Issue 001: Rewrite that messy package.json

Happy November! Here’s a random grab bag of things I found interesting lately. If you find any of these interesting, you can follow me on Mastodon for more random stuff 🙂

Deno released an update that allows using npm packages within Deno. Word is that it can run Vue, and there’s a 5-minute demo of it with Vite.

Deno v1.28 ( deno.com )

import chalk from "npm:chalk@5.18"

# run a command from a package (compare with "npx")
deno run npm:prisma init

I find myself needing to chain some build commands, like when trying to couple Tailwind with create-react-app. Or Parcel with Eleventy. wireit is a small utility to help with that. Here’s an example of chaining tsc (TypeScript compiler) with rollup (bundler):

Wireit: upgrade your npm scripts ( github.com )

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "wireit",
    "bundle": "wireit"
  },
  "wireit": {
    "build": {
      "command": "tsc",
      "files": ["src/**/*.ts", "tsconfig.json"],
      "output": ["lib/**"]
    },
    "bundle": {
      "command": "rollup -c",
      "dependencies": ["build"],
      "files": ["rollup.config.json"],
      "output": ["dist/bundle.js"]
    }
  }
}

npm run bundle
# runs "build" (TypeScript) then "bundle" (Rollup)

npm run bundle --watch
# ...same, but comes with its own file watcher

An interesting observation about dev tools: it starts with having many choices, then the best ideas survive, then those ideas move to the core. This toot illustrates it like so.

This cycle of tech seems to happen in dev tools a lot… ( hachyderm.io )

D2 is a new text-to-chart language, similar to Mermaid and Graphviz. Some nice examples are available on text-to-diagram.com, and it seems D2 can handle some diagrams better than Mermaid or PlantUML. Source on GitHub.

D2 - A modern diagram scripting language ( d2lang.com )

How do D2 diagrams and code look like?

There’s also a D2 cheatsheet with some great examples on how to get started.

AutoHotkey is the leading automation tool for Windows, similar to Hammerspoon on the Mac. However, it’s a peculiar language compared to scripting languages of today - at least in my opinion.

AutoHotkey-jk is an extension to AutoHotkey that allows writing scripts in JavaScript. Documentation is very sparse, but the project is very promising. A script might look like this:

Autohotkey-jk - Windows automation with JavaScript ( github.com )

// Bind a shortcut to ctrl-alt-a
hotkey("^!a", () => {
  run("calc.exe")
  winWait("Calculator")
  winMove(0, 0) // move to screen top-left
  msgBox("Calculator is now open!")
})