Blog

Posts written in April 2016.

  • ReactJSI've been meddling around with ReactJS over the last week or so, seeing if this is something viable to use for future client projects. I am always constantly on the lookout to whether there are better alternatives on how my fellow developers and I develop our sites.

    Throughout the sample applications I've been building, I constantly asked myself one question: Why Would I Use ReactJS In My Day To Day Development? I am ASP.NET developer who build websites either using Web Forms or MVC Razor. So I am finding it difficult to comprehend whether using ReactJS is viable in these frameworks, especially MVC.

    ReactJS is primarily a view framework where you have the ability to write component-based web applications directly into your JavaScript that then gets output to the DOM virtually - making for a very fast and responsive webpage. It's a different approach to developing websites that I quite like. But for the moment, I just don't see how it can benefit me when the full MVC framework does a pretty good job with all the bells and whistles.

    For example, I segregate all my key HTML markup into partial views in order to increase re-use throughout my web application, which works really well when making AJAX calls where the markup needs to be displayed on the page asynchronously as well as server-side. I can just see by implementing ReactJS, I will be duplicating this process at JavaScript and CSHTML level if a markup change ever needed to be made. If partial views does the job effectively, I'm not too sure the need for ReactJS in my future ASP.NET MVC creations.

    Don't get me wrong - I really like ReactJS. It makes writing JavaScript an even more enjoyable experience purely due to the JSX syntax. Long gone are the days where you have to concatenate strings to form HTML. More importantly, it's readable and truly scalable.

    Unfortunately, it doesn't look like ReactJS is a viable option for me at this moment in time. I can see how it would be a very useful framework for building web applications where there is a requirement for the view to be created strictly client-side along with heavy use of AJAX calls from an API layer to serve data to your application. But in situations where you have two frameworks that provide the ability to create views, in this case ReactJS and ASP.NET MVC, it doesn't make sense.

    I could be talking absolute nonsense and missing the whole point. If this is the case (most likely!), please leave a comment.

  • Published on
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    3 min read

    Securely Erasing An Android Device

    I decided it was time for my trusted Nexus 5 and I to part ways. We had many good times over the last few years we had known each other. But as things sometimes unfortunately turn out, our time together finally came to an end. The battery life was starting to wane and I really need a phone with a larger capacity - more than 16GB.

    Enough with the sentimentality...

    I am now the proud owner of a Nexus 6P.

    My Nexus 6P

    And what a beauty she is!

    In getting the Nexus 6P, I am about to sell my dear Nexus 5 on eBay, so that it may grace someone elses life in a positive way just as it had done mine. It's in very good condition and still looks brand-spanking new. The only thing that I need to ensure is that the phone is wiped clean - inside and out. Even though I carried out a factory reset, I read doing this alone is not enough to make your previously stored information fully un-recoverable.

    To be completely sure that the device has had a complete wipe down, you need to ensure the Android device is encrypted prior to carrying out the factory reset. You can check if the phone is set to be encrpyted by going into Settings > Security > Encryption. By doing this, the encryption process will scramble your data and if some data is left after the factory reset, a key would be required to unecrypt it. For the general user, this should suffice.

    I decided to take things a step further, just to be 100% sure. I found a very good post on StackExchange Security that states the following:

    Factory resets reset your phone to a stock like state but does not remove your data, just applications. This leaves some data behind. The best way to prevent this data from being recovered is to encrypt the phone, and use wipe data/factory reset from the recovery menu. This way you don't have to download a ton of data and you can be fairly certain your things are secure.


    If you're not that worried, encrypting, and data/factory reset from the recovery menu is probably enough.


    Forgot to mention why the recovery mode data/factory reset. It formats the user data areas as well as the application area, and is far more thorough/secure than the one inside of the android OS and will prevent you from download junk data. It just flat out gets rid of it.


    To get to the recovery console on the Nexus 5 for resetting:

    1. If your phone is on, turn it off.
    2. Press and hold the Volume Down and Volume Up buttons, and then press and hold the Power button at the same time until the phone turns on. You'll see the word "Start" with an arrow around it.
    3. Press the Volume Down button twice to highlight "Recovery."
    4. Press the Power button to start Recovery mode. You'll see an image of an Android robot with a red exclamation mark and the words "No command."
    5. While holding the Power button, press and release the Volume Up button once.
    6. Press the Volume Down button twice to highlight "wipe data/factory reset" and press the Power button to select it.
    7. Press the Volume Down button seven times to highlight "Yes - erase all user data" and press the Power button to select it.
    8. After the reset is complete, press the Power button to select the option to reboot your device.

    Don't forget to also revoke account access as an extra measure by logging into your Google Account and clicking the "Remove" button (https://security.google.com/settings/security/activity).

    Disconnecting Nexus 5 from Google Account

  • Published on
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    1 min read

    I am Just One Of Those Developers...

    ...who hasn’t created a new open-source plugin/library, answered many posts on StackOverflow (as much as I’d like to!), made an active contribution to Github, created a Pluralsight course, or coded something beautiful on CodePen.

    How very selfish of me.

    But what I do know is that this doesn’t make me any less of a developer. I have the capability to translate something in it’s infancy to truly something awesome that I am confident I will be very much proud of. I think as a developer that's quite easy to lose sight of - I know I feel that way. Just throw a problem or project my way and I’ll do it.

    Would I like to have the capability to everything I stated in my first sentence? Yes! Who wouldn’t? I look at my experienced peers (to whom I refer to as “the greats”) in pure admiration and hoping one day I will have the capacity to contribute to the programming world as they do.

    As I gaze back at my 8 years in the programming world, one thought comes to mind: I should be doing more. Thoughts like these is was what separates us from just being good at what we do to something much much more.