Create a Stream Countdown Timer for Twitch with JavaScript

As you’ve probably seen, I’ve been ramping up The Polyglot Developer on Twitch, when it comes to live streaming developer content. What might not be obvious to the viewer of the live streams is the technical effort that’s involved in making the stream possible. For example, how do you position all the stream elements on the screen, or for that matter, broadcast a stream at all?

One of the things that took me a while to figure out was in regards to a countdown timer. I was broadcasting streams with a “Starting Soon” screen, but viewers didn’t actually know when the stream would start. Does “Starting Soon” imply a minute from now or ten minutes from now? Since I’m using Open Broadcast Studio (OBS), a countdown timer didn’t exist, so I had to go out and create one.

In this tutorial, we’re going to see how to create a countdown timer that can be used in your OBS project, or any project for that matter. We’re going to do this with simple JavaScript and HTML.

5 Tips for Working Remote in Tech

There’s a lot happening in the world right now, forcing companies to change the way they operate. For a lot of people, this means working from home, something they may have never done before, or have not done regularly.

Working remote or working from home may sound like a dream come true, but it involves more focus and self control than you might think. You want to be able to prove yourself capable, while not burning yourself out in the process.

I’ve been working remote for the past five years and have picked up a few tips and tricks that I thought I’d share to those that might be struggling with their new way of working.

The Polyglot Developer is Live on Twitch

I am pleased to announce that The Polyglot Developer is now a part of Twitch when it comes to streaming developer content live!

So what can you expect when it comes to the Twitch channel?

Think webinar, but without all the marketing nonsense that typically comes with them. Twitch streams are live, not at all formal, and an opportunity for the community to engage with the presenter as things happen on the stream. In other words, instead of leaving a comment on a blog post or YouTube video, you can ask questions and provide feedback as things happen, not only to the presenter, but to other members within The Polyglot Developer community.

So how do you get involved and what does this mean for the other education channels?

TPDP Episode #34: Containers, Virtual Machines, and Orchestration, Part 2

I’m pleased to announce that the second part of the Containers, Virtual Machines, and Orchestration podcast episode, featuring Marek Sadowski from IBM, has been published!

Marek and I had run out of time in the first episode which focused on container and virtual machine strategies, so we didn’t get to dive deep into Kubernetes and similar orchestration services like Red Hat OpenShift. However, in this episode we pick up where we left off and talk about exactly that, Kubernetes (K8s) and OpenShift, and how they differ or how one might be more beneficial than the other.

If you’re new to the container orchestration world and are sure how to make sense of all the terminology, strategies, and best practices, this episode of the podcast is something you should take time to listen to.

Querying a GraphQL API in a React Web Application

GraphQL is becoming all the rage, what with being able to query an API like you can query a database. There are two aspects when it comes to GraphQL development, the first being around creating GraphQL APIs and the other around creating applications that can query those APIs.

If you’ve been keeping up, you’re probably already familiar with my courses, Web Services for the Go Developer, and Web Services for the JavaScript Developer. In these courses we saw how to create a GraphQL API. Looking at things in the other direction, you might remember my tutorials, Query a GraphQL API on Android and iOS with NativeScript and Angular, and Query A GraphQL API with Vue.js and Axios, which demonstrated how to query a GraphQL in an Angular or Vue.js application.

This time around we’re going to explore another popular framework. We’re going to see how to query a GraphQL API from within a React application using a variation of methods.

Interacting with a GraphQL API with Golang

You might remember that I’ve done quite a bit of content when it comes to developing GraphQL APIs with the Go programming language (Golang). Heck, I’ve even written a book and published a course on the subject. However, in everything I’ve done thus far, I haven’t demonstrated how to interact with a GraphQL using Golang.

Sure, a lot of the time you’ll be using something like React, Angular, or Vue to interact with your web service, but that doesn’t mean you’ll never need to query a GraphQL API from Go or execute a mutation.

In this tutorial we’re going to see some quick examples on how to make HTTP requests with GraphQL queries using Golang.

TPDP Episode #33: Containers, Virtual Machines, and Orchestration, Part 1

I’m pleased to announce that Containers, Virtual Machines, and Orchestration has been published to all of the popular podcast networks. This is the 33rd episode of the show and the first two-part episode to make an appearance.

This episode features Marek Sadowski from IBM and dives into the DevOps space, focusing particularly on deployment strategies such as virtual machines and containers, and how to orchestrate potentially massive amounts of them in an efficient and automated fashion.

If you’re not quite comfortable with Docker, virtual machines, Kubernetes (K8s), and similar, this is an episode you should listen to, since all are very relevant and necessary skills for developers.