Monica Powell is a senior software engineer, generative artist, and speaker who writes about developer education, creative coding, SVG animation, and hands-on learning through experimentation.
42 articles from this blog
A curated list of six influential tech conference talks covering web development, JavaScript, React, workplace strategy, and community building.
A developer's notes on the book 'Working In Public', exploring open-source sustainability, contributor dynamics, and the role of platforms like GitHub.
A guide to creating a custom GitHub profile README using Markdown, including examples and dynamic content ideas.
A tutorial on implementing art direction with Gatsby-Image to load different images based on screen size for performance.
A developer shares initial experiences and challenges migrating a Gatsby blog from Markdown to MDX for more interactive content.
A tutorial on using CSS custom properties (variables) to create reusable values, improve code maintainability, and easily manage themes in stylesheets.
A developer shares her top recommended Gatsby plugins for building and enhancing a personal developer blog, including analytics and SEO tools.
A guide to refactoring React state management by replacing multiple useState hooks with a single useReducer hook for a form-based calculator.
A guide to JavaScript's reduce() method, explaining its syntax, common uses like summing arrays, and comparing it to map() and filter().
Learn how to build a CLI tool with JavaScript to automate the creation of text files like React components and blog posts, saving time and ensuring consistency.
Monica Powell discusses her journey into tech, including landing her first engineering role, organizing meetups, and contributing to open-source on the Egghead podcast.
A tutorial on implementing search functionality for a GatsbyJS blog using GraphQL and React hooks to filter posts by title, description, and tags.
A developer's reflections on participating in Global Coderetreat Day, focusing on Conway's Game of Life, pair programming, and Test-Driven Development.
A developer details a Font Awesome rendering issue in SSR apps and explains how to fix it by reducing JavaScript dependency.
A tutorial on building a Grey's Anatomy-themed Lorem Ipsum generator using React, Netlify functions, and serverless architecture.
Explains how Git commit dates are set locally, not by GitHub's servers, and how to intentionally create commits dated in the future.
A woman of color in tech shares four specific meetups that were crucial to her career growth and transition from marketing to software engineering.
A tutorial on using Python and the Twython library to automatically create a Twitter list of users who use the #freeCodeCamp hashtag.
A beginner's guide to using the UNIX/Mac OS command line, covering basic navigation, file creation, and essential terminal commands.
A developer's guide to navigating the intermediate learning plateau, with advice on open-source contributions and targeted skill-building.
