New Project: Picking my Backend

Ben Prothe - March 6, 2025 - 6 mins read

Today I’ll talk about the first step I’ve taken towards my new pet project: a total rebuild of my bootcamp final project. My team of 3 completed this project in the span of 2 weeks at the very beginning of the 2020 pandemic… as in, we had been going to classes in person, then we entered quarantine just as we got our team assignments and completed everything remotely. At the time we had only been writing code for 10 weeks.

Ref Shenanigans Kicked my Butt

Ben Prothe - February 25, 2025 - 6 mins read

Intro We all know you’re not actually supposed to try to use refs in a React app. I’m not talking about when you need to save a mutable value without causing rerenders… I’m referring to the “funny business” like attaching a ref to a DOM node or using it to lift up the API of a component. This kind of thing feels weird if you’re thinking in the “React Way”.

Shower Thought

Ben Prothe - February 24, 2025 - 1 min read

I’m working on my new creative project and reminding myself how to use Next.js (I haven’t touched it since before my last job). This is a cool framework. I’m not sure if they’ve just sold me on snake oil but if it works how it should, I’m really excited to use it and talk about it here!

Why I Made a Blog, Not a Portfolio

Ben Prothe - February 16, 2025 - 8 mins read

TL;DR For a dev like me, a portfolio doesn’t do the job of illuminating my value and could be a waste of time. Creating a blog with Hugo allows me to save time in development. A blog provides a medium through which I can share what I know and what I’m doing in smaller, bite sized chunks. I can also keep a track record while I am also working on private projects.