Blog — page 3
Articles 49–72 of 105.
- Data Formats4 min read
Base64 Is Not Encryption, and Three Other Things It Is Not
What Base64 actually does, why it makes files bigger, why btoa breaks on emoji, and when base64url is the one you need instead.
The TweakPad Team
- Backend & Databases5 min read
The Regex That Works Fine Until One Input Hangs Your Server
Catastrophic backtracking turns a working pattern into a CPU bomb. Why nested quantifiers explode, and how to spot and rewrite them.
The TweakPad Team
- Backend & Databases4 min read
Seconds or Milliseconds: The Unix Timestamp Bug Everyone Ships Once
Why a date lands in 1970 or the year 56000, what the 2038 problem actually breaks, and the digit-count check that catches both.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development5 min read
CSS Container Query Units: cqw, cqi, cqmin and the Rest
What cqw, cqh, cqi, cqb, cqmin and cqmax each measure, when to use which, and the containment they require to resolve.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development4 min read
container-type: inline-size vs size — Which One You Actually Want
The three container-type values, the containment each applies, and why size collapses elements that size themselves.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development5 min read
The Contrast Ratio Your Checker Is Probably Reporting Wrong
WCAG contrast has five thresholds, not one. How the ratio works, why translucent text breaks checkers, and what 4.5:1 needs.
The TweakPad Team
- AI & Prompt Engineering7 min read
AI Coding Agents Are Rewriting the Developer Workflow
AI coding agents go beyond autocomplete. The prompting patterns, guardrails and metrics that make agent workflows reliable.
The TweakPad Team
- AI & Prompt Engineering3 min read
AI Coding Assistants: Where They Help and How to Review Their Output
What AI coding tools are genuinely good at, the failure modes to expect, and a checklist for reviewing the code they generate.
The TweakPad Team
- AI & Prompt Engineering3 min read
LLM Context Windows: What They Are and Why Bigger Is Not Always Better
How context windows work, what tokens cost, the lost-in-the-middle effect, and how to fit a real codebase into one.
The TweakPad Team
- AI & Prompt Engineering3 min read
The Programming Fundamentals That Still Matter
Which CS fundamentals pay off in application work — complexity, data structures, concurrency, naming — and which do not.
The TweakPad Team
- Developer Tools3 min read
Developer Productivity: Systems That Survive a Bad Week
Practical habits for engineers — protecting deep work, cutting context switches, and automating decisions that waste thought.
The TweakPad Team
- Developer Tools2 min read
Linux Command Line: The Commands Worth Knowing Properly
A working set of shell commands — searching, processing text, inspecting processes and diagnosing a server, with flags.
The TweakPad Team
- AI & Prompt Engineering4 min read
Prompt Engineering for Developers: What Actually Changes Output Quality
The prompting techniques that measurably improve coding results — context, specificity, examples — without the mysticism.
The TweakPad Team
- Developer Tools2 min read
VS Code: The Features That Actually Save Time
Multi-cursor editing, the command palette, workspace settings and debugging — the features worth learning properly.
The TweakPad Team
- Developer Tools2 min read
Undoing Almost Anything in Git
A lookup table for Git recovery — uncommitting, unstaging, restoring deleted branches, and why reflog makes it reversible.
The TweakPad Team
- Developer Tools2 min read
GitHub Actions: A CI Pipeline That Stays Fast
A practical GitHub Actions setup for Node — caching, concurrency cancellation, matrix builds, and the secrets mistakes to avoid.
The TweakPad Team
- Developer Tools3 min read
Git Rebase vs Merge: Which to Use and When
What each command does to your history, the golden rule of rebasing, and a branching workflow that avoids the arguments entirely.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development3 min read
CSS Container Queries: Components That Adapt to Their Own Space
How container queries differ from media queries, the containment rules and gotchas, and why they make a component library reusable.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development3 min read
Web Accessibility: A Checklist You Can Actually Finish
The issues behind most real accessibility failures — contrast, keyboard access, labels, focus — with concrete checks.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development2 min read
Semantic HTML: The Elements That Do Work For You
Which HTML elements carry real semantics, what assistive tech and search engines do with them, and the div soup to replace.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development4 min read
Core Web Vitals: What to Measure and What to Actually Fix
LCP, INP and CLS with their thresholds, the specific cause of each, and how lab data differs from the field data Google ranks on.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development2 min read
CSS Custom Properties: Beyond Storing Colours
How CSS variables differ from preprocessor variables, why they cascade, and the theming and component patterns they enable.
The TweakPad Team
- Web Development2 min read
Flexbox vs Grid: A Decision Rule That Actually Works
One dimension or two — the rule for choosing between Flexbox and Grid, plus the modern Grid features that replace media queries entirely.
The TweakPad Team
- Backend & Databases4 min read
API Authentication: Sessions, JWTs, API Keys and OAuth Compared
Session cookies, JWTs, API keys and OAuth compared — including why stateless JWTs make logout hard, and what to do about it.
The TweakPad Team