Articles by Michael Cho

[Part III] Compensation and Interviewing in Tech: Differences between Australia and the US

[Part IV] Working in the US with the E3 Visa

[Part II] So How Did You Get a Job in the US (As An Australian Engineer)?

[Part I] Relocating from Australia to the US: My Experience as a Software Engineer

The first part in a series of 4 posts about my experience moving from Australia to San Francisco as a software engineer with a wife and young family.

Parsing JSON objects as custom classes in Typescript and Vue

Use aliases to supercharge your bash and zsh terminal

Resetting Algolia's vue-instantsearch when clicking a result

Encoding / Decoding JSON objects in Python

A summary of how to serialize and deserialize from Python data structures into JSON-compatible strings, which is especially useful when working with API requests and responses.

Bit Manipulation Part 2 - Bitwise operators in Python

A primer on bitwise operators in Python - left and right shifting, bitwise and / or / exclusive or, and complements.

Bit Manipulation Part 1 - Understanding binary numbers in Python

An easy introduction to binary numbers, which will lead to a follow-up article on bit manipulation in Python.

Primer to Python multiprocessing, multithreading, and asyncio

Basic overview of parallel / concurrent programming, including comparisons between multiprocessing, multithreading, and asyncio (coroutines) in Python.

Introduction to Client-Side Javascript in 2018

My notes for introducing a junior engineer to client-side Javascript for the first time, touching briefly on vanilla JS, jQuery, and VueJS.

Redshift and MySQL's giant list of datetime / timestamp functions

How to find Redshift current date and other common expressions for working with date, time, datetime, and timestamp columns in MySQL 5.7.x and Redshift.

Method delegation in Python vs composition or inheritance

Using Python, a short example on how to delegate specified methods to another object, as compared to composition and inheritance.

Using Python enums in SQLAlchemy models

How to use enums in your models to enforce value consistency.

Python command-line scripts with argparse

A template file for using conditional arguments when running Python scripts from the command line.

SQLAlchemy merge, flush, commit, refresh: Key Differences Explained

I've always struggled to remember between these very similar methods in the SQLALchemy ORM - so I took some time out to research these and write it down.

Code Review Checklist - the most important things to look for

A few notes on the code review process, and the steps I go through when reviewing.

Code Review Principles - understand what makes effective reviews

Some thoughts on what code reviews are and are not.

SQLAlchemy Many to Many Relationships: An Example in Flask

Building model definitions for many-to-many relationships via a secondary table.

Bash script to relink alembic migrations

Sick of `alembic merge heads` slowing down your builds? Here's a short bash script I wrote to rename your migration files and update its down revision.

Running Metabase locally as a service

Want the power of Periscope or Tableau, without the big monthly bill? Setup Metabase to run locally on your CentOS server.

Shared filesystem between servers using NFS

Mount a directory to be shared between multiple servers using Network File System (NFS).

Using model callbacks in SQLAlchemy to generate slugs

Dive into SQLAlchemy's little known `event.listen` method to automatically generate slugs when saving a model instance.

Overriding default Jinja attributes in Python view templates

How to use the `do` Jinja extension to modify an existing dictionary in your view template.

Create a custom Alexa Skill with AWS Lambda - Part 3 (Lambda)

Configuring your Lambda function for use with an Alexa skill.

Create a custom Alexa Skill with AWS Lambda - Pt 2 (Alexa Skill)

Create a custom Alexa Skill with AWS Lambda - Part 1 (Overview)

Custom Jinja template filters in Flask

A short snippet for creating a template filter, to present datetime objects in Jinja templates.

JSON field type in SQLAlchemy (Flask / Python)

Want to store JSON-serialized data in your database? But sick of calling `json.loads()` and `json.dumps()` when dealing with this data in your Flask app? Read on!

Debugging mobile apps with Charles proxy

Notes on using a HTTP / reverse proxy (Charles) to view all traffic between your mobile device and the internet.

How to Open a Port with IPtables [Step by Step Guide on CentOS]

A step by step guide (with example files) to open a port using IPtables, to allow restricted inbound traffic to a server.

Creating lists of CSS selectors with SASS

I like to use CSS selectors like .margin-top-10, .padding-right-20, etc to quickly style a new page. Here's how I create them in SASS.

Resolving alembic merge branch conflicts

How to fix alembic's "Multiple head revisions are present for given argument 'head'" error.

Automated server deployments with Ansible

Guide to automating server deployments with Ansible playbooks, with example files.

Sending log files to Logstash with Elastic's Filebeat

Centralize your logging by using Filebeat to send log files to Logstash.

Using Python's Watchdog to monitor changes to a directory

A small Python script to take action whenever a new file is uploaded to a directory or its contents change.

Data Pipelines - Airflow vs Pinball vs Luigi

Review of 3 common Python-based data pipeline / workflow frameworks from AirBnb, Pinterest, and Spotify.

Bash script to monitor instances and MySQL

A simple Bash script to check multiple server instances are responding, and rows are being added to a MySQL database.

Line-by-line code profiling in Python

How to find slow sections in your Python code.

Understanding Time, DateTime, and timezones in Rails

My notes on using RoR for formatting times and datetimes to strings, and parsing strings to time objects.

SEO checklist for developers to improve Google search rankings

Start your SEO with this checklist for developers.

Consuming a JSON API - Part 2 (EventBus)

Using EventBus to update your Android app after receiving the contents of a JSON API.

Consuming a JSON API - Part 1 (Retrofit)

Square's Retrofit library together with EventBus makes it super simple to parse the contents of a JSON API into your Android app.

Simple Android utility to parse config files in your app

A really simple utility file I keep around in my Android projects which processes a raw JSON file into a List of objects.

Android swipe to refresh, only at the top of the list

Build a swipe to refresh list, which only refreshes when at the top of the list.

Creating an instant autocomplete field in Android

How to create an autocomplete text field in Android, which displays suggestions in the dropdown and has a clear button.

Rspec - How to test a controller has included concerns

A short Rspec snippet to verify the correct concerns have been included in a controller.

How to split Rails routes.rb into multiple smaller files

Organise your routes.rb file into smaller files, works in both Rails 3 and 4.

Supercharged Javascript and CSS animations

Summary notes from the Browser Rendering Optimization course on Udacity focussed on building 60 fps apps.

How do you measure user experience quality?

Are there any factors which help evaluate a product as a bronze, silver, or gold standard of quality?

Overview of basic terms in AngularJS

A glossary of terms commonly used in Angular JS documentation and tutorials.

Serving PHP with FPM (FastCGI) using Nginx on CentOS

Installation steps to start serving any PHP application (eg Wordpress) using FPM on CentOS, together with a sample Nginx config file.

Testing a $rootScope broadcast event with Jasmine

A short snippet for testing AngularJS with Jasmine.

Rails 4 Conditional Page Cache for Logged In Users

A technique to generate a full static HTML page for caching, based on any specified conditions.

Recommended Rspec style for Rails models

Listing out my top 10 recommendations for how to structure and layout rspec tests for Rails models.

Simple sysadmin tools - Screen on CentOS

Screen is one of my favourite utilities when managing servers - it allows you to use multiple shell windows from a single SSH session and to keep these active even after logging out. It is super useful for monitoring long-running processes.

Should I use AngularJS or jQuery?

AngularJS has a good balance of maturity, community support, and productivity - suitable for use either by itself or together with jQuery in production apps.