feels like being the goalkeeper in a soccer match. You make a hundred great saves, and no one bats an eye. But let one ball slip through, and suddenly you're the village idiot.

How to Launch Software Projects On Time and On Budget
7 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Learn the art of scope management to keep your projects fixed in time and cost

A Company Is Not a Family. It's a Sports Team
5 Oct 2024 | original ↗

'We're not just a company, we're a family!' It's a nice sentiment, sure. But it's also a load of crap.

Build Your Army
4 Oct 2024 | original ↗

If you want to do great things, you'll need people with skills that complement yours. You can't do everything yourself. You need a team. You need an army. You need to build your army.

Barnacle Strategy for Startups
3 Oct 2024 | original ↗

As a founder, you're always on the lookout for smart ways to grow your startup without burning through your limited resources. That's where the barnacle strategy comes in.

When Tasked with a Problem, Start with the Bigger Picture
3 Oct 2024 | original ↗

When faced with a challenge, I always step back to see the whole picture first. It's like pausing a complex strategy game to study the map. You might lose a few seconds of play time, but you gain a crucial understanding of the battlefield.

Cloudflare Study: 39% of Companies Losing Control of Their IT and Security Environment
3 Oct 2024 | original ↗

New research reveals a shocking loss of control in corporate IT environments

Micro Frontends: The LEGO Approach to Web Development
2 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Explore the concept of micro frontends in web development, understand their benefits, and learn when this architectural approach is most effective for building scalable applications.

Google's Journey: From Search Engine to Tech Giant
1 Oct 2024 | original ↗

Exploring the key innovations and strategies that transformed Google into a global technology leader

Apple's Secret Sauce: The Untold Stories Behind Its Success
30 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Diving deep into the lesser-known factors that propelled Apple from a garage startup to a tech titan

Amazon's Rise to Tech Titan: A Story of Relentless Innovation
30 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How Jeff Bezos' 'Day 1' philosophy turned an online bookstore into a global powerhouse

What's the Number One Thing Holding Most People Back from Reaching Their Full Potential?
29 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Discover the biggest obstacle to success in tech and learn how to overcome it

Self-Taught Developer's Guide to Thriving in Tech
28 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How to turn your non-traditional background into your biggest asset

Make It Work First Before Optimizing
27 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Users don't care how elegant your code is. They care if it solves their problem.

Minimum Viable Documentation
26 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How to create essential documentation that actually gets read and used.

Write Documentation Like a Journalist
26 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Create comprehensive, engaging documentation by adopting journalistic techniques for research and storytelling

You Can Choose to Be Someone Who's Competent in Many Things, or Unbelievably Good at One Thing
26 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Should you diversify your skills or specialize?

Conway's Law: The Hidden Force Shaping Your Software Architecture
24 Sept 2024 | original ↗

If you've ever wondered why your carefully planned software architecture ends up looking suspiciously like your org chart, you're not alone. Welcome to the world of Conway's Law.

Cloudflare's AI Content Control: Savior or Threat to the Open Web?
24 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How Cloudflare's new AI management tools could revolutionize content creation, potentially reshaping the internet landscape for both website owners and AI companies.

Internal Mobility
23 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Just like a utility player on a sports team discovering their ideal position, internal mobility allows you to explore different areas of engineering and find your true passion.

Outdated Docs Are Tech Debt
22 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Teams often neglect to create good documentation. Code gets delivered, but updating the docs is treated as a secondary task, easily postponed—until it’s too late.

Weeks of Coding Can Save You Hours of Planning
21 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning. It’s one of those sayings that’s been around forever, and for good reason—it’s a warning that still holds up today.

Attracting Top Engineering Talent to Your Startup
21 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Advice on competing for great software engineers without name recognition

It's More Fun to Be Competent
20 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Once you're competent, everything changes. You stop second-guessing yourself. You stop panicking every time you encounter a new problem. And you start taking on bigger challenges with excitement rather than dread.

Users Can Be Fired
19 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Letting go of difficult or harmful users can be the key to maintaining the health and growth of your product

Take Your Writing Seriously
19 Sept 2024 | original ↗

It’s not just about getting the message across; it’s about doing so in a way that’s easy for others to follow. Good writing shows respect for your team and your work.

Code Wins Arguments
19 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How Meta and other companies use the 'code wins arguments' mindset to turn ideas into reality

Engineering Managers Should Write Code
18 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Engineering managers who stop writing code lose touch with their teams and become ineffective leaders

dependency-time-machine: An Easier Way to Update NPM packages
18 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Automatically update your package.json dependencies one by one in chronological order, ensuring compatibility and reducing errors

A Great Product Doesn't Need Marketing
18 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Great products speak for themselves, without the need for massive marketing campaigns

The Real Cost of Meetings: What FAANG Companies Do Differently
17 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Discover how FAANG companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix reduce the hidden costs of meetings by embracing written communication and minimizing unnecessary gatherings.

Amazon's 'No Weasel Words' Rule
17 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How Amazon's emphasis on eliminating weasel words leads to more precise, actionable communication and better decision-making

What's New in Express.js v5.0
16 Sept 2024 | original ↗

A detailed look at the key changes and improvements in Express v5.0 and how to migrate your app

What Makes MrBeast So Successful? The Secrets Behind His YouTube Empire
16 Sept 2024 | original ↗

A deep dive into the strategies, mindset, and team culture that have made MrBeast one of the most successful creators on YouTube

Speculation Rules API: Boosting Web Performance with Prefetching and Prerendering
15 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How the experimental Speculation Rules API improves web performance by prefetching and prerendering future navigations

Evolve or Become Irrelevant
15 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Why staying relevant in tech means constantly adapting to new technologies and trends

Company Culture Happens Outside Management
14 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Why real company culture grows from the ground up, not top down.

The Crutch Effect: How AI Tools Became A Crutch
13 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Introducing The Crutch Effect

Speed Up Your Website with
13 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Using can improve your website's performance by reducing connection setup times to key external domains. Speed up the loading of critical resources like images, analytics, and embedded content for a smoother user experience.

Improve Website Performance with Lazy Loading Iframes
13 Sept 2024 | original ↗

How to save bandwidth and speed up your site by lazy-loading iframes

When Should You Actually Worry About Tech Debt?
12 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Technical debt isn't the monster under your bed, but it can become one if ignored too long.

Mental Toughness is the Best Quality a Developer Can Have
11 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Mental toughness gets developers through challenges like debugging, picking up new tools, and hitting tight deadlines. It’s about staying calm and pushing through when things get tough.

Google is Killing Information Economics on the Internet
11 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Google’s Gemini pulls summaries from websites and slaps them directly into the search results

Tips for Reducing Cyclomatic Complexity
9 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Cyclomatic complexity is like counting how many ways a car can go. More options make it harder to drive because you have to make more decisions, which can lead to confusion.

The Internet is Becoming an Ocean of LLM-Generated Junk
8 Sept 2024 | original ↗

The internet’s full of content, but most of it is becoming junk. I’m talking about the stuff generated by Large Language Models (LLMs). These AI tools are cranking out endless articles, and the quality? It's bad—really bad.

setImmediate() vs setTimeout() in JavaScript
7 Sept 2024 | original ↗

both setImmediate() and setTimeout() are used for scheduling tasks, but they work differently.

Unrealistic Deadlines In Software Engineering
7 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Unrealistic deadlines are more than just stressful—they set engineers up for failure

Understanding JavaScript Closures With Examples
5 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Closures are essential for creating functions that maintain state, without relying on global variables.

Explicit is better than implicit
3 Sept 2024 | original ↗

Clarity is key: being explicit makes your code more readable and maintainable.

AggregateError in JavaScript
1 Sept 2024 | original ↗

AggregateError helps you handle multiple errors at once in JavaScript. This makes your code easier to manage and more reliable.

Comprehensive React Testing: Handling API Calls with Mock Service Worker
31 Aug 2024 | original ↗

Testing can be tricky, especially when it comes to handling API calls.

Chrome Is Beta Testing Built-In AI. Could This Kill a Lot of Startups?
31 Aug 2024 | original ↗

The Power Play: Gemini Nano in Chrome

Embrace Intermediate Variables and Early Returns
30 Aug 2024 | original ↗

Early returns and intermediate variables make your code easier to reason about

When Regex Goes Wrong
29 Aug 2024 | original ↗

Issues and catastrophic failures caused by regex

Invisible columns in SQL
26 Aug 2024 | original ↗

It’s a small feature, but it can make a big difference.

Objective-C Is a Total Abomination (opinion)
23 Aug 2024 | original ↗

Objective-C is, without a doubt, one of the ugliest programming languages out there

Understanding Vue's Suspense
22 Aug 2024 | original ↗

How component manages async dependencies and improves loading states in Vue apps

The Only Widely Recognized JavaScript Feature Ever Deprecated
21 Aug 2024 | original ↗

The 'with' statement is the only feature ever deprecated in JavaScript

10 Essential Terminal Commands Every Developer Should Know
21 Aug 2024 | original ↗

List of useful Unix terminal commands to boost your productivity. Here are some of my favorites.

Remove Garbage NPM Packages with eslint-plugin-depend
13 Aug 2024 | original ↗

We don't need packages to handle basic JavaScript tasks

Common Causes of Memory Leaks in JavaScript
10 Aug 2024 | original ↗

Identify and fix common JavaScript memory leaks (Node.js and Deno.js)

Secure Your Repositories: Prevent Credential Leaks with Gitleaks
5 Aug 2024 | original ↗

Automate security flows and ensure your team follows security best practices

Who is the fastest? Node.js, Bun.js, or Deno.js
2 Aug 2024 | original ↗

A detailed comparison of Node.js, Bun.js, and Deno.js runtime performance

Technical Debt Is Killing Your Business
30 Jul 2024 | original ↗

And it will be your downfall if you choose to ignore it

Frontend Security Checklist
29 Jul 2024 | original ↗

Tips for Keeping All Frontend Applications Secure

Speeding Up React Apps with Code Splitting and Lazy Loading
26 Dec 2023 | original ↗

Performance is not a luxury; it's a necessity

Staying Motivated While Building Your Startup: A Balanced Approach
16 Dec 2023 | original ↗

Building a startup is an exhilarating journey, filled with highs and lows

The What, Why, and How of Using a Skeleton Loading Screen
11 Nov 2020 | original ↗

Skeleton loading screens enhance user experience and make your app feel faster

Sharp: A High-Performance Image Processing Library for Node.js
27 Oct 2020 | original ↗

Sharp is a high-performance package for resizing and formatting images

Integrating Docker with React
15 Jul 2020 | original ↗

Streamline your development and deployment processes

How To Restore Your Passion for Programming
25 Nov 2019 | original ↗

Programming is a difficult skill to master and requires great perseverance to get good at. The grind can be too much at times — remember, if something is hard, it’s worth doing, as nothing good comes easy.

What Does an Entry-Level Programmer Need to Know Exactly?
5 Nov 2019 | original ↗

Expectations for entry-level programmers

Mermaid.js — Create Charts and Diagrams With Markdown-like Syntax
30 Oct 2019 | original ↗

Mermaid.js is a simple markdown-like script language for generating charts from text via JavaScript

Become a Web Developer in 180 Days
29 Oct 2019 | original ↗

A comprehensive roadmap to becoming a proficient web developer

Peaks.js — Interact With Audio Waveforms
21 Oct 2019 | original ↗

Peaks.js is a client-side JavaScript component to display and interact with audio waveforms in the browser

Boost React + Redux Performance with Reselect
1 Oct 2019 | original ↗

Selectors are a powerful tool to optimize state selection and enhance performance in your React and Redux apps.

Programming Trends to Watch in 2020 and Beyond
18 Jul 2019 | original ↗

Here are my bets on the programming trends

How To Fetch Data From an API With React Hooks
20 Jun 2019 | original ↗

Fetch data in React applications using the power of React Hooks

How To Use Redux with React Hooks
20 Jun 2019 | original ↗

Write less code, but better code

Demystifying React Hooks
15 Jun 2019 | original ↗

Hooks can save you time and improve the quality of your code

The Secret to Being a Top Developer Is Building Things
1 Dec 2017 | original ↗

You can only become a great developer if you're willing to put effort into it

All You Need To Know About CSS-in-JS
9 Nov 2017 | original ↗

An overview of CSS-in-JS and its relevance in modern web development

Next.js — React Server-Side Rendering Done Right
1 Nov 2017 | original ↗

We’re officially in the age of server-side rendered react apps

How to setup Webpack +2.0 from scratch in 2017
4 Apr 2017 | original ↗

Webpack is another evolution in the JavaScript tooling ecosystem

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