Nicholas C. Zakas

Creator of ESLint (npub1med…v0f7). Author, programmer, speaker, coach. GitHub Star.

Blog: https://humanwhocodes.com
Coaching: https://humanwhocodes.com/coaching
GitHub: https://github.com/nzakas
Donate: https://humanwhocodes.com/donate

Public Key

npub1g5ed6mk7ntm0e2g884e53zcjtayx358lfjkn7z42lyqarncx2rcsqcc2fj

NIP-05 Address

nzakas_at_fosstodon.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsy2vkadm0f4ahu4yrn6u6g3vf97jrg6rl5etflp240jqw3eur9pugpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsg0284n

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

relay.primal.net

Author Public Key

npub1g5ed6mk7ntm0e2g884e53zcjtayx358lfjkn7z42lyqarncx2rcsqcc2fj

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Last Notes

2025-11-24 14:41:59 UTC

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the US has no laws around this (or my much of anything important, as usual).

2025-11-19 22:08:47 UTC

TIL there's a browser API for highlights.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/CSS_Custom_Highlight_API

2025-11-12 23:22:46 UTC

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put this together for folks who don’t like reusing Response for errors:
https://github.com/humanwhocodes/guarded-fetch

2025-11-12 21:56:40 UTC

Another take on the problem of fetch() sometimes returning a response and sometimes throwing an error: what if it always returned an object containing either response or error?
https://github.com/humanwhocodes/guarded-fetch

2025-11-05 14:39:39 UTC

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there are a bunch of nice utilities under the Cloudflare umbrella, of which Hono is one.

2025-11-04 23:05:55 UTC

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I’m really enjoying it. Very well thought out and excellent integration with Cloudflare workers (for obvious reasons)

2025-09-30 22:33:21 UTC

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I bet you could wire that up to an Ethernet-over-power system inside the wall.

2025-09-02 14:01:40 UTC

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I see. I don’t think this is getting at what you want. You’re delaying a blocking operation until later, which is different than yielding so that any pending UI updates can be applied.
I’d suggest making a bunch of DOM changes, then setTimeout to flush the pending DOM updates.

2025-09-01 22:09:44 UTC

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hard to answer without full context. Depends on what sleep(5000) is a placeholder for.

2025-09-01 14:04:46 UTC

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ye olde setTimeout 😀

2025-08-14 18:44:15 UTC

New! I updated my persona-based AI assisted programming post with latest findings:
1. Switched architect and problem solver personas to use GPT-5
2. Added tech spec reviewer and implementation reviewer personas
Check it out:
https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2025/06/persona-based-approach-ai-assisted-programming/

2025-06-10 18:32:05 UTC

Friendly reminder that CommonJS functionality is frequently unspecified and often falls somewhere between "script" and "module" programs as defined by ECMA-262. It's really time to stop using CommonJS.
https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/58663

2025-06-02 19:46:30 UTC

If you're waiting for eslint-config-airbnb to get updated for ESLint v9 before migrating, please give this alternative a try and let us know how it works:
https://github.com/NishargShah/eslint-config-airbnb-extended/issues/10#issuecomment-2928085279

2025-05-05 13:22:49 UTC

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an ambitious project that gets a lot right (disallowing publishing for invalid packages) and a lot wrong (packages can’t easily be used in Node.js). Also seems pretty dormant at the moment. My issues have not received responses in months.

2025-04-28 17:43:10 UTC

ESLint enables the V8 compile cache by default in Node.js v22+. The result on my machine is a load time reduction of around 90%.

2025-02-25 21:37:00 UTC

What would you call the group of JavaScript APIs containing XMLHttpRequest, fetch, WebSocket, WebTransport, and EventSource?
Ten years ago I'd call that "Ajax" but I'm not sure anyone really uses that term anymore.
"JavaScript networking" seems overly vague?

2025-02-24 16:45:07 UTC

Which server side JavaScript runtime do you primarily use at work?

2025-02-19 00:21:14 UTC

When you have a popular open source project, you will periodically get suspicious-looking PRs that seem like tests to see how easy it is to land a malicious change.
Here's the latest:
https://github.com/eslint/eslint/pull/19433

2025-02-17 17:15:22 UTC

TIL The CSS cursor property is not considered baseline:
https://github.com/web-platform-dx/web-features/blob/main/features/cursor.yml#L9

2025-02-15 01:40:00 UTC

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the whole Netflix UI is designed to force you to browse in the hopes you’ll find something new to watch. Once you understand that, all the annoying things about their UX make sense.

2025-02-15 00:20:52 UTC

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As an example, CSSTree is written without arrays as it claims they slow down the parsing process.
I haven't been able to validate such an issue in my own testing.

2025-02-14 21:31:01 UTC

I've come across a few instances where people claim that JavaScript arrays have a performance impact when adding a variable number of elements due to memory allocations, and that JS-based linked lists are more performant. Anyone seen benchmarks for this?

2025-01-22 17:10:08 UTC

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interestingly, in Bluesky, it’s the client posting the text that indicates what is a link. There’s no auto detection upon posting like in Twitter and Mastodon. If you want to hack together your own post app, you can ensure only URLs with protocols become links.

2025-01-16 00:05:30 UTC

Why does TypeScript's DOM library still not include URLPattern?
https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript-DOM-lib-generator/issues/1199

2024-12-23 17:48:44 UTC

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definitely makes static analysis a lot easier. In ESLint, we have to go through great pains to determine if a variable references a global. Would be nice to not have to do that.

2024-12-21 00:02:06 UTC

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I’ve wanted this ever since ESM was released.
I just wish browsers would do the same with new APIs. The surface area of Web JavaScript APIs is massive.

2024-12-10 23:26:19 UTC

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when I asked on Bluesky, most folks said there was one key person they followed on Twitter who left for Bluesky, so they followed.
Many also cited Starter Packs as a reason to go Bluesky over Mastodon, as it was too hard to populate their Mastodon feed. (I know this has changed, just sharing the feedback I got when I asked.)

2024-12-10 17:56:10 UTC

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I also feel like Mastodon encourages a much narrower identity. I don’t feel as comfortable discussing non-tech things. I don’t feel like my whole person is something people want here.
In Bluesky, it feels a lot more welcoming to non-tech topics. I feel more able to discuss health, or football, or whatever. And non-tech people will find those posts and interactive with me. It feels like early Twitter in that way.

2024-12-10 17:23:34 UTC

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I think your definition of "reach" may be too narrow. There is horizontal reach (reaching more people) but also vertical reach (reaching different people).
To me, Bluesky is better at both. Mastodon feels very much like a closed ecosystem where I'm mostly exposed to the same type of people every day unless I go out of my way.
On Bluesky, almost every day I'm running into someone unexpected discussing something unexpected. There's more serendipity.

2024-12-09 23:32:43 UTC

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there’s some data on the My Activity page: http://myactivity.google.com/
Under Other Activity in the menu. Look for YouTube Not Interested Feedback. Not granular but you can at least reset everything.
I think if you subscribe to a channel it’ll still show up even if you accidentally said don’t recommend.

2024-12-09 15:00:45 UTC

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there is a “don’t recommend this channel” option for anything that’s recommended on the homepage. I use it frequently.

2024-12-06 17:40:24 UTC

In software, it’s rarely a good idea to try to solve for more than 80-90% of your use cases. The incremental cost of supporting use cases after that point tends to be exponential for an increasingly smaller number of users.

2024-12-04 17:07:34 UTC

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Right now I think the math: do you care more about lock-in or more about reach?
If you care more about lock-in, then Mastodon is a good choice; if you care more about reach, then Bluesky is a better choice (and probably always will be).

2024-11-28 23:18:49 UTC

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I still question the decision not to have some keyword to annotate class fields.

2024-11-11 21:38:03 UTC

Bluesky follower count has now passed Mastodon follower count.
All of the “here’s why I’m not joining Bluesky” thinkpieces likely won’t age well.

2024-10-28 14:59:07 UTC

Do any of my followers work at Shopify? I’m looking to get in touch with the person in charge of open source sponsorships. Any help greatly appreciated. 🙏

2024-10-24 14:53:17 UTC

If you are still reviewing pull requests in your browser, you really need to try the VS Code GitHub extension. Reviewing PRs directly in VS Code is absolutely a game-changer.

2024-10-16 14:45:58 UTC

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interestingly, VS Code does not warn in tsconfig.json or settings.json. It’s all kind of a mess.

2024-10-15 21:27:03 UTC

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Yes I've seen this.
From my perspective, JSONC is what's implemented in Visual Studio Code. Ubiquity wins.

2024-10-15 16:24:31 UTC

TIL JSONC actually supports dangling commas.
https://github.com/humanwhocodes/momoa/issues/135

2024-10-02 22:18:53 UTC

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True also in open source. Plenty of “it would be cool if ESLint did X” and not enough people willing to triage issues and PRs.

2024-09-06 13:55:40 UTC

I love those IBM videos with people writing on a clear board. It took me a while to figure out how they’re done. The clue?
Almost everyone in the videos is left handed. 💡
They are writing normally with the right hand, so the clear board is key. Then the video is mirrored. 🤯

2024-09-03 13:56:56 UTC

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I’ve been having these discussions (arguments?) for at least 20 years. It’s not new. What’s new are the participants and how they communicate. but speaking as someone who colleagues tried to get fired because they didn’t agree with my approach to frontend, the tactics are pretty much the same.