There’s a lot of big and scary technical mumbo jumbo in the world of Software Development, which causes no end of pain to both the beginner and the experienced. One of these technical terms that you might hear a lot is ‘Abstraction’ — easily one of the most confusing terms in the field.

So what exactly is abstraction? As an adjective, abstraction means ‘existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence’, and as a verb, it means ‘consider theoretically or separately from something else’. …

As Software Engineers, one of the first things we learn to do is how to write code. But what is code really? In a literal definition, code is simply the exact instructions given to a computer to execute some task, these instructions being written by us, the human. But code goes deeper than that. Code is the implementations of comprehensive ideas, the abstractions of complex models into simpler ones, and the concretion of conceptual theories into reality. …

Do you know what the top errors are that occur within a Javascript codebase? In order, they are:

• TypeError: Cannot read property
• TypeError: ‘undefined’ is not an object
• TypeError: null is not an object

So what do all of these errors have in common? They all deal with references, specifically references that do not exist, either because the reference isn’t there (it is undefined), or the reference has been explicitly set to be nothing (deleted or set to null).

In Javascript, we would need to explicitly check every reference to make sure it’s defined. …

I love being a Software Developer. Getting to solve problems and create amazing applications on a daily basis is something I get so much enjoyment out of. But I still vividly remember struggling as a beginner, that feeling of being so lost all the time, not really understanding what I was doing.

But I kept at it, and I’m so glad I did. As a mostly self-taught developer, there are so many things that I wish would’ve been explained to me upfront. Instead in my stubbornness, I had to learn a lot of things the hard way, and fail a…

Mastering your keyboard can save you hours upon hours of time every week. Whether you’re working on that important project or trying to meet a deadline, knowing your shortcuts can be a massive difference maker. For Visual Studio Code, these are the essential shortcuts that everyone should know.

1. Open Command Palette

Shift + Cmd + P : The command palette will quickly become your best friend as you learn various shortcuts. If you ever forget a shortcut, simply open the command palette, and search for what you’re trying to do.

2. Find in current File

Cmd + F : Instantly find whatever you’re looking for in the current…

MongoDB is one of the most popular options available as a NoSQL database. It uses a rich Javascript-like query language to interact with incredibly flexible data. This article will quickly walk you through getting up and running with MongoDB as the database of choice in your application.

To get started, you’ll need to get the MongoDB server to run on your local machine. Download MongoDB’s community-edition server here, and be sure to download and install the latest current version for the type of machine you’re running on.

Once it’s installed, you’ll then need to actually start the server itself. Open…

As a developer, I’m always looking for ways to make things more efficient. I want this thing to run faster, and that thing to use fewer resources. Especially in web development, speed is key to great user experience. But it wasn’t until I was introduced to Vim that I started looking at not just writing efficient code, but at efficiently writing efficient code.

Vim changes the way you interact with your editor. The biggest change Vim forces you to make: you aren’t allowed to use your mouse. Now you might be thinking, “How does that let me write code faster?”…

Visual Studio Code is absolutely awesome. Even out of the box, the editor can already do so much, especially for web developers. One of the major reasons that it’s so popular is that it has this unique ability to go from a strict text editor to a near full-blown IDE.

This is thanks to the fact that VSCode is extremely customizable. Every action you can think of in the editor? If it doesn’t already have a shortcut, you can definitely set one! Don’t like the color scheme? Yeah, there’s a setting for that too. …