Providing insights into a career of apps and utilities that I've conceptualized, designed, and developed; complemented with developmental journeys, findings, observations, and challenges encountered along the way.

  • Happy Halloween — c/o GitHub

    Happy Halloween — c/o GitHub

    GitHub has provided us with a splash of autumn colors in our profiles. Nice!!

  • ChatGPT gets Expressive with Emojis

    ChatGPT gets Expressive with Emojis

    My first time seeing ChatGPT respond with emojis, and I’m still . . . speechless. – Keith | https://keithdc.com — Keith D Commiskey https://keithdc.com

  • Flutter: The perfect take!

    Flutter: The perfect take!

    Flutter FTW! When asked by a non-technical stranger on LinkedIn to explain what Flutter is, being I’m not in sales or marketing, and knowing I’d get too technical, I turned to ChatGPT to help out. The Prompt: As succinctly as possible (maybe just a few paragraphs), what advantages does Flutter offer for cross-platform mobile app…

  • A Tour of some of Dart 3’s Impactful New Features

    A Tour of some of Dart 3’s Impactful New Features

    I created a public Gist of my experience touring Dart 3’s new features via their Dart Codelab. Gist files from Dart’s codelab: Dive into Dart 3’s new OO language enhancements including patterns, records, enhanced switch and case, and sealed classes. It was intriguing and educational!! 💡 A couple of the features I recall learning or using…

  • Dart and OO: Design Patterns, Refactoring, and Code Smells

    Dart and OO: Design Patterns, Refactoring, and Code Smells

    I would like to thank Refactoring.guru for their insightful course on, well, refactoring (and code smells) at an Object-Oriented (OO) level. The course helped to set me on the right track for being more cognizant of my coding practices in Flutter and Dart. While some refactoring concepts might appear self-explanatory, the dissection of the refactoring processes in…

  • TIL — `.nonNulls`

    From the source code: flutterbincachedart-sdklibcollectioniterable.dart /// Operations on iterables with nullable elements. @Since(“3.0”) extension NullableIterableExtensions<T extends Object> on Iterable<T?> {   /// [Returns] The same elements as this iterable,   /// except that `null` values are omitted.   Iterable<T> get nonNulls => NonNullsIterable<T>(this); } dart:collection Source — changelog: https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/blob/5d30f18892f1f825943a74e81ab02f27c2c6c26f/CHANGELOG.md#dartcollection Added extension members: nonNulls firstOrNull lastOrNull singleOrNull elementAtOrNull Obtained…

  • Migrating to Dart’s Null Safety

    Migrating to Dart’s Null Safety

    Prior to starting on my 4th Flutter mobile app, and because it seems that every plugin now supports it, I decided to give migrating to Dart’s null safety a go. Sound null safety is available in Dart 2.12 and Flutter 2. In reading through the migration documentation, it appears the migration tool may pose as…

  • The Appreciation of a Framework

    The Appreciation of a Framework

    . . . that inspires productivity. The tl;dr is that, thanks to Flutter, my third app is now live in both Google’s Play Store (for Android) and Apple’s App Store (for iPhones and iPads). The appreciation comes in the form of the Flutter framework providing a solid base from which to learn mobile app development,…

  • Wrote an App; Got a Mac; Wrote another App

    Wrote an App; Got a Mac; Wrote another App

    Or more specifically, “Wrote an app for Android; Bought my first Mac; Wrote another app for iOS and Android.” App development is a time-consuming, minutely detailed process, and there is little time for pause. Mar 29 First Flutter mobile app approved for Closed Testing in the Google Play Store. Apr 22 First interview for a Flutter Developer position (knowingly…

  • Architectural Challenges: My Flutter Frankenstein

    Architectural Challenges: My Flutter Frankenstein

    The Bottom line: I really like Flutter.It has been extremely challenging at times, but the lessons learned from those challenges have been mostly fundamental and insightful. My first major challenge with Flutter came in October when I found I could not update multiple Flutter widgets from various ‘reactive’ sources using Flutter’s Provider package. I got to…

  • “Hello Suite”

    “Hello Suite”

    When completing a lengthy course on an interesting topic such as mobile app development via Flutter, the satisfaction of the certification at the end can be short-lived, as the real joy comes in the form of creating your own actual apps. Recommended course of action: “Just start building something . . . anything!“ But what?!…

  • I got a Flutter Full Course Certification—Now what?!

    I got a Flutter Full Course Certification—Now what?!

    The Goal: Find a mutually-accommodating position working on productive solutions involving mobile apps built with Flutter or JavaScript-based web interfaces before the end of the year. The Plan: → Phase I:  Begin learning mobile app development via Flutter. Complete. Yay! 🥈 → Phase II:  Focus on a solid project to continue to broaden and strengthen…

  • New Browser Extension: Too-Much-Time

    New Browser Extension: Too-Much-Time

    Browser Extension: Too-Much-Time This blog entry is to simply document the creation and publishing of my third browser extension now available in the Chrome Web Store. The extension was relatively light and more of a personal project to accomplish something during—and break the monotony of—my mobile app development learning curve (which is coming along nicely).…

  • Learning Mobile App Development via Flutter

    Learning Mobile App Development via Flutter

    Learning: Mobile App Development – via Flutter What is … Flutter? Flutter is a mobile—and web—app development framework powered by the Dart programming language. It is akin to React Native or Ionic, and is built by Google. Dart is akin to JavaScript—but not. Since coming out of beta in December 2018, trends from Stack Overflow…

  • React Component Marries Chrome Browser Extension

    React Component Marries Chrome Browser Extension

    Less than two years later, Chrome browser extension requests opportunity to see other code. Ever wondered how to wrap a Chrome browser extension inside a React component to allow the extension to run as a SPA? The Expired To Be: SPA version does just that. It is a React alarm component I wrote that wraps and…

  • Introducing: The Book Length Classification and Word Count Tool

    Introducing: The Book Length Classification and Word Count Tool

    Where does your story fit? Novel, Novella, Novellette, Modern Short Story, Short Story, Short-Short Prose, Flash Fiction? Introducing: The Book Length Classification and Word Count Tool — Providing aggregated insights distinguishing the differences between a Short Story, Novella, Novel, etc. Comments and suggestions always welcome. Disqus comments are provided at the bottom of the article…

  • JavaScript Informational: Best of the Basics

    JavaScript Informational: Best of the Basics

    Best of the Basics: JavaScript Informational JavaScript Informational: Best of the Basics: A full run through for entry- and mid-level developers looking for some solid fundamentals. Comments and suggestions always welcome. For those new to the language, this is my own personal introduction to the topic garnered from over 17 years of experience: I’m throwing…

  • Popular Development Tags: Starting 2020

    Popular Development Tags: Stack Overflow Starting off the year 2020 Below are the results for the most popular tags on Stack Overflow beginning the year 2020. javascript 1,931,524 845 asked today, 4835 this week java 1,626,006 585 asked today, 3235 this week c# 1,373,811 453 asked today, 2427 this week php 1,327,017 324 asked today,…

  • There’s code in my … code! A common experience?

    After writing about 500 initial lines of code in designing a database schema for a web app, I realized I’d gone and added 150 lines of JavaScript code—for handling 30 lines of JSON data I’d written above that—all directly in my `.sql` file. I often create new ‘untitled’ documents for temporary storage, but was curious…

  • Instructing My First Tutoring Course [2019 Sep-Oct]

    Instructing My First Tutoring Course [2019 Sep-Oct]

    The results of teaching my first tutoring course: Background: I took on teaching this class less than two weeks prior to the class starting. I had never taken the course before. I had never formerly taught a class before. The only thing that caught me up was the second week in my correcting some misleading…