I can’t believe it’s been over two years since I last published an article here! Time really flies. The crazy part is that over these last two years, I’ve done more writing than ever; it just hasn’t been public. Several years back, I started a journaling habit, and since then, most of my writing energy has been redirected from my website to my private journal. While writing in private feels liberating, as I can dump every little thought in my head into an archive, I find myself missin...| Randall Degges
I’m a bit of a sustainability nerd. I love the idea of living a life where your carbon footprint is neutral (or negative) and you leave the world a better place than it was before you got here. While it’s clear that there’s only so much impact an individual can have on carbon emissions, I like the idea of working to minimize my personal carbon footprint. This is a big part of the reason why I live in a home with solar power, drive an electric vehicle, and try to avoid single-use plastic...| Randall Degges
I’ve been building and working with REST APIs for many years now. Recently, however, I’ve been spending more and more of my time working with (and building) GraphQL-based APIs. While GraphQL has generally made my life easier, especially as I’ve been building and consuming more data-heavy APIs, there is still one extremely annoying problem I’ve run into over and over again: lack of GraphQL support for third-party APIs I need to consume. If I’m trying to use a third-party API service ...| Randall Degges
I’m a big fan of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. They have a number of interesting applications, one of which I’ll be discussing today: monetizing your websites. Developing and running a successful website can be really challenging. If your website doesn’t directly charge users for a service, making money to cover your expenses (and potentially turn a profit) can be nearly impossible. Advertising is Dying Integrating with an ad network like Google Adsense and showing displ...| Randall Degges
It’s hard to describe in words how painful it is to lose a best friend – so instead, I’ll simply tell you about how amazing having a best friend can be. I didn’t have a bad childhood. I grew up in a family with two parents who loved me and supported me – and although we had fights and disagreements all the time, I always felt loved and care for. Despite this, at some point in my childhood (I can’t remember exactly when), I started to feel very alone. In school, I was a good studen...| Randall Degges
A little bit of life advice to myself for future reference: the next time you’re not feeling great – feeling lonely, sad, whatever it may be – just get up and fucking do something. No excuses. Want to sit there and feel bad for yourself? Grow the fuck up! Sometimes you’ve got to be hard with yourself, there’s just no getting around it. You’ve got to get up, go to the gym, and lift some heavy ass weights. You’ve got to get on that bike you bought and crush 20 miles or so. You’v...| Randall Degges
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Alven and I built a small webapp together that I wanted to share with you today: motivation.io. The idea behind motivation.io is simple: when I go workout at the gym and lift weights, it requires a lot of effort and energy. What I like to do before I go to the gym is open YouTube, search for bodybuilding motivation, and then watch a video or two to get myself pumped up for the gym. While this has been working great for the past two years or so, it gets tedious...| Randall Degges
Over the past few years I’ve been spending more and more time building and working with web APIs. To me, APIs are absolutely fascinating, and they’ve quickly become my favorite branch of technology to work on. Last year, I even built a quite successful API company (OpenCNAM), which allows developers to easily get Caller ID data. I’ve also built a good number of other APIs over the past several years: An API that allows users to create, edit, and modify teleconferencing chat rooms. An AP...| Randall Degges
Last week my friend Alven and I launched a new service for developers using PostgreSQL: postgression. postgression is a simple web service that allows you (a programmer) to instantly provision a free PostgreSQL database that automatically disappears after 30 minutes. Why would you use this? Primarily for testing code: running unit tests, integration tests, etc. It’s handy because using postgression means you don’t need to configure (or even run) PostgreSQL server locally just so you can r...| Randall Degges
If you want to be awesome, then go be awesome. Code the stuff you want to code. Build the business you want to build. Lift the weights. Lose the weight. Go the extra mile. Don’t listen to anyone else, just get out there, do what you love, and fucking KICK ASS along the way. Don’t yield for anyone.| Randall Degges
This year for Thanksgiving, I did something I don’t normally do: I took some time away from the computer. Since both my work and hobby involve programming, it is rare that a day passes for me in which I don’t do at least a little bit of coding. If I had to guess, I’d say that for the better part of the last 5 years I’ve gone at most a dozen days without programming overall. Since I’ve been putting in a lot of effort lately working on my various projects, I decided that this year I...| Randall Degges
I’ve noticed that sometimes, doing the things you enjoy just isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to do more. I often get that feeling deep down that I’m not being the best I can be–I’m not pushing myself hard enough. I’m not getting out there, doing the stuff I love to do, and completely destroying it. Sometimes I feel weak, tired, and beaten–and the only thing I can think about or focus on is absolute victory. I find that when I’m in this mindset, there’s only one way to satis...| Randall Degges
It’s about 1am right now, and instead of sleeping I’m thinking about all the things I want to accomplish, and what I need to do to get there. While I’m currently really happy with my day-to-day life: I enjoy the things I’m working on each day, I’m constantly learning new skills, I’m pushing myself past my comfort barrier–I’m always craving more. More skills, more connections, more victories, more struggles, more achievements–more everything. Unfortunately, when I think about...| Randall Degges
Some quick thoughts about how life is just too short to do stuff you hate. If you’re an engineer working on a product you can’t stand, it really isn’t worth it to stick around and keep working on the same thing. If you can code things, you have the power (quite literally) to build your own wealth, however you choose. Whether you want to work at a big company on a big product (with lots of other engineers), whether you want to work at a tech startup on a product you love (with a few amaz...| Randall Degges
Improvement is something nearly everyone craves–you want to be better at your job, better at your relationships, better with your physical fitness–the lists goes on endlessly. Regardless of what you’re trying to improve, there are likely thousands of websites, books, and bits of advice available to you that will help you to analyze your desires, organize them in a healthy way, and slowly make progress towards one (or more) of these goals. Over time, with enough consistency, you’ll imp...| Randall Degges
Something that is a constant source of inspiration for me, particularly in difficult (or high stress) situations, is the knowledge that I have the ability to make choices. Everyday I wake up, and one of the first things I think about is what I’m going to do that day. Will I work hard? Will I exercise? Will I eat the right foods? Will I read? Will I write? It’s so easy to not do any of those things. It’s incredibly easy to sit on the couch, surf Reddit all day, and eat potato chips–and...| Randall Degges
This article shows you the simplest possible way to force your Django site to run over SSL.| www.rdegges.com
A story about building a scaling a web service in an extremely simple way using Heroku.| www.rdegges.com
Does listening to music help you focus? Here's what I found.| www.rdegges.com
Real estate vs stocks: which is better? A discussion of my personal investing strategy.| www.rdegges.com
How I stumbled into a journaling habit and how it changed my life for the better.| www.rdegges.com
The personal productivity system I live by: the feature snowball method.| www.rdegges.com
Thoughts on maintaining economic stability in a crisis.| www.rdegges.com
Don't waste your time on user feedback if you're a startup.| www.rdegges.com
How you price an API service is incredibly important. In this article I'll explain what good API pricing looks like, and why.| www.rdegges.com
An in-depth look at how I manage my finances.| www.rdegges.com
Stop using local storage to store sensitive information. If you're putting a JWT in local storage you're doing it wrong.| www.rdegges.com
The EU Cookie Law has had a massive negative impact on website security. Here's why.| www.rdegges.com
Authentication hasn't improved much in the last several years. Here's the current state of things.| www.rdegges.com
In which I reflect on the sad state of my busy life over the last few years.| www.rdegges.com
Software licensing is stupid. Let's take a look at why.| www.rdegges.com
Obsessing over availability and service uptime is dumb. Here's why.| www.rdegges.com
A look back on my first two years as a Developer Evangelist at Stormpath.| www.rdegges.com
In this part of the series, we'll lay out our Heroku addon plans, take a look at mockups, and cover high-level functionalities.| www.rdegges.com
I'm buiding a Heroku addon, and you'll do it with me! In this series we'll build a Heroku addon together!| www.rdegges.com
I love HTTP Basic Authentication. It's simple, secure, and a pleasure to use.| www.rdegges.com
An easy way to accomplish little wins throughout the day is to try and always leave things better off than they were before you got there.| www.rdegges.com
A bit of discussion about my mindset, and a little bit of advice for people not already enjoying their lives.| www.rdegges.com
Some personal reflection on what my ideal life might look like.| www.rdegges.com
This article talks about my experience learning to program and my general development mindset.| www.rdegges.com
Be merciless with yourself if you want have no regrets.| www.rdegges.com
This article shows you the simplest way to compress your HTML code with Django.| www.rdegges.com
What I learned while building my writing habit.| www.rdegges.com
Want to be a better person? Do the right thing. Have some personal integrity, and make good decisions.| www.rdegges.com
Give this a try: do stuff, and have fun. Don't worry about anything else.| www.rdegges.com
I'm learning node.js because not only is it awesome, but it's a great way to improve my Javascript chops while concurrently writing backend code. It's a two for one deal.| www.rdegges.com
I'm working on a new startup: OpenCNAM! If you're interested, read on.| www.rdegges.com
A guide to being a successful GitHub hacker and open source developer.| www.rdegges.com
You know what's fun? Programming. Don't let the passion fade.| www.rdegges.com
The thought of automating all my work and making my life as simple as possible is really motivating to me.| www.rdegges.com
Having fun programming is something that a lot of programmers forget how to do -- and that makes me sad. Check this shit out.| www.rdegges.com
A little rant about Heroku, David Cramer, and 'cloud' myths. Heroku is awesome, learn why.| www.rdegges.com
Build modular, simple software! It's simpler, more useful, and more fun!| www.rdegges.com
Want to make your life easier when writing production quality software? You should try to keep your development environment as similar to your production environment as possible.| www.rdegges.com
I'm two months into my new startup. Here are some of the things I've been thinking about.| www.rdegges.com
One way to become a better programmer is to increase your usage of application monitoring software. You'd be surprised how much you'll learn! My suggestion: use New Relic.| www.rdegges.com
I just wrote a book! On Heroku!| www.rdegges.com
A quick look at some of the side effects you'll encounter when writing service oriented applications. Many of them are positive.| www.rdegges.com
A look at some of the problems you'll encounter when writing service oriented applications.| www.rdegges.com
A few days I've devised to keep myself motivated for writing code over the years.| www.rdegges.com
Programmers are the most dangerous people on the planet: they have the power to change the world -- solo.| www.rdegges.com
The next time you get frustrated, take a deep breath and relax. Coding when you're frustrated isn't going to help anyone.| www.rdegges.com
I can't stand the thought of doing anything less than 100%. It's the only way I can live with myself.| www.rdegges.com
I suck at multi-tasking. It's a lot easier to focus on a single thing at a time.| www.rdegges.com
Some of the things I try to do on a daily basis to keep myself sane.| www.rdegges.com
A great way to free up your time is to automate everything: from buying groceries to running repetitive tasks at work.| www.rdegges.com
If you miss the LA Hackathon, you're missing out; hardcore.| www.rdegges.com
Striving for perfection is the only way to become the absolute best. You've got to keep pushing yourself if you want to improve.| www.rdegges.com
A quick article discussing the past year I spent in Bakersfield, California, and how it went.| www.rdegges.com
DNSimple is the greatest DNS provider in the history of the universe. You'd be crazy not to use them. Here's why.| www.rdegges.com
Introducing postgression: a free PostgreSQL database service.| www.rdegges.com
Don't be an asshat. Be nice to your fellow developers! We're all total noobs, finding our way through this crazy world.| www.rdegges.com
When I'm in a calm state of mind I tend to do my best work -- how about you?| www.rdegges.com
A technical look at Heroku's dynos, and how they work.| www.rdegges.com
How I've been crawling out of my own exhaustion by focusing on the basics and keeping things simple.| www.rdegges.com
My thoughts on all the negativity in the tech community.| www.rdegges.com
Sometimes you have to sacrifice other tasks and activities to make room for new ones.| www.rdegges.com
Your perspective on everyday situations makes all the difference in life.| www.rdegges.com
Want to improve yourself? It doesn't hurt to have high standards for yourself.| www.rdegges.com
I started using Bitcoin a while back, here are my thoughts.| www.rdegges.com
Some thoughts on continuous delivery, and why it is awesome.| www.rdegges.com
I've been waking up at 5am, trying to change things up a bit. These are my thoughts.| www.rdegges.com
A motivational short about living a fearless life.| www.rdegges.com
PostgreSQL has a really useful extension which allows you to easily do full text fuzzy search.| www.rdegges.com
Holy shit. I'm 25 years old. How did this happen? Anyway, here are some things I've learned.| www.rdegges.com
Come build an API company with me!| www.rdegges.com
Here's a trick to getting through those boring days at work: see how hard you can possibly work. Make it a game.| www.rdegges.com
The simplest way to extract XML data with Python.| www.rdegges.com
A few ways you can instantly improve your month, cut back on stress, and feel happier.| www.rdegges.com
An in-depth look at how Caller ID works. TLDR: Caller ID is horribly broken and totally sucks.| www.rdegges.com
Some thoughts on how you can make the world a better place by improving your immediate environment.| www.rdegges.com
A quick look back at my startup: what things worked, what didn't, and what I learned along the way.| www.rdegges.com
I'm officially moving on from my startup to do something new! Here's my story.| www.rdegges.com
Reflections and thoughts about my first three weeks as a Developer Evangelist at Stormpath.| www.rdegges.com
Thoughts on building a life focused around quality.| www.rdegges.com
Heroku's platform was designed with services in mind. If you're building a service oriented web app, you might find this interesting.| www.rdegges.com
A story on how I unknowingly spammed Reddit, and reflections on what is and isn't considered spam in the world of tech.| www.rdegges.com
A story in which I discover that writing simple for loops in Node.js isn't always so simple.| www.rdegges.com
How do you find that thing you were meant to do? The thing that you love spending your time on? Your passion?| www.rdegges.com
Some personal reflections on the best thing I ever did for myself and my own personal growth.| www.rdegges.com