Blog by Dr. Lars Hupel

Property-based Testing with “fast-check”

It isn’t exactly news that developers have to write not only code but also tests. Nevertheless, many find this to be burdensome and monotonous work. Plus, it is far from guaranteed that unit tests actually cover all the border and non-border cases. A modern approach is property-based testing, which consists of specifying an abstract condition that is then automatically checked by the test framework.

Blueprints

JavaScript’s approach to object orientation is different from other languages. This hasn’t been changed by the introduction of classes, even if it looks that way at first glance. Read on to learn how this unusual system works.

We Are Developers World Congress 2022 in Berlin

Our Experience Report

Dependently-Typed TypeScript

TypeScript is a programming language with some special features: Unlike most other typed programming languages, it was developed as an add-on for JavaScript (JS). In the process, Microsoft has placed great value on ensuring that the language integrates as seamlessly as possible into the existing ecosystems (Node.js and browser). TypeScript’s syntax “merely” adds types to JavaScript, while the compilation “merely” removes the type annotations. This has made TypeScript the de-facto standard for building type-safe JS-based applications.

Rich code documentation with Jekyll

Static site generation is a perfect fit for publishing documentation. In a recent project, we chose to use a combination of Jekyll and NGINX to build and host the documentation. In this post, I show how to process and include other types of assets.

Customer-specific documentation with Jekyll

TypeScript – Taming the Complexity of JavaScript

TypeScript celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2022. A good reason to look back at its beginnings – and to provide beginners with everything they need to know for working with this programming language.

Next Please!

Despite modern multicore processors, website code usually runs in only one thread. True parallelism therefore does not exist, but a clever programming model still allows “asynchronous” code that is not processed linearly.

What Does a Bundler Actually Do?

Injecting environment variables into static websites using NGINX

Static site generation is a perfect fit for publishing documentation. In a recent project, we chose to use NGINX as a web server to host the HTML and CSS files. However, we also wanted to protect the site using SSO. This is where things get a bit difficult.

Decentralized Architecture: What’s Behind Blockchains?

Fueled by ever new highs in cryptocurrency prices, there is currently a lively debate about blockchains. Some praise the “self-sustaining” currencies as saviors in times of crisis, while others see their excessive power consumption as a climate killer.

Deploying a WebAssembly smart contract on Oasis Ethereum

Cross-platform testing of TypeScript code with Jasmine and Karma

I like TypeScript. Writing code that already underwent basic checks (i.e. typechecking) before it can even touch an execution engine is a big win in my book. In particular, TypeScript is nice because it integrates well into the broader JavaScript ecosystem and comes with batteries (i.e. types) included. Unfortunately, most test runners require extra setup to work with tests written in TypeScript. Some even require staggering amounts of configuration.

So you want to compose some functions

Let’s say you have a list of functions and you want to compose them. Should be trivial, right? Of course it is, but maybe there’s an elegant way.

Type checking JSX: A can of props

The many ways of testing Smart Contracts in Ethereum

You have implemented a smart contract for Ethereum, and now you are wondering how you can test it under real-life conditions, but without spending money in case there’s a problem? Luckily, there are test networks that can help you with this.

Integrating Logback with JLine

Logback is a popular logging library for Java. JLine can be used to create nice shell-like applications. Combining both is not as hard as it looks.

Verification of smart contracts